I was pleased to find a book on my doorstep last week. Adrianna Wright from InterVarsity Press was kind enough to send me a backlisted title: The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (New Studies in Biblical Theology) by G.K. Beale.
I’ve been wanting this book for some time now. A few years back, I took a course in Biblical Theology from The Bethlehem Institute. We used IVP’s New Dictionary of Biblical Theology and Graeme Goldsworthy’s intro to Biblical Theology, According to Plan (IVP), as texts (both are phenomenal books by the way). My instructor also highly recommended this book. Then, when I read Beale’s recent book, The Erosion of Inerrancy (Crossway), a whole chapter was devoted to the theme of the cosmic temple idea. That plus having recently finished John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP) made me very eager to get this book.
The Temple and the Church’s Mission traces the theme of “the dwelling place of God”. Beale argues that Eden was a cosmic temple modeled after the heavenly abode of God. All future temples were modeled after Eden, and Rev. 21-22’s “new heaven and new earth” are expressly a renewed Edenic temple-city which fills the whole earth.
From what I’ve read and heard of the book already, it promises to be an insightful and rich read. I look forward to jumping into the book in the near future.