Why does Mormonism have temples?
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It’s the most readily identifiable building associated with Mormonism. The massive six-spire, Gothic structure is garnished with celestial symbols—the sun, moon, and stars—heaven visiting earth. The building is crowned with a golden statue of an angel, Moroni; his lips are pressed against a long trumpet in one hand, and in the other, he grasps metal plates. The angel heralds audibly what the building communicates symbolically. God is here, in the restoration of the reconciliation of heaven and earth, the temple being a physical representation of this spiritual message. A most unassuming and mundane feature fills in the blanks if anyone is left wondering what the building is about. Engraved on the doorknobs is the phrase “Holiness to the Lord,” the same message written on the ancient high priest’s garment (Exod. 28:36). This is the Salt Lake Temple.
For traditional Christians, the word “temple” transports their thoughts not necessarily to a place but to a time, the biblical era of priestly sacrifices and biblical feasts. But that time ended long ago when Rome destroyed the second temple of Jerusalem. Since then, the temple as a place has practically evaporated from the Christian imagination, but not its theology. Temple theology plays a significant role in understanding the nature of God and the purpose of His works.
So when early Latter-day Saints reintroduced temples as physical spaces to worship, non-Mormons began scratching their heads. Some dismissed it as delusional, an extravagant exercise in religious zealotry, a place where Mormons “pretend to have remarkable revelations, work miracles, heal the sick, &c.,” reported one newspaper. Others were impressed but perplexed, believing that building temples outside ancient Israel was “contrary to every precept of the divine law.” To add to the confusion, Latter-day Saints haven’t built merely one temple in a holy city, as the ancient Jews did. They’ve built many temples worldwide, from Tonga to Toronto and everywhere in between. So, why does Mormonism have temples?
Temples in Early Mormonism
According to Mormonism, there were at least two prominent Jewish temples in antiquity. The first, of course, was Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, but the Book of Mormon describes how ancient Jews built a second temple similar to the one in the holy city shortly after their arrival to the Americas (2 Nephi 5:16). Other temples were constructed, too, and served as places where people gathered to hear preaching (Jacob 1:17; 2:11; Mosiah 1:18; Alma 16:13) and to commune with the resurrected Christ (3 Nephi 11:1, 7–8). The Book of Mormon, like the NT, is uninterested in the temple as a primary mechanism for salvation after Christ’s death and resurrection. The temple does, however, feature in some eschatological readings of the scriptural texts and so retains importance as a physical, but future, structure (Ezk. 37:28; Matt. 24:15–16; 2 Thess. 2:4; cf. 3 Nephi 24:1).
Smith agreed, in part, teaching that building temples in the end times would herald Christ’s imminent return, providing the messiah with “a place to manifest himself to his people.” And because the Latter-day Saints were in the latter days, it was, perhaps, unsurprising to them when they began to receive divine commands to build temples. But Smith also envisioned temples playing a critical role in the soteriological development of his church. Just as the Book of Mormon materialized the recovery of lost or forgotten “plain and precious truths,” so would temples be spaces where ancient religious rituals, retrieved by revelation, could be performed. And not just any rituals. What would eventually occur in temples had the power to exalt the individual in knowledge and power, and to bind them eternally to an ever-expanding networked community of both the living and the dead.
Smith promised his church that God would one day “endow those whom I have chosen with power from on high,” should they build him a sacred “House” according to divine design. By March 1836, that day had arrived after Latter-day Saints dedicated their first “House of the Lord” in Kirtland, Ohio. In this temple, members performed early sacred ordinances, like washing and anointings, while rendering sacrifices of prayer and song. Those in attendance reported intense pentecostal activity, marked by prophecy and tongues in the company of angels. Some even witnessed the Son of God himself “standing upon the breast work of the pulpit before them,” according to Smith’s journal.
But the Kirtland charismatic episode would prove to be “the zenith of the Saints’ ecstatic experience,” explained one historian, after the LDS Church lost ownership of the Kirtland temple and struggled to build any others during Smith’s lifetime, despite being “allways Commanded to build” temples. In the time since, however, the LDS Church has built over 170 temples on every continent (except Antarctica) with more under construction or announced.
Temple Design and Activity in Mormonism
Temples are inaccessible to non-members, with very few exceptions. Unlike meetinghouses, which welcome visitors, only certain members of the LDS Church are permitted entry. So, non-members will never know precisely what temples are like, but they are able to know approximately what occurs through official LDS Church sources. Full disclosure: as a non-member who has never been one, I have not participated in temple rituals, but I have, on occasion, had the privilege of touring temple spaces before dedication. What follows, then, is an amalgam of my minimal experience, official LDS Church information, and academic perspectives on temple design and activity.
Not all temples are designed the same, but they share the same mission: to provide sacred space for performing ordinances. Typically, the entry point of a temple is practical, an administrative foyer to verify one’s temple recommend, an ecclesiastical endorsement for entry. Because temples represent the most sacred spaces in Mormonism, only worthy members may enter. Worthiness is dependent on individual efforts to obey the teachings of the church faithfully and is determined in interviews by church officials who certify their temple recommend. Once permitted entry, members are directed to private dressing rooms where they change into all-white clothing, representative of holiness and equality. Members then participate in a variety of rituals, like baptism for the dead, eternal sealings, and the endowment.
These ordinances and phased rituals are performed in different rooms. Baptism for the dead occurs in a baptistry with a large font atop twelve outward-facing oxen. This design is modeled after the “molten sea,” or mikveh, used to cleanse priests ceremonially in the ancient temple (1 Kings 7:23–25; 2 Chr. 4:2–4). Sealings are performed in rooms specifically designated for the rituals. Sealing rooms feature kneeling altars and rows of chairs for witnesses who look on as husbands, wives, and children are “sealed” for “time and eternity.”
