The Theology of the Sight of God [8]

Rev. D.Th. Dorin Octavian Picioruş

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The Theology of the Sight of God 

Studies and translations

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Here are the parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…

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1.2. 7. The Temple full by the Glory of God

If in the case of Moses, the tent of the testimony was the place where God dwelt or He shows His presence (Lev. 9, 23-24), the moving of the ark of law in the temple built by Solomon does not mean than a moving of God’s dwelling into a space much more imposing.

This new liturgical spatialization of God’s presence, as otherwise and the first, in this case the tent of the testimony, was a divine initiative and not human, cf. II Sam. 7, 7, 12-13; III Kings 5, 5; 6, 12-13[1]. The Lord promises to David that his son will raise this temple and to Solomon says, cf. VUL: „habitabo in medio filiorum Israhel et non derelinquam populum Meum Israhel” („I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake/ forget/ neglect on My people Israel”) [I Kings 6, 13].

is the place where He makes Himself evident in plenary mode in before the people. The evidence of God in the temple does not mean a narrowing, a restriction of God’s presence in the world, but, contrariwise, a maximum nearness of those who believe in Him, a meeting place of God with men, on which God has endorsed it effectively.

Solomon brings the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Zion, together with all things from the tent of the testimony and with the tent itself (I Kings 8, 1-4). We assist in I Kings 8, 1-9 at a moving full of godliness of the tent in temple.

The glory of God, seen as cloud of light, fill the entire temple, floods it^[3]. The holiness of temple is the direct consequence of the glory of God and it is kept as long as God wants to manifest in this. The initiative is fully of God and His glory overwhelms on priests, which are no longer able to liturgise from cause of

Solomon’s words from III Kings 8, 12, cf. ed. BOR 1988, support the ecstatic character of cloud, which is seen by all the priests of the inauguration of the temple: „Dominus dixit ut habitaret in nebula[4]” („The Lord said that dwells in cloud”, cf. VUL).

The cloud or the darkness where God dwells is one of the expressions of God’s transcendence, across from the low power of the people of to define the personal reality of God and their relation with God. God, says Solomon, is not in cloud, but beyond of cloud or of darkness and He is just intuited, felt into a certain degree, which overwhelms on the faithful.

From the fact that God fills the temple and that the priests experientize the glory of God is understood that God is not inabordable. But He is intimizable, outside any boundedness or human conceptualization. God and His reality are not exhausted at the cognitive level, but are only indicated.

The darkness of God is overwhelming light, is plenary irradiation of imperishable life of God, is something from God, which touches the human person and makes it to be proper of God. The divine darkness fills on man of knowledge and does not vacuum him mentally or emotionally of every trace of understanding of our union with it.

Saint Solomon expresses God’s transcendence without as to diminish with something the immanent character of God’s presence in world. The glory which filled the temple is of God and it does not materialize through its epiphany but is giving to the people to their sanctification.

The apparition of the glory of God did not make on God the prisoner of our world, but has revealed to us the energetic presence of God, through which He lets Himself known and loved by the faithful.

[1] Cf. ed. BOR 1988.

[2] Into a typological and spiritual commentary of much exactness, Saint Bede said, that the temple built by Solomon was an image of „Holy universal Church” [Sanctae universalis Ecclesiae], cf. Venerabilis Bedae, Epistola ed Eumdem Accam, De templo Solomonis, in PL 91, col. 737C.

[3] In the commentary of Saint Bede at Kings, this identifies the cloud, which filled the temple of Solomon, from I Kings 8, 10, with the glory of God, bringing guarantee for this fact Lk. 2, 14, cf. Venerabilis Bedae, Quaestiones super libros Regum, in PL 93, col. 445C.

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