Of Towers and Temples
Chapter 1 - Chewing the Cud: A Devotional Rumination on God, Man, and World
I’m excited to share the next installment in my series of posts previewing the first handful of sections/chapters in my newly released book, Chewing the Cud: A Devotional Rumination on God, Man, and World. If you’d like to support my work, you can pick up a copy here: https://amzn.to/4lkSMUs. If you haven’t read the Preface or Prologue yet, I have also made them available on my Substack for free here:
The Lord Jesus Christ said to His disciples:
If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt. 16:24-26).
Throughout history, fallen man has made it his prerogative to save his own life—attempting to reshape both himself and the world so as to maximize power, control, comfort, security, and pleasure: to become the master of his own destiny and the architect of his own salvation, defined on his own terms and weighed by the scales of his own wisdom. This penetrating question of Christ, when posed before such striving, pierces man to his heart: For what profit is it to a man? With but a few words, Christ unmasks as profitless what man so often hails as the very paradigm of profit. But toward what end does he seek such worldly gain? For if his pursuits do not transcend the comfort, pleasure, and happiness of this world, then what are they but vain, empty, and ultimately profitless engines of spiritual stagnation? When He speaks, the Lord never lingers upon the surface of a matter, but searches the depths and treads the heavens—radiating the light of truth and revealing the innermost meaning of all things.
In these words, the Lord reveals the two divergent paths set before man: to deny himself and find life, or to assert himself and lose it. One leads through humility and repentance to communion with God; the other through egotism—seizing the fruit—to isolation and death. This dichotomy marks the spiritual chasm between constructing a worldly tower in prideful abandon and presenting oneself as a living stone to be built into the temple of the Most High God. Though similar in certain superficial respects—both Tower and Temple are structurally hierarchical and unifying—their spiritual orientations are perfect inversions of one another. To explore this contrast, the Tower of Babel and its contemporary analogue—the transhumanist project—will first be considered. By contrast, the Tabernacle, Temple, and Church—each a stage in the unfolding revelation of man’s locus of transformation—reveal how, unlike the Tower’s deceitful pretension, God alone can effect the divinization of man.
Man’s Building Project: Babel
The death spiral of fallen human history—from Adam’s solemn exile from the Garden to the enshrinement of divine-human estrangement in the Tower of Babel—unfurls through a series of falls, each corresponding to a moment of angelic apostasy from the vocation entrusted to them as shepherds of humanity. It began with the serpent’s spiritual seduction, inciting Adam and Eve's disobedience of God’s command; it deepened with Cain’s envious fratricide, for which he was cursed from the earth and withdrew to build the first city apart from God, seeking refuge from a ground now refusing its gifts to him—a city in which the fallen sons of God enticed humanity with technologies veiled as gifts, yet wrought for their ruin. Thereafter, evil descended further still into depths uncharted, as the sons of God left their proper dwelling to partake in the unhallowed hospitality of pagan rite; commingling with human women, they sired a race of giants as mighty in renown as in corruption.
This descent culminated in such overgrown wickedness among humanity that God razed the world that He had made—that man had perverted—sending a flood to cleanse the earth. Only one human family, that of Noah, was preserved in an ark, along with some of each kind of animal, to be planted as the seeds of a new creation. When the waters subsided, the earth rose again from the deep, as it had on the third day, when dry land first appeared at God’s command.
Though the world had emerged from the womb of judgment, newly baptized, Noah’s progeny—rather than filling the earth and subduing it as God had ordained—settled instead in the plain of Shinar. Humanity, united in one language and purpose, resolved to build a city and a tower whose height would reach to heaven—and, in so doing, to make a name for themselves. The tower stood as the spiritual axis of the city—through which man sought to harness divine power in service of his collective ambition. But whatever the precise shape of this ritualistic enterprise, God foresaw its end, intervening to halt the descent of man’s soul into inevitable desolation. For God proclaimed, “They will not fail to accomplish what they have undertaken. Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language, so they may not understand one another’s speech” (Gen. 11:6–7). And thus rendered unable to communicate, fallen man lacked the means to realize his vision. However the world of their pride-induced delusion may have unfolded, God prevented its fruition by scattering humanity across the face of the earth—dividing them into nations to begin again, each in linguistic, social, and political isolation. Indeed, the power they had nearly attained through collective unity around the Tower would certainly have proven ruinous to His true purpose for them.
Man, the pinnacle of God’s creation and His living image in the world, sought to exalt himself in a manner discordant with his true nature. For humanity is, by nature, personal—and thus communal—after the likeness of the Trinity, whose inner life is one of self-giving love, not self-exaltation. Yet in seeking to make a name for himself, man grasped at the world with the arm of self-will—an ambition that, as Christ so definitively declared, could only lead to the forfeiture of life.
