Aquinas on the Tabernacle and Temple: Why Sacred Places Inspire Reverence

Orientation #

He begins simply “let’s go on to another thing here. Article four,” continuing the treatment of the Old Law’s ceremonies concerning sacred things (ST I-II q.102 a.4). He stops before the sixth reply because “next one goes on for a long time. We’d be here till beyond dinner time.” The previous class treated the Old Law’s sacrifices and then Trinitarian appropriation; the next continues this same article at replies six through nine.

The class, in order #

1. How Thomas taught this article (“a bunch of young minds there”) #

Ten objections in a row are a teaching device: he imagines Thomas assigning “tomorrow we’re going to have a demonstration of this article” — one student states the first objection, another the second, others reply to each in turn. Contrast with modern philosophers, who “just go on and state their own opinion, and that’s it.”

2. Objections 1–2: God does not dwell in temples; the status of the law (“does not dwell in handmade temples”) #

• Obj. 1 (Acts 17): God, Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in handmade temples; therefore no tabernacle or temple was needed.
• Aside on tabernaculum = tent: before David’s temple there was the tent; hence the Eucharistic tabernacle is shaped and named after a tent, with a veil-like covering (“that’s why we’re so used to tents being four-sided”), and the screen formerly hung before its door.
• Obj. 2: the status of the Old Law was not to be changed except by Christ; the tabernacle designates that status; therefore it should not have been changed by building a temple — “should have left it in the tent.”

3. Objections 3–5: many temples, veils, orientation (“Why deny the people their own temple?”) #

• Obj. 3: divine worship grows by many altars and temples, as in the New Law (“all these churches around town”); why only one in the Old Law? He notes the Jews had many synagogues, but these were not counted temples.
• Obj. 4: in God one venerates unity and simplicity; veils dividing the tabernacle complicate what is simple. Aside: in the Compendium theologiae unity is treated inside the treatise on God’s simplicity rather than pulled out separately as in the two Summas — “that’s how you get down to three.”
• Obj. 5: the power of the first mover appears first in the east, where the first motion begins; so the tabernacle should face east, not west. Students dispute the facts (the priest faced east; Ezekiel’s east gate for the prince); he does not settle it here, leaving it for reply 5.
• Aside: “These are wonderful little objections… I should use this when I go out with my grandchildren at Christmas time.”

4. Objections 6–7: images and altars (“You shall make an altar of earth for me”) #

• Obj. 6 (Exodus 20): no sculpted statues or likenesses were to be made — yet there were cherubim, the ark, the propitiatory, the candelabrum, the table, the two altars.
• Obj. 7: God commands an altar of earth, and no ascent by steps; yet afterwards an altar of wood overlaid with gold and brass, five cubits by five by three (Ex. 27), and the incense altar of wood and purest gold (Ex. 30) — so high one must climb steps. “So God is kind of contradicting himself, right?” Students gloss a cubit as about eighteen inches, finger to elbow, “just a handy measurement.”

5. Objections 8–10: superfluity, consecration of bodies, fixed feasts (“nothing ought to be superfluous”) #

• Obj. 8: nothing in God’s works is superfluous, since nature does nothing superfluous — we have two hands and two eyes, not three; a third hand “would have come handy” carrying groceries, but two suffice, and two eyes are needed for distance. One covering suffices for a house; the tabernacle had many (curtains, goats’-hair coverings, red ram skins, hyacinth skins). He guesses the objection “came from some Cistercian in Thomas’s class,” their churches being plain and set against grandiose ones.
• Obj. 9: exterior consecration signifies interior holiness, whose subject is the soul; so consecrating inanimate tabernacle and vessels is unsuitable.
• Obj. 10 (Ps. 33): “I bless the Lord at all times”; so fixed solemn days are unsuitable.

6. Sed contra and the body: reverence and figure (“example and shadows of celestial things”) #

• Sed contra (Hebrews): those who offered gifts according to the law served “as an example and shadow of celestial things,” as Moses was told, “see that you make all things according to the exemplar shown you in the mountain.” What represents the image of heavenly things has a reasonable cause. “So you got one man against ten men here.”
• Body, first reason: all outward worship is ordered that men have God in reverence. Human affection is such that what is common and undistinguished is less revered, what has some distinction of excellence is more admired and revered. Hence kings and princes, to be held in reverence, wear precious vestments and have ampler, more beautiful dwellings — the king’s house should be grander than mine; Queen Elizabeth opening Parliament; his son arriving at a wedding in dress uniform (“I thought I was the best dressed man there until your son showed up”). Therefore special times, dwelling, vessels and ministers are ordered to God’s worship.
• Applied: the college French teacher who made chalices with precious stones in Mexico and gave them to priests; his own dislike of the plain chalices now used — a beautiful chalice given by one’s parents, carried through a priesthood, and the altar boy’s impression of it, makes for more reverence. Protestant-stripped European churches and a woman troubled by “the frills” of Catholic worship — “I wish I had known this section of the Summa back then.” Benediction with the monstrance, and the priest’s vestments as principal offerer, induce more reverence.
• Body, second reason: the status of the Old Law was also instituted to figure the mystery of Christ; what figures something must be determinate and bear some likeness to it. So special things had to be observed in the cult of God. “There’s really two reasons he can give.”
• [Break taken here.]

