I forget what exactly inspired this topic, but I was thinking about Paul’s use of ‘temple’ language in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 – broadly, Paul identifies God’s people as the temple. I dug a bit into the latter passage, which is a kind of mash-up of several Old Testament passages – Leviticus 26:12, Ezekiel 37:27 and 2 Samuel 7:14. A few rough and uninspired notes:
– Each of those three OT passages invoke either the ‘your God/my people’ or ‘your father/my son’ covenantal formulas – Paul grounds the identity of God’s people in this very covenant-focused passages.
– The purity/ethical aspects of both 2 Cor 6;14-18 and the OT texts it quotes are brought into sharper relief when considering the temple/covenant language. Impurity in the context of temple equals desecration.
– In a nutshell, Paul seems to be locating matters of purity/ethics within the context of the temple – the people of God being the temple, or being where God dwells, where forgiveness and the presence of God is. This sharpens the issue considerably.
– Related to this is the use of exclusionary language which Paul invokes. The temple is to be kept pure and undefiled.
– The three OT texts have some interesting themes – Leviticus is obviously a more ethical text, 2 Samuel has a more prophetic/eschtalogical dimension to it, and Ezekiel is soundly eschatalogical. I wonder if a trajectory could be argued here, pointing towards the eventual birth of the people of God as the temple. More work could stand to be done here.
Theologians, Inc. 
One point that is worth reflecting upon is the fact that the significance given to the temple in the New Testament suggests that the Church is not just a jerry-rigged entity designed to plug the gaping hole left by a surprisingly unrealized eschatology, but is in fact integral to that eschatology and the Christian faith more generally.
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Thats roughly where I was heading with my point on ‘trajectory’. The Church is a ‘real thing’, to be crude about it. Thinking on it a bit more, I wonder if this line of thought might serve to rebut or at least challenge ‘flat church’ conceptions.
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