Edward Adams has an essay where he affirms Plato’s positive view of the cosmos in “Graeco-Roman and Ancient Jewish Cosmology” in the LNTS book Cosmology and New Testament Theology.
Plato viewed the physical cosmos as everlasting and indestructible. It was constructed by a craftsman-deity who shaped raw material at his disposal into an ordered structure based on the model of eternal forms.
Therefore Adams concludes after surveying Plato and Greaco-Roman philosophers that they had a high view of the cosmos. He even calls it outrageous (although quite popular) to believe that thinkers after Plato denigrated and despised the material world.
Plato is highly enthusiastic about the physical cosmos.
Edward Adams, “Graeco-Roman and Ancient Jewish Cosmology,” in Cosmology and New Testament Theology (LNTS; New York, NY: T & T Clark International, 2008), 5-27.