7. Reply 1: the church is a place to put us (“It’s a place to put us”) #

Worship regards two things: God who is worshipped, and men who worship. God is not contained by a bodily place, so a temple is not needed on his account; men are bodily, so a special place is needed on theirs — for two reasons: (1) coming together in a place deputed to God’s worship, they approach with greater reverence; (2) the disposition of the temple signifies things pertaining to the excellence of Christ’s divinity or humanity (the division of the first book of the Compendium). Solomon (3 Kings 8): if heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house — yet “my name shall be there,” that the knowledge of God be manifested there and prayers be more hearable from the devotion of those praying. Note: in the virtue of religion, devotion is the first act, prayer as it were a second, preceded by devotion.

• Examples of place shaping devotion: the little altar boy sent to tell adults in the back of church to be quiet; his children at Blessed Sacrament, who without prompting knelt in imitation of the statues of the children of Fatima — “man is the most imitative of the animals, and first we learn by imitation”; St. John’s in Clinton, beautiful and representational, with more vocations than any parish in the Worcester diocese; his own parish’s costly Florentine windows that are merely “shafts of light,” non-representational, unimpressive to children; his daughter choosing the cathedral — “I want to get married in a real church.”
• Aside: the alpha and omega on tabernacles “gets me thinking, even old man like me”; the Kansas City church with walls of the life of the Virgin and of Christ.

8. Reply 2: tabernacle then temple (“a certain most quiet status”) #

The status of the Old Law was not changed before Christ as regards the fulfilment of the law, which came only through Christ; it was changed as regards the condition of the people. First they were in the desert without fixed dwelling; then wars with little nations; at last, under David and Solomon, “a certain most quiet status” — and then first the temple was built, on the place Abraham designated by divine showing (Gen. 22, the mountain named “God sees”), foreseen for divine worship (Deut. 12).

• Three reasons from Rabbi Moses why the place was not designated earlier: lest the Gentiles appropriate it (“that’s probably happening now with the Mohammedans”); lest the Gentiles destroy it; lest any tribe claim it as its own lot and quarrels arise — hence no temple until there was a king to restrain such conflict. Before that, a portable tabernacle, no place yet determined. This is the literal reason for the diversity of tabernacle and temple. “You’re so thorough, Thomas.”
• Figurative reason (answering to the body’s second reason): the changeable tent signifies the status of the present changeable life; the fixed temple the future, altogether invariable life. A student supplies “in my Father’s house are many mansions” — “I wasn’t thinking of that reply, but that’s very good.” Hence no sound of hammer or saw was heard in the temple’s building: all tumult is far from the future state. Alternatively, tabernacle = Old Law, temple = New Law; only Jews built the tabernacle, but Gentiles of Tyre and Sidon helped with the temple. “This is beautiful, Thomas. Makes you want to read the Old Testament more.”

9. Reply 3: only one temple (“for the exclusion of idolatry”) #

• Literal: the Gentiles set up diverse temples for diverse gods; that faith in God’s unity be made firm, God willed sacrifice offered in one place only. Also, to show that bodily worship was not accepted for its own sake, it was restrained, not offered everywhere in passing. The New Law’s worship, in which the sacrifice contains spiritual grace, is accepted in itself — hence multiplication of altars and temples.
• For spiritual worship (teaching of the Law and prophets) the Old Law also had diverse places, the synagogues, as we now have churches. So our church succeeds in place of both temple and synagogue, its sacrifice being spiritual; “whence there is not distinguished with us the place of sacrifice and the place of teaching.”
• Figurative: the unity of the Church, militant or triumphant.

10. Reply 4: the veils and the parts (“on our side, and on the side of God”) #

Just as the unity of temple or tabernacle represents the unity of God or of the Church, the distinction of its parts represents the distinction of things subject to God, from which we rise to venerating God — i.e. the division is on our part. Aside: in Florence the baptistery stands separate from the church; elsewhere the baptismal place is an entry to the place of worship, signifying that one enters the Church through baptism.

