What is Reddit's opinion of Jesus the Temple?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

>I thought WE became the temple

We become the Temple in the sense that we are now God's dwelling—the Temple (and before it, the portable Tabernacle in the desert) housed the shekinah, the presence of God. More comprehensively however the Temple was understood to be the very point of convergence between God and humanity, the place at which the heavens and the earth met: for this reason Israel had such fidelity to Mount Zion.

At the incarnation, Jesus Christ becomes the point of intersection between God and humankind precisely because he himself is both God and man—he is the one person in which the heavens and the earth do substantively intersect. Jesus clearly understands himself to be the Temple, going so far as to claim: "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days... the temple he had spoken of was his body" (John 2:19, 21). It is thus more correct to say that both Jesus and his followers together constitute the new eschatological temple, but that we Christians are "the temple" only insofar as we participate in Jesus' temple-ness, if that makes sense (see Wheaton professor Nicholas Perrin's book, Jesus the Temple).

In any case it is entirely true that Jesus re-creates the situation that existed before the fall: he restores not only the vertical relationship between God and humankind that had been breached, but also the horizontal relationship between humans beings themselves that had also been degraded. The Church is the corporate vessel of salvation; it is the vehicle into which human beings are gathered together to be saved together and thus is the representation of the ideal horizontal relationship between members of the human race. It is therefore entirely essential for there to be a means by which the Church recognizes somebody coming back into the fold, as it were; hence confession.

I've never seen someone misunderstand so much about Jesus/what the New Testament says about him in my life - and I grew up in a charasmatic prosperity gospel church!

Jesus was the farthest thing from an authoritarian figure. His message and actions were critiques of both the Jewish Temple (aka against the religious elites, see Jesus the Temple by Nicholas Perrin) and domination of the Romans (aka against the political sphere). In fact, Jesus was crucified because he was seen as a threat to the powers that be.

When he says render to Caesar what is Caesar's, he deliberately didn't say "pay your taxes" but also didn't say "pay your taxes". It was a call to action to realize what is ultimately God's (everything) and what is ultimately Caesar's (nothing).

One can read Jesus as a "proto-anarchist" (because Anarchism doesn't arrive until the 19 century) based on his teachings and actions - active nonviolence as in the sermon on the mount (e.g. turning the other cheek is an assertion of your dimity and equality to those "above" you) and his acceptance of death on the cross read in the light of the political reality. You can see this trend continue in the early church with Acts 2 (holding things in common) and the patristic era in Anarchy and the Kingdom of God by Davor Dzalto. You can also see it continue in "real" Christian anarchism, which is expounded in Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel written by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos.

Ultimately too, Creation is redeemed and brought back to health by Christ. It's not an escapism from the world. The "commandment" to give to the poor is rooted in the prophetic critiques of Israel and Judah and is a form of participation in God's calling to His People to be part of "the Kingdom of God" because the poor and widows are being taken care of not because "you get saved". It's an outpouring of love that 2 Peter claims for the "partakers of the divine nature" (see Endangered Gospel by John Nugent for a more thorough understanding of what the Kingdom of God is/does).

Jesus' whole ministry was in continuation with the story of the Israelites and follows from the prophets - who constantly call the authoritarian figures out on their BS. He is the literal embodiment of everything the powers, principalities, and authorities despise. Because if the Kingdom of God reigns, they don't.

(On a tangentially related note, I wrote a blog post about the Cross, nonviolence, and the state: http://theworsttheologian.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-crucifixion-of-nonviolence.html?m=1)