Thomas A. Wayment
Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Symbols, Sermons, and Settings, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-symbols-sermons-and-settings/.
“My training in New Testament and religious studies has forced me to see some conversations about our shared faith trajectory differently and in ways that have not always resonated with Latterday Saint audiences. The topic of the temple in early Christianity is one that is both complex and in need of discussion, particularly for a people who emphasizes the role of the temple in their religious experience and identity. For many believing Latter-day Saints, history or recovered history is a causative force for belief: it obligates one to believe in a tradition if the history is tangible, provable, and credible. The idea of history pushing a person to believe underlies so many of the things that I have read by Latter-day Saint scholars.”
To download this chapter in PDF format, click here.
About the Interpreter Foundation Book Chapter Reprint Series
The purpose of this reprint series is to make individual chapters from books published by The Interpreter Foundation more accessible to readers. Although in some instances the formatting and pagination may have been changed, the content of this chapter, like others in this reprint series, is identical to what appeared in its original book publication. It has not been updated to incorporate research that has appeared subsequently nor to reflect the current practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to use the full name of the Church and to avoid terms such as “Mormon” and “LDS.”