• The parts: Holy of Holies (to the west), the Holy (to the east), and before them the atrium.
• First reason: the parts figure the parts of the world — Holy of Holies = the higher world of spiritual substances, the angels; the Holy = the bodily world. (A student’s suggestion that the angel appeared to Zachary in the Holy of Holies is corrected: only the high priest entered there; Zachary was an incense priest, not high priest.) Footnote: the canticles of praise — the three young men in Daniel, and Psalm 148 — praise heavens, earth, and then man.
• Digression on man as “a hodgepodge”: Thomas in the Compendium — man’s soul is far nobler than his body and naturally immortal, the body not; since the soul is naturally the body’s form, God gave original justice as a remedy, subjecting body to soul against corruption and death; Adam ruined it. (Prompted by a Kasurik conversation about the line, “that man whom I call my father, I know not.”)
• The veil’s four colours = the four elements: linen = earth (linen grows from earth); purple = water (the dye from sea shells — “the Venetian secret”); hyacinth = air; twice-dyed [coccinum] = fire. The matter of the four elements is the impediment veiling incorporeal substances from us.
• Hence only the high priest, once a year, entered the Holy of Holies — designating man’s final perfection, to which he is introduced in that age. (Students: a rope was tied to him in case he died inside.) The priests entered the exterior tabernacle daily; the people came only to the atrium — because the people could perceive only bodies, while only the wise attain by consideration the interior reasons of things. “Now it’s all going to be on your exam.”
• Figurative reason (Heb. 9): the exterior tabernacle = the status of the Old Law, which the priests always enter to complete their offices; the inner = celestial glory, or the spiritual status of the New Law, a certain beginning of future glory, into which Christ introduces us, figured by the high priest entering alone once a year. The veil = the hiding of spiritual sacrifices under the old sacrifice; its colours now: linen = purity of the flesh, purple = the passions saints sustained for God, twice-dyed = the twofold charity of God and neighbour, hyacinth = celestial meditation (“isn’t there a hyacinth tea now? I’ll have to try that. See if it helps my meditation”).
• The Old Law’s status belonged differently to people and priests: the people considered the bodily sacrifices in the atrium; the priests, having more explicit faith in the mysteries of Christ, considered their reasons and entered the exterior tabernacle, itself divided from the atrium by a veil, since what was hidden from the people was known to the priests — though not fully revealed as afterwards in the New Testament (Eph. 3:5). “So you can put that down for your homework.”

11. Reply 5: why facing west (“adored at the rising of the sun”) #

• Literal: adoration toward the west was introduced to exclude idolatry, since all the Gentiles, revering the sun, adored toward the east — Ezekiel 8:16, “their backs against the temple of the Lord and their faces to the east, and they adored at the rising of the sun” (he thinks of the Egyptians). So the tabernacle had the Holy of Holies to the west, that they adore westward. (He first mis-says “adoring to the East,” then corrects himself.)
• Figurative: the whole status of the earlier tabernacle was ordered to figuring the death of Christ, signified by his going down (setting) — Ps. 67, “ascended upon the going down, the Lord is his name.”
• He stops here rather than begin reply 6.

His words #

• Tabernacle — a tent; portable, changeable dwelling, as against the fixed temple.
• Propitiatory — the ark’s cover, listed among the temple’s images.
• Sancta Sanctorum / Sancta / atrium — Holy of Holies (west), the Holy (east), the court.
• Summus sacerdos — “the highest priest,” the high priest who alone entered once a year.
• Reverence — his constant rendering of reverentia: what distinction and excellence in worship produce in men.
• “Portatile” — portable, of the desert tabernacle.
• “Ratio literalis” / figurative reason — the two orders of explanation, answering the body’s two reasons.
• “Twice tinted” / twice-dyed — his rendering of coccinum [ed.: scarlet], designating fire, then the twofold charity.
• “Most quiet status” — quietissimum statum, the peace under David and Solomon.
• Devotion — the first act of the virtue of religion, preceding prayer.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II q.102 a.4: objections 1–10, sed contra, body, replies 1–5.
• Quoted inside it: Acts 17; Exodus 20, 27, 30; Hebrews (sed contra; ch. 9); 3 Kings 8; Genesis 22; Deuteronomy 12; Psalm 33; Ezekiel 8:16; Psalm 67; Ephesians 3:5.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Compendium theologiae — unity treated under simplicity; division by Christ’s divinity and humanity; man’s soul, body, and original justice.
• Rabbi Moses — three reasons for delaying the temple’s site.
• Ezekiel, the east gate of the prince (student’s remark).
• Daniel, canticle of the three young men; Psalm 148.
• John 14, “in my Father’s house are many mansions” (student).

His questions #

• Why was a tabernacle instituted if God does not dwell in handmade temples? Not on God’s account, who is not contained by place, but on ours: a place where we come with more reverence, and whose disposition signifies Christ’s divinity and humanity.
• Why change from tent to temple before Christ, if only Christ changes the law’s status? The fulfilment was unchanged; the people’s condition changed, from desert wandering to the quiet reign of David and Solomon.
• Why only one temple, when the New Law has many churches? To exclude idolatry and confirm faith in God’s unity, and to show bodily worship was not accepted for its own sake; the synagogues corresponded to our churches.
• Why divide the simple God’s dwelling by veils? The division is on our part: it represents the distinction of things subject to God, the spiritual and the bodily world, by which we rise to venerate him.
• Why did the tabernacle face west, if the first motion begins in the east? Because the Gentiles adored the rising sun eastward; westward adoration excludes idolatry, and figures Christ’s death, his “going down.”
• Was the tabernacle or the temple oriented east or west? Disputed among the students at the time of objection 5; settled only at reply 5 for the Holy of Holies (west).
• Did the angel appear to Zachary in the Holy of Holies? No — only the high priest entered there; Zachary was an incense priest.