The endowment takes place in phased stages. Beginning in the creation room and culminating in the celestial room, Latter-day Saints move through a narrative of creation, fall, mortality, resurrection, and exaltation, a representation of one’s ascent to glory. A subsequent ceremony offers participants a second anointing to compliment the initiatory invitation of blessings offered in the endowment. This later ritual is extremely rare; most Latter-day Saints will never experience it. Having gone through these ordinances once, participants may redo some ceremonies on behalf of the deceased, ideally for their ancestors.
While each ordinance is different, a covenantal theme of vows and promises to God tie them all together. As one LDS philosopher explained, “the rites of the temple are the medium through which celebrants are made ready to receive the covenants enmeshed in those rites.” In other words, temple ordinances are preliminary, not necessarily conversionary; they are more instructive than transformative. Ordinances, in effect, open the hands of Latter-day Saints to receive exaltation, should they grasp it by keeping the related covenants, and the instruction they receive teaches them how to grasp and keep those covenants. And they do so not as individuals but as a community working toward an eternal network of kinship forever.
In the end, temple ordinances are designed to channel the priesthood power of God into the lives of faithful Latter-day Saints—whether in life or death, and for time and eternity—to forge a network of families that not only mirrors heaven but to incorporate Latter-day Saints into it. It’s no wonder that Joseph Smith said: “We need the temple more than any thing Else.”
Traditional Christianity and Temples
If temples are so important to Mormonism, why does traditional Christianity lack them? The question is misleading. While there are no physical temples in Christianity, the faith nonetheless depends on a robust temple theology, especially for its soteriological and Christological claims. The temple of Jerusalem dominated the landscape of Israel’s ancient capital. It was the nation’s most sacred space, a holy dwelling place of yhwh, but not because He literally lived there. After all, the “heavens cannot contain him” (2 Chron. 2:6), let alone a building. Instead, Israel believed the temple was an intersecting space of heaven and earth that described God in three primary ways.
First, God reigned over Israel. Biblical scholars have noticed how the temple is designed in a way that parallels the Genesis creation accounts. Just as God created the cosmos in six days, so God commanded the tabernacle’s construction in six phases. God’s creation is also a sevenfold work of successive separation (e.g., light from dark, land from sea), just as the tabernacle separated people from priests and priests from the high priest as the distance between God and man closed, i.e., holy of holies. And as God rested on the seventh day of creation, so too was Israel commanded to rest on the seventh day after receiving instructions to build the tabernacle (Exod. 31:6–17). Finally, after God saw His creation, He blessed it (Gen. 2:1–3), just like Moses saw and blessed the completed tabernacle (Exod. 39:43). The implications are subtle but clear. Just as yhwh reigns over the whole cosmos, so too does He reign over all of Israel.
Second, God resided with Israel. Biblical scholars have also noticed the parallels of imagery and function between the tabernacle (and later the temple) and the Garden of Eden. Both were spaces set apart from the rest of the world for a special purpose, fitted with precious material, like gold and onyx (Gen. 2:12; Exod. 28:15–20), and furnished with menorahs that evoke the tree of life. And the tabernacle was the center point of sacred presence and activity. Just as God walked about (halak) the garden in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8), so God’s presence (halak) was made known in the tabernacle (Lev. 26:11–12; Deut. 23:14). It was a holy place, and to approach God’s presence required holiness, a work that fell uniquely to Aaron and his descendants. God placed Adam in the garden “to dress it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15), and he called Aaron to perform priestly duties for the sake of holiness.
Third, God redeemed Israel. The tabernacle was not merely symbolic. It served a practical function as well. The sins of Israel were reconciled to the holiness of God through a system of feasts, pilgrimages, and sacrifices. Israel sacrificed various offerings, like grain and animals, for forgiveness and peace with God. The holiest of these events was the annual yom kippur in which the high priest alone entered the Most Holy Place to offer the atoning sacrifice for the sins of Israel (Lev. 16:1–27).
But Israel struggled to maintain the vision of temple life that God set out before them. Prior to the NT period, people like John the Baptist believed the temple system had become irredeemably corrupt. It was then when Jesus Christ stepped forward to reveal Himself as the one to whom temples pointed. Jesus reigned not only over Israel but the whole world (Eph. 1:22–23; Phil. 2:9–11; Rev. 17:14). And like the temple—the space where God resided with His people—in the incarnation, the Son of God “took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7) as the Word of God “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), explained NT writers. Yet, unlike us, Christ was holy, completely without sin (Heb. 4:15). Most evident to the earliest Christians, then, is Christ’s work of redemption, the sacrificial lamb who “was manifested to take away our sins” (1 John 3:5).
Jesus thus radically altered the Christian understanding of the temple. Jesus is the greater temple, the one to whom Israel’s temple pointed (John 2:21). And because His saints “are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Cor. 12:27), the church is, wonderfully, the new temple. The temple is no longer a place to go but a people to whom we belong, and this was ultimately the point all along. As one scholar argued, the temple was “symbolically designed to point to the cosmic eschatological reality that God’s tabernacling presence, formerly limited to the holy of holies, was to be extended throughout the whole earth.” In other words, the Son of God reigns over a new kingdom, a society of ‘temples’ (i.e., believers) redeemed by Him and indwelled with the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; Eph. 2:19–22). They are the living stones with whom God “built up a spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5), because “the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them” (Rev. 21:3).
Early Christians did not see themselves “as being merely like the temple of God or as supplanting the temple altogether,” argued one scholar. Rather, they were convinced “that the heavenly temple had begun to break into history through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” His message, the gospel, is an invitation into all that the temple represents, i.e., to receive God’s reign, residence, and redemption in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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