“Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.”
—Exodus 25:8
Man’s yearning for God is written into the depths of his heart. From time immemorial, human beings have sought to ascend the ladder of divine encounter—echoes of Jacob’s vision lingering in every culture, every longing for the sacred. Yet while many have reached upward, it was to Israel alone that God descended in full revelation. And in the fullness of time, that revelation found its natural and supernatural fulfillment in Jesus Christ and his Body, the Church.
In this divine pedagogy, God has consistently chosen to meet man in space and time, investing creation with sacramental meaning. Sacred architecture presents us with a pivotal space of the encounter of man and the Godhead. The Temple of Jerusalem, divinely instituted and symbolically rich, was not a human monument to transcendence, but God’s own appointed dwelling. It prefigured the Christian church—not merely as a historical precursor, but as a prototype of her theology, liturgy, and structure. In this essay, we examine the Temple as prototype of the Christian church, drawing from Scripture, Platonic metaphysics, Patristic thought, and liturgical tradition. Thus, we intend to present a coherent vision wherein sacred space becomes an icon of the eternal reality.
Archetype—Prototype—Imitation
To grasp how the Temple of Jerusalem might serve as a prototype of the Christian church, we must first understand what it means for one thing to resemble another. Plato, in the Phaedo, insists that true “equality” doesn’t exist in the visible world—that is, in immanence. What seems “the same” is, on close inspection, always different. For example, two circles drawn on paper may appear identical at a glance, but under scrutiny, one is always slightly thicker, less symmetrical, or less precise than the other. And yet we still recognize both as “circles.” This recognition does not arise from comparing the drawings to each other, but from the mind’s recollection of a transcendent standard—the eternal Form or Idea of the Circle. In these Forms, our intellect transcends the flux of experience and rests in an intelligible realm, the realm of real truth. Reality, then, is somewhat tiered: the Archetype exists in eternity; the Prototype is the closest material embodiment of that idea; and the Imitation is the everyday echo—a shadow of a shadow of sorts.
In order to move from illusion to essence, we must embark with Plato on what he calls the “second navigation”—a metaphor for the shift from sense-driven speculation to metaphysical insight. When the winds of empirical observation fall still, the philosopher must in this second step take to the oars of reason. Only then can he approach the ultimate causes and true structures of being. This inner voyage, from appearance to archetype—from the drawn, imperfect circle to the perfect circle—is what sacred architecture attempts in form: to row through the sensible toward the eternal. In architecture, imitation becomes sacramental: visible forms signify and make present invisible truths. Form imposed on matter reveals not only human invention, but rather the invisible reality that God chose to reveal.
God’s Dwelling Place
The Temple of Jerusalem did not arise in isolation; rather, it was the culmination of a series of sacred spaces by which God progressively revealed how he was to be worshipped and how creation itself was to be ordered. Scripture presents us with sacred geography—spaces where heaven touches earth, and where divine order breaks into human history.
The first of these spaces was the Garden of Eden, a primordial sanctuary planted by God himself (Genesis 2:8). Eden was not merely paradise—it was the archetype of sacred space. The rabbis long interpreted it as a mikdash, a sanctuary, echoing the imagery of later temples. According to Midrash Tanchuma, the Shekhinah, God’s indwelling presence, resided in Eden before the sin of Adam drove it away. The garden was bounded by a threshold—guarded after the Fall by cherubim and a flaming sword (Genesis 3:24)—a clear foreshadowing of the veil before the Holy of Holies. At the heart of the garden stood the Tree of Life, a symbolic axis of divine life, oriented cosmically and watered by the four rivers of the world. The Tree’s form and function later found liturgical echo in the menorah of the Temple. Eden, in this sense, was the first sacred center, where creation was ordered and man walked in communion with God. And this helps us understand the very meaning of the word profane. The fanum is the temple—the sacred center—while the pro-fanum denotes all that lies outside its threshold. Even the seemingly “worldly” finds its orientation by relation to the holy. The sacred is not one realm among others; it is the axis that renders the whole intelligible.
