With a number of key creation-themes established, we are now prepared to proceed into a more complex subject of the temple. In prior creation studies, it was noted that God made three spaces, each of which He filled. The spaces provided domains into which God could create life, filling creation with lifeforms that were specific to each domain.
Chief among the spaces was the earth (the dry land), the domain of man. Though not specifically stated in the narrative, it was implicit that God’s place was above the firmament in heaven. By placing God above the firmament and man below it, an immediate tension is introduced into the narrative. How will God interact with man and with His creation below the firmament?
In giving man dominion over the earth, man was to care for the earthly part of creation. That man was created in God’s image also provides a hint that man’s dominion, leadership and care of the earth was to follow the model of God’s dominion in heaven. But how was this to be determined? How was man to know God’s expectations? How was God to communicate those expectations?
Though there was a “space” created for each, the firmament brought a divide between the parties preventing communication, communion and understanding. Yet this is how the Genesis 1 creation-narrative ends, leaving the reader to wonder what the resolution will be. It anticipates and sets the stage for the garden-narrative found in Genesis 2-3.
While the answer to the question of interaction between Yahweh and man is left unresolved at the close of the Genesis 1, the reader is not left in the dark. A key clue is provided in structuring creation into spaces. It is significant that the author of Genesis divided creation into three spaces, much as the tabernacle was structured to have three rooms or compartments. We will show that this correlation is not coincidence but provides a path forward to understanding God’s creative purposes. But how are these objectives and expectations to be carried out?
The theater for achieving these objectives and expectations is found in these spaces. It is within the three spaces that everything exists, both the visible and invisible things that comprise creation and within these three spaces communication and communion between God and His creation exist. God has not ordered the cosmos indiscriminately but with forethought and intent.
Key is recognition that Genesis 1 is written as a temple-text with creation described as a cosmic temple within which God’s redemptive plan is accomplished and man, together with God communicate, interact and participate in what will be the grand theatrical-production of redemption.
The approach to demonstrate Genesis 1 as a temple-text will proceed as follows. First, we will show that Ancient Near Eastern temples typically and ubiquitously modeled the cosmos, establishing an ancient precedent that suggests the ancients envisioned their temples as models of creation.
Second, we will show that the most important pagan cultic rituals were intended to annually assure good harvests through subduing cosmic chaos and thereby establishing cosmic order. These rituals were accomplished through a temple in which their god(s) dwelt and rested. Some parallels between pagan and Hebrew practice will be highlighted, bringing important emphasis to areas where Hebrew ritual was superior theologically.
Analysis will then move to show that Hebrew temple practice also bears the hallmarks of creation. It was a widespread belief in Judaism that the temple represented creation. In Judaism however, cosmic order was not dependent upon annual harvest festivals and mythological victories over chaos. In Judaism, cosmic order resulted from compliance to God’s covenant by His people.
Temple ritual then served a greater purpose of assuring order through mediation and forgiveness of inadvertent covenantal violations. Mediation was necessary given that covenantal violations would disrupt creation’s order, unleashing pre-creative (and thus de-creative) chaos upon creation and particularly upon God’s covenant community.
This truth has profound impact upon prophetic and apocalyptic texts. Violations of God’s covenantal laws brought de-creative destruction. It establishes an ethic whereby covenantal breaches can be thought of as spiritual boundary-breaking that introduces chaos and disorder. These breaches however, are not limited to the spiritual realm. The ancients believed that covenantal violations also unleashed chaos upon the physical creation, bringing famine, pestilence, drought, disease, captivity to foreign regimes and death.
Thus, the sins of the community and its individuals would bring cosmic dissolution, a total destruction of creation. This truth must be borne in mind when reading prophetic, eschatological and apocalyptic texts. The authors saw God’s judgment in the breakdown of the norms of our physical cosmos. Sin destroyed creation. Pestilence, famine, crop-failure, even signs in the stars (comets, eclipses, etc.) were believed to portend judgment upon ungodliness. It explains why the prophets described Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem (and destruction of the temple) using apocalyptic language as if the world were ending.
A brief history of Israel’s temples will also be provided to reveal the centrality of the temple to Judaic life. We will show critical transition points in temple-history that reveal deepened meanings suggestive the temple would undergo significant theological change. With the destruction of the Solomonic temple, the requirement that a single stone structure mediate all interactions with God ceased. Yet God’s oversight of His people remained.
The relationship between the transition from a single stone structure and the rebuilding of the second temple will also be examined, including the impact and significance of the destruction of the second temple by Titus. Temple-theology of the early church will be compared with traditional Judaic temple-thought as the church’s view of the temple reveals a very significant change in thinking from early Judaism.
The implications will next be examined. These implications are far-reaching, bearing strongly upon eschatology and Christian understanding of the end-times. We will show how the temple underwent a transformation from its humble beginnings as a tent to its final grand unveiling envisioned by John. It is a stunning transformation that points toward how the final creation should be envisioned by believers.
The transformation finally answers the question how God will interact with His creation, showing how He will supersede the divide He created (the firmament). The transformation is a marvelous picture of redemption and our permanent standing with Christ.
For some, these discussions may seem foreign, as often temple studies are not the focus of churches today. For many believers, the temple is largely a mystery whose importance seems odd or irrelevant. It is an Old Testament institution often considered passed away or believed to be in abeyance, awaiting a final Jewish chapter in eschatology. Either way, the temple seems to have little value to the Christian church.
This teaching will open the reader to an entirely new world of biblical and theological understanding, providing important insight into an institution critical to understanding God and His plan for man. It is, after all, the theater wherein the drama plays out, and the marvelous transformation lends great insight and understanding to eschatology.
The temple is of such criticality that we would venture to suggest that neither eschatology or theology can be properly understood apart from a comprehensive knowledge of this institution. On that final note, we can now proceed to a study of the temple and its bearing upon creation.