The common denominator of this series of progressive falls is the extolment of self: the displacement of God and the enthronement of self as the telos of all things.
The spiritual dynamic at play in the construction of Babel—both city and tower—is recapitulated with disturbing clarity in its contemporary counterpart: transhumanist ideology. One of its prominent exponents, Harari articulates what he sees as the inevitable evolutionary path for mankind—one which aims to transcend human nature altogether. After outlining what he considers the first two “big projects” of present-day civilization—overcoming death and securing global happiness—he turns to the overarching third:
[O]nce technology enables us to re-engineer human minds, Homo sapiens will disappear, human history will come to an end and a completely new kind of process will begin, which people like you and me cannot comprehend. Many scholars try to predict how the world will look in the year 2100 or 2200. This is a waste of time. Any worthwhile prediction must take into account the ability to re-engineer human minds, and this is impossible . . . Though the details are therefore obscure, we can nevertheless be sure about the general direction of history. In the twenty-first century, the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus. This third project obviously subsumes the first two projects, and is fueled by them. We want the ability to re-engineer our bodies and minds in order, above all, to escape old age, death and misery, but once we have it, who knows what else we might do with such ability? So we may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with many branches): attaining divinity.1
According to Harari’s vision, “re-engineering our bodies and minds” to “escape old age, death and misery” is the gateway to attaining divine powers of creation and destruction. With this power in hand, one can imagine humanity’s ability to shape both itself and the world becoming effectively limitless—uncannily reminiscent of what God affirmed regarding the builders of Babel. The crux of the problem, of course, lies in the path by which one pursues such power. In seeking to overcome death and suffering through technology, man bypasses their spiritual root—sin—and rejects their God-ordained role as occasions for repentance, leading to life. Spiritually incapacitated by such pride, he becomes incapable of perceiving the mercy of suffering as God's gift, and thus seals himself in sin. In this condition, man may appear “free” to recreate both himself and the world in his own distorted image—yet, paradoxically, he is thereby imprisoned within himself, bound to a self-referential trajectory toward oblivion. For meaning, significance, and purpose find their ontological anchor only in relation to the other—and ultimately, in relation to God the Father, in His Son, the beginning and end of all things, through His Spirit of eternal love. In seeking to make a name for himself by seizing the reins of creation, fallen humanity obliterates meaning, significance, and purpose. Indeed, he obliterates the world. Should the transhumanist vision be realized, its architects would find themselves entombed in the spiritual ruin of their own artifice; and should they succeed in digging a technological pit to capture death and suffering, they would surely fall headlong into it themselves. Just as the Lord declared: “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it” (Matt. 16:25). What, then, is the alternative?
God’s Building Project: Tabernacle, Temple, Church
As an inversion of the Tower’s vainglorious grasping, God establishes His own foundation—a sanctuary not born of human ambition, but raised upon the rock of obedient faith, with humble hands opened to receive His gifts in thanksgiving. The Tabernacle and the Temple, though differing in composition and duration, stand as successive unveilings of the same heavenly Archetype, each marking a moment in the unfolding architecture of redemption. The Tabernacle, fashioned for movement, was a tent of divine-human assembly—pitched and dismantled as the Lord shepherded His people through the wilderness toward the land of promise.
The Temple, by contrast, was fixed in place—built not to guide a wandering people, but to serve as the true spiritual axis of the world, where God’s presence was planted in Israel's heart, the City of David, to whom a messianic heir was promised, to sit upon an eternal throne. Yet even this seeming permanence bore the mark of historical transience, for the Temple would be razed by Nebuchadnezzar, an instrument of divine judgment upon a nation called to holiness, yet fallen into covenantal adultery. When the promised Seed of David—the heir to the eternal Kingdom—came to gather His subjects, He laid the foundation for a new Temple, built upon the rock of perfect self-sacrifice, and composed of living stones: the Church.
Through each movement of this unfolding mystery, God draws ever nearer to man. In the Tabernacle, He met His people in the wilderness—guiding them from without, as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, pitching His tent among homeless exiles who had not yet possessed their inheritance. In the Temple, He established His throne in the heart of their land, in Jerusalem—not merely as Guide, but as King enthroned among them. And in the Church, He draws nearer still: not beside them, but within them—dwelling in their very bodies and souls through the gift of His Spirit, sanctifying them as His living Temple. What once descended from above now rises from within. The God who once walked among tents and reigned from the sanctuary now rests in the hearts of those who love Him—His eternal home, unbounded by time or place.
