Altar, Statue, and Temple
We regard the spirit of every good man as an altar from which arises an incense which is truly and spiritually sweet-smelling, namely, the prayers ascending from a pure conscience. Therefore it is said by John in the Revelation, “The odours are the prayers of saints;” and by the Psalmist, “Let my prayer come up before Thee as incense.” And the statues and gifts which are fit offerings to God are wrought and fashioned in us by the Word of God, to wit, the virtues in which we imitate “the First-born of all creation,” who has set us an example. In all those then, who plant and cultivate within their souls, according to the divine word, temperance, justice, wisdom, piety, and other virtues, these excellences are their statues they raise, … to honour the model and prototype of all statues: “the image of the invisible God,” God the Only-begotten. They “put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that hath created him”.
In the contemplation of God with a pure heart they become imitators of Him.
The Spirit of God takes His abode in the soul which is conformed to the image of the Creator. Thus the Spirit of Christ dwells in those who bear, so to say, a resemblance in form and feature to Himself. And the Word of God, wishing to set this clearly before us, represents God as promising to the righteous, “I will dwell in them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” And the Saviour says, “If any man hear My words, and do them, I and My Father will come to him, and make Our abode with him.”
We do not object to the erection of temples suited to the images and altars of which we have spoken, but that we do refuse to build lifeless temples to the Giver of all life, let any one who chooses learn how we are taught, that our bodies are the temple of God, and that if any one by lust or sin defiles the temple of God, he will himself be destroyed, as acting impiously towards the true temple. Of all the temples spoken of in this sense, the best and most excellent was the pure and holy body of our Saviour Jesus Christ. When He knew that wicked men might aim at the destruction of the temple of God in Him, but that their purposes of destruction would not prevail against the divine power which had built that temple, He says to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again.…This He said of the temple of His body.” And in other parts of holy Scripture where it speaks of the mystery of the resurrection to those whose ears are divinely opened, it says that the temple which has been destroyed shall be built up again of living and most precious stones, thereby giving us to understand that each of those who are led by the word of God to strive together in the duties of piety, will be a precious stone in the one great temple of God. Accordingly, Peter says, “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ;” and Paul also says, “Being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ our Lord being the chief cornerstone.” And there is a similar hidden allusion in this passage in Isaiah, which is addressed to Jerusalem: “Behold, I will lay thy stones with carbuncles, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy battlements of jasper, and thy gates of crystal, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established.”
–Against Celsus Bk. VIII Ch. XVII-XIX