Physical Churches as New Jerusalem: Some More Thoughts on my 1/2026 Regensburg Paper

As I related in my last post, last friday I presented a draft of one chapter from my upcoming book to a group of theologians here in Regensburg. It was about how in late antique thought, John's New Jerusalem came to be applied in an unexpected way to physical church buildings (as opposed to the church itself, the people), such as the churches in Tyre and Jerusalem in the early fourth century. 

During the talk, my Regensburg colleague Emanuela Valeriani (a wonderful person!), offered three observations and/or questions (a bit of both in each). The were so rich that she and I met up today to discuss them in further depth. Here are my takeaways from the conversation, with her and my thoughts kind of mingled together into these three points: 

Amillennial Physicalism?

First, in a sense, isn't Eusebius's thinking of the physical church being just another form of the immanentizing and physicalizing interpretation of the early millennialists? Whereas the likes of Papias, Justin, Victorinus, Commodian, Lactantius, and others had imagined the New Jerusalem to be, at least in part, the restored Jerusalem at the time of Christ's future return and earthly kingdom, Eusebius imagined the heavenly Jerusalem to in fact be realized on earth in physical structures of Christian worship. 

This reminds me of an idea I've floated before: that the Constantinian turn represented a watershed in the interpretation of the New Jerusalem, and moreover a watershed in how some people expected the New Jerusalem to arrive--namely through some sort of political action that would, to use Eric Voegelein's phrase, "imminentize the eschaton" (The New Science of Politics, 1952). A link to this paper, which I delivered at SBL/AAR in 2022, may be found elsewhere on my blog: "Thy Kingdom Come: Millenarian Violence Minus the Millennialism from Late Antiquity until Today."  

Image 1: The oldest known floor plans of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from the De Locis Sanctis (On Holy Places) (c. 680) by the Irish monk Adomnán (c. 624 – 704), abbot of the Iona Abbey in Scotland.

Temple Relocation from "Old" to"New" Jerusalem(s)?

Second, it seems that Eusebius here influenced by the fact that in the New Jerusalem there is "no Temple." After all, Christ's sacrifice ends the Jewish Temple worship, and so to John, the author of Revelation, there's no need of the Temple anymore: Christ's sacrifice has abolished any need of it or its rites. On the other hand, the ritual sacrifice is reenacted in the early Christian eucharistic liturgy. And this happens in physical places of Christian worship, that is, in churches. And so the Jewish Temple becomes the Christian churches, because the latter are the place in which Christ's sacrifice is realized. There is no (old) Temple in the New Jerusalem. That's because Christian churches have become the New Jerusalem; like Eusebius says, the Basilica in Tyre (ca. 315) is the heavenly Jerusalem, and the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (ca. 335) is a "new Jerusalem."

Image 3. A representation of John's New Jerusalem in the eastern vault of the Church of San Pietro al Monte in Civate (ca. 1090)

Heavenly Worship on Earth?

Third, church worship (liturgy) in the fourth century and thereafter saw itself as reflecting the heavenly liturgy that was, per sacred Scripture, already taking place in heaven. This liturgy is transparently demonstrated at various passages in the New Testament, and perhaps especially in Revelation, where the four living creatures, angels, 24 elders, 144,000 chosen out of every tribe, etc. are situated around the throne of God and worshipping him. So what the church does when it worships is in fact reflect and amplify and enact the worship visibly on earth that is already taking place invisibly in heaven. 

What is more, it seems that, at least in the eastern church of fourth century, the church represents the heavenly Jerusalem on earth. And since this liturgy takes place in physical buildings, the buildings employed for this worship are the natural place where this heavenly liturgy takes place on earth. Every physical place of worship, as Eusebius would have it, is a heavenly Jerusalem in a concrete physical way, much as the members of the church are the heavenly Jerusalem in a concrete spiritual way. 

Image 2: Diagram of a possible layout of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (facing west) published in 1956 by Kenneth John Conant.

Revelation and Canonicity, Novelty and Precedence, and Other Follow-up Questions

In light of these questions and observations, a few other thoughts were sparked during Emanuela's and my coffee today. For instance: 

• Where did Eusebius get this idea? Surely the ecclesiological interpretation had been around since Origen, Melito of Sardis, and indeed Paul and John. 
• But how did he come to extend the ecclesiological interpretation so that the New Jerusalem can refer not only to the spiritual church but to the buildings in which they worship? 
• Was he really the first to have done this, since in many respects the way in which he does it seems so theologically of a piece with earlier patterns of though? 
• Did Christian liturgy and literature prior to the so-called Constantinian Turn of AD 313 already imagine the physical space of the church's worship as the heavenly New Jerusalem? 
• Were these ideas coming directly from the Book of Revelation, even when the book was neglected in the Greek (and Syriac) East in the fourth and fifth centuries? And even if Revelation was neglected, it seems that its ideas had thoroughly suffused Christian worship and the church's liturgy to the point where, regardless of what Eusebius or others thought of the book (there were some remarkably dim views of the book in the East for a while), Revelation's ideas and theology were canonical, even if the book itself was marginalized. 
• Liturgy is more than lectionary readings. Even if Revelation isn't in the lectionaries, it's in the liturgical rites themselves.
• In this light, what would liturgical history tell us about the practical canonicity of the book of Revelation? As Emanuela quipped, "If it's was in the liturgy, it's canonical, no matter what anyone saidto the contrary." 
• And further, Emanuela also asked, to what extent did any of the church fathers explicitly prohibit the use of Revelation? Perhaps to less of an extent, she suggested, than we might think. 

All food for thought, and all fodder for the upcoming book. At the very least, I don't think I'll be able to leave liturgy out of the next book, even if I thought I was going to be able to bracket it when I first set out planning it.

If I remember more from the conversation, I'll try to remember to put it in an update.