Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. (2 Thess 2:3–4 ESV)
I want to make some comments on this verse that support a literal temple interpretation.
First, it is often assumed by some interpreters that a colossal
Solomonic-like temple complex must be
rebuilt. This is not the case, because the term for temple in this verse is
naos, which does not require the meaning
of a large temple-complex; instead, it can refer to just a tent-like structure
or the inner sanctuary, a structure that could evidently be erected in a matter
of weeks. Just one hundred years ago it would have been difficult to fathom a
reconstituted state of Israel back in their land, nevertheless, it did happen
in 1948 in God’s providential purposes. So that historical event should serve
as confidence when we read that there will be a future temple. With God all
things are possible, however difficult it may be to imagine that Jews would be
allowed to build a temple within Islam’s exclusive presence on the Temple
Mount. Perhaps a peace accord between Israel and Muslims will permit orthodox
Jews to build a tent-like temple sanctuary beside, or even upon, the Temple
Mount. However it will materialize, I accept the plain reading of Scripture
that there will one day be a literal temple structure, and when the man of lawlessness is
revealed he will appropriate the temple for his own blasphemous glory.
Second, rather than taking “God’s temple” in its normal, natural, customary sense,
historicist interpreters deny Paul intends a literal future temple in 2
Thessalonians 2:4. Historicism claims Paul’s use of “temple” refers
metaphorically to the church since Paul elsewhere uses “temple” for the church. This is mistaken for the following reasons: (1) This commits the corpus-lexical fallacy. Not too mention that Paul actually does use the term (through Luke) in a literal sense in a sermon in Acts. But all that is irrelevant to the context of 2 Thessalonians 2:4. (2) It imposes a foreign context upon the target text. They have to go
outside of the immediate context to attempt to make their case. That is because there are no lexical, grammatical, historical, contextual elements that supports a metaphorical interpretation.
The “church” interpretation is weak and lacks support given the additional arguments.
Colin R. Nicholl
gives good reasons showing that Paul has in mind a literal temple:
(1) since
the author is contradicting the false eschatological claim of 2:2c, we would
expect a concrete, observable and conspicuous event.
(2) the use of
kathisai [“takes his seat”]
seems more naturally to suggest a
literal, physical temple.
(3) the definite articles clearly allude to a
particular temple of the true God, which can only refer to the Jerusalem
temple.
(4) the immediately preceding reference to
sebasma [“object of worship”]
favours a material temple.”
(From Hope
to Despair in Thessalonica: Situating 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Society for
New Testament Studies Monograph Series 126 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004)
, 232–33, n. 34.)
Daniel
Wallace provides additional reasons:
“It seems that by 63 CE (the date I would
assign to 1 Timothy), the idiom [“God’s temple”] had shifted in Christian usage
sufficiently that a metaphorical nuance had become the norm. However, it is
equally significant that
all of the references in the Corinthian
correspondence seem to require an explanation (readily supplied by Paul) in
order to make the metaphorical sense clear. Thus, for Paul at least, one might
chart his development as follows: 50 CE—literal notion is still in view (2
Thess 2:4). Mid-50s—metaphorical notion is developed, but the shift has to be
made explicit. 60s—metaphorical notion is clearly in place, requiring no
explicit referential clue for this meaning. To sum up the evidence so far: it’s
not that 2 Thess 2:4 cannot have the metaphorical notion in view, but rather
that on a trajectory of Pauline thought such a possibility seems less likely
than a literal temple.”
http://bible.org/article/“temple-god”-2-thessalonians-24-literal-or-metaphorical
(accessed 3/11/2012).
Finally, Gene L. Green, despite his interpretation that
this is a reference to a literal temple in Thessalonica and not Jerusalem,
makes an excellent point militating against a metaphorical sense of the temple
being “the church.” He writes, “[T]he orientation of the divine claims of the
“man of lawlessness” is toward the
world at
large and not the church.”
The
Letters to the Thessalonians, 312, emphasis mine.
For more exegesis on
this issue and related subjects see here.
