The Cosmic Temple

Nearly everyone I know that has attended American schools has learned to write a five paragraph essay with the following instruction from a teacher: in the introduction you tell them what you are going to tell them, then in the body you tell them, and in the conclusion you tell them what you told them.

In broad outline, this can be used to think about what we find in the Bible, which begins in the opening chapters of Genesis with a temple and concludes in the final chapters of Revelation with the same. In between, Scripture relates the story of God's special, temple presence among his people. In the Old Testament, this takes the form of the Garden of Eden, altars built by the patriarchs in commemoration of special encounters with God, the tabernacle, and the building and rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. In the New Testament, it takes the form of Jesus, the temple that would be rebuilt in three days, and the church, which is also described as a temple filled with the Spirit and built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ as the chief cornerstone.

Thus, the Bible can be read as a book about God's temple, by which he is present among his people. This is the story as it starts "in the beginning."

The temple account begins in Genesis 1, where God is described as the wise and powerful designer and builder of a cosmic temple. He is so wise and so powerful that he constructs this temple universe ex nihilo -- out of nothing. Nonetheless, like a builder, God clears space and then fills it. There is an apparent literary structure in the text that magnifies God's wisdom in accomplishing this. On day 1, he creates the heavens and the earth, which he fills with the sun and the moon on day 4. On day 2, he divides the firmament, then fills the sky with birds and the water with sea creatures on day 5. On day 3, he called forth dry land, which he fills with land animals and mankind on day 6. Having constructed and filled his temple, he rests on the 7th day.

The reader might wonder why I have described creation as a temple. Its description as a place of God's rest, a theme captured in other Old Testament passages about the Jerusalem temple (see, as one example, Psalm 132:7-8), is one clue. However, there is much more evidence than that. I will want to hold some of this material for later, but much of the best information to help us understand God's intention in creation, as outlined in Genesis 1, comes from looking at the design for the Jerusalem temple itself.

The temple in Jerusalem was built with a three section design that was intended to provide a miniature replication of the cosmos. The outer court, with great basins representing the seas and other figures representing oxen and vegetation, represented the physical earth. The holy place, an enclosed dark area with lampstands providing points of light, represented the visible heavens. The holy of holies contained the great cherubim standing guard over the altar and represented the invisible heavens where God dwelt.

That the temple was created as a depiction of the cosmos in miniature tells us that the cosmos itself was created as a temple of God. Nonetheless, the Jerusalem temple was not the first microcosm of the cosmic temple. The first is described in Genesis 2 and named the Garden of Eden. I will talk about that next time.