After Eden, God’s presence reappears in structured form in the Tabernacle (Mishkan), described in meticulous detail in Exodus 25–27. The Mishkan is the first explicitly architectural response to divine command: a mobile sanctuary in the wilderness, designed as a dwelling place for the divine presence among the Israelites—“that I may dwell in their midst” (Exodus 25:8). It included multiple zones of access, from the outer court to the inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies, separated by veils and governed by purity laws. Its construction followed a heavenly template, i.e. Plato’s form: “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain” (Exodus 25:40; cf. Hebrews 8:5). Materials were prescribed with precision—gold, acacia wood, precious fabrics—each with symbolic weight. Every dimension was ordered; every direction intentional. The Tabernacle, portable and provisional, taught the people of Israel how to center their lives on the sacred even as they wandered.
With Solomon’s Temple, the divine dwelling found enduring form. Built on Mount Zion—described in Midrash Tehillim as the tabbur ha-olam, the “navel of the world”—it assumed cosmic significance. The Temple embodied the covenant and divine kingship, a microcosm of the universe, or imago mundi. The Book of Wisdom affirms its archetypal role, calling it “a copy of the holy tent you had prepared from the beginning” (Wisdom 9:8), linking it both to the Tabernacle and Eden. The Zohar—the central text of Jewish mysticism, offering a symbolic and esoteric commentary on the Torah, attributed to a 2nd-century rabbi but likely composed in 13th-century Spain by Moses de León—deepens this theology: “The Temple above and the Temple below are one.” In this unity of heaven and earth, stone and glory, the Temple prefigures the Church’s own liturgical center. As St. John Paul II observed, the Eucharist is always celebrated “on the altar of the world” and thus has cosmic significance (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 8). Thus, every altar becomes a new Mount Zion, every Mass a return to the sacred center—the cosmos sanctified.
Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the Temple is never depicted as a mere building, but as the place where God’s glory dwells and heaven meets earth. In Exodus 40:34–35, when the Tabernacle is completed, “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle,” making it clear that sacred space is defined by divine presence. Later, in 1 Kings 8:10–11, when Solomon dedicates the Temple, “the cloud filled the house of the Lord… for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord.” These theophanies reveal that the Temple is the axis of covenantal communion—a meeting point of time and eternity.
The Church: Fulfillment and Transfiguration
The Christian church building is not merely a new structure—it is a sacramental fulfillment of creation and the Old Covenant. As the Letter to the Hebrews proclaims, “For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence” (Hebrews 9:24). The church building, therefore, presents more than architecture—it becomes a threshold between worlds, the visible gate to the invisible sanctuary.
At the heart of its design lies a sacred logic—a structure that teaches by form. The traditional church is ordered according to an orientation and a tripartite progression: threshold, nave, and sanctuary. The narthex, corresponding to the court of the Gentiles in the Jerusalem Temple, serves as a space of preparation and purification. It welcomes the outsider, the catechumen, the penitent—those on the edge of divine mystery. Beyond it, the nave represents the sanctified cosmos: the domain of the baptized, the ark of salvation echoing Noah’s vessel. It is the domain of the faithful, ordered, spacious, and bearing the weight of the Church’s pilgrimage. Finally, the sanctuary, set apart and veiled in beauty, evokes the Holy of Holies—now opened through Christ’s priesthood. The altar, traditionally aligned eastward and raised upon steps, becomes the focal axis of the church’s meaning. It is the place of offering, the table of communion, and the font of divine illumination—where Christ, the “rising sun” (Luke 1:78), becomes light for the world. It is here, upon the altar, that the one true sacrifice is made present again, and the eternal Word made flesh is encountered.
The very shape of the church building embodies and deepens its theology. Whether laid out in the form of the Latin or Greek cross, the church’s floor plan is not merely architectural—it is cosmological. The cross itself stands as the axis mundi, the axis of the world, uniting heaven and earth, time and eternity. Joseph Ratzinger notes that even in the philosophical imagination of antiquity this symbol carried profound weight: “In the writings of Plato, they found the remarkable idea of a cross inscribed upon the cosmos” (The Spirit of the Liturgy, referencing Timaeus 34ab, 36bc). In Christian liturgy, this intuition reaches its fulfillment: the cruciform structure becomes not only a symbol of the universe but also the place where the cosmic and the salvific intersect. The very architecture of the church proclaims that Christ’s sacrifice is not a past event but the living center of space and time. Thus, the cruciform church reflects not only Calvary, but also the four rivers flowing from Eden (Genesis 2:10), the four winds, and the four Gospels proclaiming salvation to the ends of the earth. The cross-shaped plan is both shield and sign. Often this symbolism is crowned by the dome, the vault of heaven made visible. At its oculus or apex, one often finds the icon of Christ Pantocrator—the divine Logos enthroned in glory, holding the cosmos together with sovereign compassion.
