The Created World Is God’s Temple

When most people today read the seven-day creation story in Genesis, they usually have one of two reactions. Either they see it as a piece of laughably outdated science, or they see it as a figurative account meant simply to teach us that God created everything that exists, including us. As Bible-believing Catholics, we shouldn’t hold the first opinion (in fact, the text itself tells us that it isn’t meant to be a literal, scientific account), but the second one isn’t entirely correct either. Yes, it is a figurative account meant to teach us that God is the creator and we are his creatures, but there is more to it than just that.

When God created the world, he actually made it to be a temple, a place where he could dwell and where his people could be with him and worship him. Now, on the surface, that may seem ludicrous. The text doesn’t use the word “temple,” and a careful reading of it doesn’t even seem to give any hint of this. However, as usual, we need to look deep below the surface. We need to read it in the context of the entire Old Testament as well as in the context of the ancient Near East in general, and when we do that, the deeper meaning of the text rises to the surface and becomes clear as day.

Three Clues

There are three basic sets of clues that lead us to see the world as a temple in this story. To begin, the text very deliberately recounts creation as a seven-day event, and the number seven often figured prominently in ancient Near Eastern stories about temples. For instance, sometimes those temples were built in seven days, and sometimes they were dedicated with seven-day feasts (Note 1). And the Bible itself testifies to this practice. It took seven years to build the Israelite temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 6:38), and when it was finally done, it was dedicated with a seven-day feast (1 Kings 8:65).

Secondly, at the end of the week, on the seventh day, God rested in his creation, and that is another important point of contact with ancient Near Eastern stories about temples. Many of Israel’s neighbors believed that their gods rested in their temples, often beginning on the seventh day of their dedication (Note 2), and once again, Scripture itself exemplifies this. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, we read that God too rested in the temple in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 6:21, Psalm 132:8).

And finally, some of the vocabulary used in the story also points in this direction. For example, it calls the sun and moon “lights” (Genesis 1:14-16), and the Hebrew word it uses is also used elsewhere to describe the lamps of the tabernacle, an important precursor to the temple (Exodus 25:6, 27:20, 35:8). Similarly, the text also says that the sun and the moon mark the “seasons” (Genesis 1:14), but the Hebrew word for “seasons” here is never used for natural seasons like spring or summer (Note 3). It is, however, used for appointed times for liturgical feasts (Exodus 13:10, 23:15; Leviticus 23:4).

Two More Clues

And in case there is any doubt left, there are two other passages that seal the deal for us and confirm this interpretation of the seven-day creation story. First, we have a text from Isaiah:

“Thus says the Lord:
Heaven is my throne
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house which you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?” (Isaiah 66:1)

The “house” God mentions here is the Israelite temple in Jerusalem, so with these words he is relativizing the temple and saying that he is actually present in all of creation, not just in that one building. In other words, he is telling us that he dwells in the entire world just like he dwells in the temple, so the world must essentially be one big temple.

Next, let’s look at a passage from one of the psalms:

“He built his sanctuary like the high heavens,
like the earth, which he has founded for ever.” (Psalm 78:69)

The “sanctuary” here is again the temple in Jerusalem, so the psalmist is explaining that the temple was modeled on creation itself. God had the Israelites make it “like the high heavens, like the earth,” and at first, that may seem like a curious detail. What was the point of this? What special connection did the temple have to the larger world around us? The psalmist doesn’t answer those questions, but given everything we have seen so far, we can figure it out for ourselves: it is because the temple was a microcosm of the entire world. It was a miniature version of what all of creation is supposed to be, so again, the world is essentially just one big temple.

What It Means for Us

When we put this all together, the conclusion is pretty hard to miss: While the seven-day creation story in Genesis isn’t a literal, scientific account, it is meant to teach more than just the basic fact that God is God and we are his creatures. It presents the creation of the world as the building of a temple where God can dwell with his people and we in turn can worship him, and this has tremendous implications for our lives as Catholics.

Many in our culture today contend that when we step outside our homes and our churches, we enter a secular sphere where God has no place, so our faith should have no influence in areas like politics and business. However, that is patently untrue. Since the entire world is God’s temple, his place is everywhere, and we can’t leave our faith out of anything we do. For instance, Catholic politicians cannot support immoral practices like euthanasia and same-sex marriage, Catholic businessmen cannot use unethical means to further their profits, and Catholic doctors cannot perform abortions or any other procedures that are contrary to our faith.

Likewise, when we decide which government plans and policies to support, we have to form our opinions in accordance with the Church’s social teachings. For example, we have to keep in mind the Church’s preferential option for the poor and the vulnerable (Catechism 2448), and we can’t ignore Scripture’s insistence on treating immigrants with love (Jeremiah 7:5-7, Zechariah 7:8-10).

Simply put, temples are places of worship, so everything we do should be for the glory and praise of God. Granted, not everything has to be explicitly religious (for example, not all art has to be about religious subjects), but all our actions, whether in politics, business, or any other sphere, should be in accordance with the teachings of the Church and should glorify God and express our worship of him in some way.

Endnotes

1) John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 116-117, 181.

2) Walton, Genesis 1, 181.

3) L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 44.