Biblical cosmology symbolical of spiritual realities?

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Peairtach

Puritan Board Doctor
This is a sort of "spin-off" from this thread:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f15/Christ-going-up-into-sky-61632/

We know that the human body reflects spiritual realities

e.g. the soul must be cleansed from sin, just as the body must be cleansed from filth.

e.g. the soul hungers and thirsts for God, just as the body desires food and drink.

Does Man's environment reflect spiritual realities too? In the Bible Heaven is Up/ Above and Hell is Down/Below? What about the fact that God has put a literal "lake of fire" below the Earth?

The Demons in Legion did not want to be sent into the "abyss", yet they entered into a herd of swine that ran into the "abyss"

The Beast from the Sea in the Book of Revelation comes up from the abyss, and the subtler Beast from the Earth arises from the Earth.

Are there any threads/books on Biblical Cosmology and its symbolism?
 
This is a sort of "spin-off" from this thread:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f15/Christ-going-up-into-sky-61632/

We know that the human body reflects spiritual realities

e.g. the soul must be cleansed from sin, just as the body must be cleansed from filth.

e.g. the soul hungers and thirsts for God, just as the body desires food and drink.

Does Man's environment reflect spiritual realities too? In the Bible Heaven is Up/ Above and Hell is Down/Below? What about the fact that God has put a literal "lake of fire" below the Earth?

The Demons in Legion did not want to be sent into the "abyss", yet they entered into a herd of swine that ran into the "abyss"

The Beast from the Sea in the Book of Revelation comes up from the abyss, and the subtler Beast from the Earth arises from the Earth.

Are there any threads/books on Biblical Cosmology and its symbolism?

Check out Meredith Kline's essay "Creation in the Image of the Glory-Spirit" from WTJ. Here follows the most relevant segment (emphasis mine):

If one is first introduced to the Glory-cloud as it appears in the later history of God's covenantal reign over Israel, he will probably identify it as a special, supernatural, localized version of the general heavenly phenomena of sky and clouds and luminaries. But that will be seen to be a reversal of the real situation if we recognize the presence of the Glory-cloud in Genesis 1:2, creatively poised over an earth-cosmos at a time when light of day and heavenly waters and firmament had not yet received their name-existence. If we are introduced to the Glory-cloud at Genesis 1:2 and behold the reproduction of its several features of light and firmament and clouds transpiring in the creative process, we will identify the general heavenly phenomena as a rendering in the medium of natural revelation of the supernatural Glory- heaven. The heavens declare the glory of God in the special sense that they are a copy of the archetypal Glory of God.

As a result of the creation of the earth-cosmos after the pattern of the Glory-temple, it has the character of a royal temple of God. Comparing Israel's temple to his cosmic house, the Lord says: "Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me?" (Isa. 66:1). [26] Similarly, the natural heavens consisting of heaven (the firmament) and the heaven of heavens (the cloud waters "above the heaven”) are regarded as God's royal chambers and chariot. [27] In harmony with the identification of heaven and earth as a macrocosmic temple, the earthly tabernacle and temple that appear in redemptive re-creation symbolism are designed, as various architectural features show, to be a microcosmic representation of heaven and earth. [28]

I believe he gets a little bit more into this in his book Images of the Spirit which built upon this essay.
 
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