575 chapter 1: the christian is the temple of god Temple built in his royal city of Jerusalem, [that] the like of it had never been seen in the whole world; if [one like it] shall [ever] be seen, I do not know. It was built over a space of seven years at the greatest expense by a large number of workmen. The walls were constructed of squared stones in such a manner that neither a hammer nor an axe could be heard. On the inside they were clad with panels of cedar: these were not only inlaid with sheets of gold which were themselves most attractively engraved, but were wholly enclosed by them: “there was nothing in the whole temple that was not covered with gold” (3 Kings 6:22). But it was human ingenuity that raised up all these, and in like manner a human hand destroyed them, and leveled them to the ground.5 You, Man, are the invention of the Divine deliberation. The most August Trinity raised you up as a Temple for itself, and the Creator of all things called you into being: “God formed you out of the slime of the earth” (Gen 2:7). Nor on that score is man inferior to the Temple of Solomon because he was shaped of mud. For the hand of the Creator set an immense value on such a worthless material. “For whatever was made besides man,” (says Hugo of St. Victor6) “God made for change and death; He made only man for immortality” (cf. Gen 2).7 Therefore rightly each of us boasts before the Lord with the harpist King8 and Job: “Your hands,” O Lord, “have made me” (Ps 119:73; Job 10:9). Nevertheless, I warn here that nobody should think that God has hands when he reads that he is the work of God’s hands. “It is a very childish idea,” says the African Doctor,9 “that God molded man from mud with corporeal hands, for God is not 5 The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans. 6 Hugo of St. Victor (d. 1141), a theologian and philosopher. He wrote many works of biblical exegesis (commentaries on the Holy Bible). Compare Piolanti Antonio, Ugo di San Vittore: ECat XII, 711-712. 7 Hugo of St. Victor, Explanatory Notes on the Pentateuch, on Genesis 1 (Ch. VII): PL 175, 37. Also the same: LCG, f.34v. 8 By “the harpist King,” the author means King David, whom he calls a harpist because in the Psalms he played to God. 9 St. Augustine (d. 430): he was born in Africa and was made the bishop of Hippo Regius, a city in Africa.
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