The Divine Council and Ancient Cosmology

"Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). Paul writes this without a single word about the physical shape of the universe — because the claim was never about geography.
A common objection holds that the divine council worldview depends on an outdated, three-tiered ancient cosmology — a flat earth beneath a solid firmament, waters above and below — that modern science has long since set aside. The objection deserves a direct answer rather than a dismissal, and the answer rests on separating two different questions: ontology and cosmology. Ontology asks whether real spiritual beings exist and interact with the visible world; cosmology asks what physical model of the universe an ancient writer assumed while describing them. The reality of the beings described in Scripture does not depend on the ancient world's physical map being scientifically accurate, any more than affirming a historical figure's real existence requires affirming every geographical assumption held by the writer who first described them. Paul grounds even hostile spiritual powers within the scope of Christ's own creative work: "all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him" (Colossians 1:16) — a theological claim about what these beings are and to whom they ultimately answer, entirely independent of ancient cosmography.
Strip away the borrowed cosmology, and the claim that remains standing is simple and untouched: real, created spiritual beings exist, and they interact with the visible world under God's ultimate authority. That claim does not rise or fall with a flat-earth diagram — it rises or falls with what Paul actually says believers are wrestling against, in the present tense, right now: "not against flesh and blood" (Ephesians 6:12), but against something the ancient furniture of the sky was never required to prove.