Ecclesiastical architecture is more than metaphor. Each stone set in place echoes the City of God. The Church on earth is both journeying and already arrived; each sacred building is a visible anticipation of the eternal dwelling, where God will once again pitch his tent among men.
Church and Temple: Distinctions
While the Christian church building clearly draws upon the Temple of Jerusalem in both structure and symbolism, it also departs from it in essential ways. These differences are rooted in the newness of the Christian revelation.
The first and most decisive difference is this: Christianity universalizes sacred space. Whereas the Temple in Jerusalem was bound to a specific place, the Church is not. This decentralization is not a loss but a fulfillment—for the people of God themselves have become the temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). Each church of stone is, as it were, a sacrament of the Church made of living stones.
Moreover, the Christian church is not merely a sacred venue; it is the house of Christ. From the earliest centuries, churches were dedicated not simply to divine transcendence but to the mysteries of Christ’s life—his Resurrection, his Ascension, his Passion. The Church is inhabited not only by his memory, but by his Real Presence in the Eucharist. Especially when the Church prays, offers, and receives in the sacred liturgy does the building become what it was always meant to be: the living house of God. Here, the echoes of the Jerusalem Temple resound most deeply. For just as the Shekhinah, God’s indwelling glory, once filled the Holy of Holies, so now it returns—not as a cloud, but under the humble signs of bread and wine. In the liturgical act, the absence becomes presence, and the shadow finds its substance. The Church is thus not simply the successor of the Temple, but its fulfillment: the place where heaven and earth meet, where the divine truly dwells among men (Revelation 21:3).
And finally, the most profound transformation: the true Temple is no longer made of stone but of flesh and spirit. The new sanctuary is Christ himself. As St. Paul teaches, the Church is his Body (Ephesians 1:22–23), and the faithful are members within it (1 Corinthians 12:12). Thus, the earthly church building is a visible sign of a deeper mystery—the ecclesia, the communion of saints, the living Body of Christ, united to its Head. This spiritual reality redefines what sacred architecture must express: not merely ritual propriety, but mystical union.
Temple and Church: Continuity and Fulfillment
Having traced the deep structural and symbolic links between the Temple of Jerusalem and the Christian church, we can affirm a twofold conclusion.
The Temple of Jerusalem, especially in its scriptural and theological form, can rightly be seen as a prototype for the Christian church. Its hierarchical structure, sacrificial logic, and orientation to God’s presence offer enduring paradigms. For the Christian architect, the Temple provides not only historical reference but spiritual orientation—a way to root sacred space in revealed order. The imitation of its tripartite division, its eastward focus, and its sacred measure can help maintain the biblical and liturgical logic of the Christian tradition. This is not merely a matter of aesthetic fidelity. It protects the Church’s understanding of sacred hierarchy, as Lumen Gentium teaches, by distinguishing between laity and clergy through space—often expressed in the communion rail and sanctuary layout. It underscores the centrality of the Eucharistic sacrifice, making the altar the true heart of Christian life. And by preserving a sense of cosmic orientation, it continues to express Christianity’s profound rootedness in the order of creation.
And yet, in another sense, the Temple is not the prototype. It points beyond itself to the archetype. It is fulfilled—and transcended—in Christ. The Church, as the Bride and Body of Christ, no longer shadows a coming reality but shares in its presence. Worship is no longer confined to a place, nor tied to a single priesthood, nor even to a single architectural form. The true Temple is Christ, and through him, the faithful themselves become temples of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the Christian church is not just the imitation of the Temple; it is the material expression of a deeper reality—the mystical body, the heavenly Jerusalem, the eschatological dwelling of God with man. As such, the church building points both backward and forward: backward, to the Temple as a prefiguration; forward, to the final consummation when God will be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28). These two poles—continuity and fulfillment—must not be played against each other. Instead, they form a unified vision. The Church inherits the Temple’s form but exceeds it in meaning. This integration allows sacred architecture to remain faithful to divine patterns, even as it lifts the eyes toward the glory that surpasses all figures: the presence of God among his people in Christ.
