Against Celsus 8.19

And if we must also compare temples with temples, so as to show those who accept Celsus's views that we do not avoid building temples fitting for the images and altars described, but refuse to build lifeless and dead temples for the giver of all life, let whoever wishes hear how we are taught that our bodies are “a temple of God,” and that “if anyone” through licentiousness or sin “destroys the temple of God,” he, as truly impious toward the true temple, will be destroyed. But better and more excellent than all the temples so called was the holy and pure body of our Saviour Jesus. He knew that the temple of the God within him could be plotted against by the impious, but not so that the will of those who plotted would be stronger than the divinity that built the temple, and he said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He “was speaking of the temple of his body.” In another way too the divine words, teaching the resurrection mystically to those able to hear the words of God with a more divine hearing, say that the temple will be built up again with living and most precious stones; hinting that each of those who breathe together through the same Word toward the piety he teaches is a precious stone of the whole temple of God. So Peter says, “You are being built up as living stones and a spiritual house into a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ,” and Paul, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus our Lord himself being the cornerstone.” The passage in Isaiah too, which runs as follows and is spoken as to Jerusalem, has some such mystical sense: “Behold, I am preparing for you carbuncle as your stone, and your foundations of sapphire, and I will make your battlements of jasper, and your gates of crystal stones, and your wall of choice stones, and all your sons taught of God; and your children shall be in great peace, and in righteousness you shall be built.”