When Christ yielded up His Spirit and the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom, the ancient barrier was cleft in two, and the way into the Holy of Holies was opened to all who would enter through the crucified and risen Son. What was once external—veiled and shrouded in smoke—has now become internal radiance, shining from within as a spiritual sun. The Church, whose lifeblood flows from the pierced side of Christ, and who was made a living being by the breath of His Spirit at Pentecost, is the holy Body in whom man is gathered into the very life of the Trinity—a communion of self-emptying love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No Person asserts Himself over another, for the divine nature is love, and love does not grasp, but gives. The very structure of the Church is formed by this reciprocal self-offering, in which each member exists not for assertion of self, but to become a gift: to God and to one another. “By this all will know that you are My disciples,” said the Lord, “if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Such love is not an ornament upon meaning—it is its root and fulfillment, the pulse of abundant life. Wherever a soul, a household, or a city is formed around this altar of love, creation begins its return to the Giver. And what is given back in thanksgiving, God receives, transfigures, and returns again—each time more luminous, in the quiet spiral of His endless grace.
For through this liturgy of love, the world is made God’s cosmic house, and man its priestly steward. Thus, the Tabernacle, Temple, and Church are all progressively realized microcosms of the new creation—each expanding the scope of God’s incarnate presence until He is all in all. In this unfolding, the purpose of the world is revealed, along with man’s mediatory role: to exercise royal dominion, cultivate through wisdom, and offer creation back to God in sacrificial thanksgiving, that He may descend to fill it all full of Himself.
As man moves in resonance with this sacred rhythm, he is scattered not by the winds of disintegrative oblivion, but knits the world—and is himself knit together in love.
At the Crossroads: Transhuman Transmutation or Deification by Grace?
Yet in opposition to the altar of God’s sacrificial love, another structure coils, uninvited, about the soul of man—a monument to spiritual greed, not gift; to grasping, not grace.
Here lies the heart of the matter: what do these two disparate heavenward structures ultimately reveal about man’s being in the world? On the one hand, the transhumanist grasps at dominion over both himself and creation, erecting a Luciferian tower of self-will that reaches into heaven to steal its power—a stronghold for his attempt to subjugate the world to his own vain purposes. On the other, the Christian humbly offers himself as a living sacrifice, to be fashioned by Christ into a sanctuary of cruciform love.
Striving to construct what is truly a false paradise of living death, the transhumanist re-engineers his body, mind, and environment, but neglects the inmost chamber of his soul: the heart. The sort of unity forged in this artificial world—imposed from without rather than blooming from within—inevitably fractures into a splintered multiplicity, held together only by the cold grip of domination, ever suspended above the gaping jaws of chaos. Thus, in pursuing a transhuman world, man cannot, without repentance, escape the weight of Adam’s primordial curse: “Cursed is the ground in your labors. In toil you shall eat from it all the days of your life” (Gen. 3:17). He is doomed to a Sisyphean struggle—laboring to secure his place in a world that casts him off as an alien presence, unnatural and unblessed.
By contrast, the harmonious unity of Paradise emanates from within the Triune God, who indwells all things. It is no product of willful labor, but a gift from God, received in the heart—freely bestowed and shed abroad through the faithful cooperation of man. In this way, man is the medium of God’s transformative love—received, reciprocated, and overflowing—himself becoming a deep spring of divine life in the world. As this love cascades outward, it streams from the human being as a holy fire—purifying the heart, ordering desire, illuminating the mind, and sharpening spiritual perception—flowing with superabundance through the whole fabric of the cosmos. As God formed it, creation’s myriad parts cohere not by imposition, but by the interior dynamism of His wisdom: unity not by coercion, but by the gravity of divine love, drawing all things freely into mutual harmony. What a contrast to the sterile machinery of transhuman toil—ceaseless, loveless, and estranged from the organic warmth of divine communion.
“But surely,” the transhumanist might object, “the body and mind of man can be re-engineered to achieve the same result.”
By no means! For the transformation God desires cannot be manufactured from without, but must be received from within: not a recalibration of circuitry, but a renewal of the heart; not a restructuring of matter, but the realization of meaning through love. Without a transfigured soul, the human being remains unmoored—tossed to and fro by the winds of a chaotic world, vulnerable to every shifting current of passion, pride, and power.
“But chaos can be controlled through technological mastery.”
To what end? What manner of heart gives rise to such a will to dominate for its own sake? A corrupt tree cannot bear good fruit, and no edifice of control—however masterful its design—can redeem the soul that constructs it. Man’s toil will not cease until the roots of the tree are made good. Only then will it bear the fruit of divine life.
