Dalby Christian College
Messiah and the Temple
In his epistles, Paul identifies Jesus of Nazareth with several different appellations. Among them, the most frequently used one is the Christ, the Messiah. The history of the interpretation of Jesus’ identity as the Christ shows that there is some tension between two cultural backgrounds through which Paul’s letters can be read. In the previous generations, under the clout of the history of Religions School in particular, the Christ was understood to be intelligible only against the Hellenistic milieu in general. In this view, the term Christ lost its titural function, serving only as a surname of Jesus. Several recent studies, however, have improved our understanding of the meaning of the Christ by demonstrating that the designation is an honorific title with a Davidic royal connotation. The implications of these recent studies for Pauline Christology are promised to be fruitful for further exploration. Nevertheless, as N. T. Wright notes in reviewing Matthew Novenson’s works on the topic, one aspect of the messianic tasks is neglected in the scholarly discussion: the role of the Messiah in building God’s eschatological temple.
In fact, discussions on Paul’s messianic understandings do not devote much attention to this relationship between the Messiah and the temple. This negligence becomes further evident when it is compared with Gospel studies on the issue (e.g., Joshua Jipp). One main purpose of this paper is to determine where Paul utilises the Jewish hope of building the eschatological temple in relation to the Messiah. With this goal in mind, it attempts to show how Paul characterises his apostolic ministry for the Gentiles against the temple background in Rom 15:19–20. In the context, this temple understanding is related to Jesus’ identity as the Christ in Rom 15:8–13. This interpretation implies then that, because of his messianic Christology, Paul regarded his apostolic ministry as a temple-building project.