Divinization: Fulfillment of Humanity
The transhumanist seeks to transcend his humanity, which he regards not as a gift to be fulfilled in Christ, but as a burden to be cast off, a passing phase in an evolutionary ascent of his own design: vain in purpose and unseeing of the death to which it leads. But from the beginning God created man in His own image with a view to becoming His manifest likeness—a divine end inscribed within human nature itself. Humanity’s fallen condition is not mere incompletion, but regression from this image—a stasis, or even a deepening, of spiritual contortion. Though rightly repulsed by the brokenness of his fallen state, the transhumanist strives to escape his humanity altogether—only to seal himself unwittingly within the very condition from which he longs to be delivered. For in rejecting the cruciform path forged by grace—wherein the image of God in man is restored and progressively realized as divine likeness—he veers from the ascent for which he was made, and collapses ever deeper into a false transcendence: a parody of deification that leads not to glory, but to a disfigurement increasingly profound. The tragic irony is that in undertaking to become like God, he becomes increasingly unlike Him, for he pursues exaltation apart from the cross—apart from humility and self-emptying love. Perhaps one of God’s funniest jokes was to infuse pride with inevitable irony. Yet amid all the snares of the fallen world, there lies a narrow gate that opens upon the path of divine ascent: the deification of the human person by grace, wherein God suffuses man with His own life.
Nowhere is this mystery expressed more majestically than in the words of St. Maximus the Confessor in Ambiguum 7, where, drawing upon an oration of St. Gregory the Theologian, he sets forth a vision of deification that urges deep meditation:
He [St. Gregory the Theologian] teaches the same thing in his oration “On the Plague of Hail,” when he says: “They will be received by the ineffable light and vision of the holy and majestic Trinity, shining upon them with greater brilliance and purity, and which will be wholly mingled with the whole of the intellect, and this alone I take to be the kingdom of heaven,” at which point— if I may dare to add my own words to his—the whole of rational creation, both of angels and human beings, will be filled with spiritual pleasure and joy. I mean those creatures that did not, out of negligence, violate any of the divine logoi, who by their natural motion were inclined to the end established by the Creator, but kept themselves wholly chaste and faithful to their end, knowing that they are and will become instruments of the divine nature. For God in His fullness entirely permeates them, as a soul permeates the body, since they are to serve as His own members, well suited and useful to the Master, who shall use them as He thinks best, filling them with His own glory and blessedness, graciously giving them eternal, inexpressible life, completely free from the constituent properties of this present life, which is marred by corruption. The life that God will give does not consist in the breathing of air, or in the flow of blood from the liver, but in the fact that God will be wholly participated by whole human beings, so that He will be to the soul, as it were, what the soul is to the body, and through the soul He will likewise be present in the body (in a manner that He knows), so that the soul will receive immutability and the body immortality. In this way, man as a whole will be divinized, being made God by the grace of God who became man. Man will remain wholly man in soul and body, owing to his nature, but will become wholly God in soul and body owing to the grace and the splendor of the blessed glory of God, which is wholly appropriate to him, and beyond which nothing more splendid or sublime can be imagined.2
Here, St. Maximus unveils an eschatological vision of human transformation: God suffusing and working through the soul as an organic extension of His deified life, rendering man truly like—and manifestly expressive of—the One whose image he bore from the beginning. He likens this deifying work of God in man to the soul’s animating presence within the body—a mysterious union so intimate that it is known only in direct personal experience, not grasped by conceptual thought.
From this mystery emerges the profound implication that man was created not merely to reflect divinity as an echo from without, but to bear within himself the infinite capacity to receive and convey the unbounded life of God—having a share in the Triune communion: a potential inscribed in the living human image, and fulfilled in its eternal movement toward divine likeness. From a fallen vantage, the thought of such intimate communion with another, like that of soul to body, can seem a fearful prospect. But given God’s ineffable love for the human being, what could be more joyous for His humble servants than to be filled with the One who is Love itself? By contrast, the pride of transhumanist man is laid bare as empty folly: the delusion that divine transformation can be seized through instruments of his own will. To such patent self-exaltation, the Lord responds with humbling sobriety: “[Y]ou are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17). The question, then, is not which path of transformation man shall choose, as if both Temple and Tower were legitimate ways to the same end; but whether, when he hears the voice of the Lord, he will harden his heart, as in the rebellion of old, or open it to the Word of Love, allowing Him to enter and fill the soul with the very glory to be revealed at the consummation of history, when God fills all things by the Spirit of Christ, who makes His everlasting abode the heart of deified man—the living sanctuary of His eternal Temple.
Harari, Yuval Noaḥ. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. First Harper Perennial edition. New York: Harper Perennial, 2018, p. 26.
St. Maximus the Confessor. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua. Edited and translated by Nicholas Constas. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28–29. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 111-113.