The Perils of Deep Structure
or James Jordan’s Big Hammer
“My God, it’s full of stars!”
One of the reasons I appreciate James Jordan is his ability to identify the “universals” in Scripture. Understanding these recurring themes answers many questions and solves many mysteries. These universal “roles” and events all point forward to the events of the first century. For instance, we cannot understand what the apostles meant by the phrase “the sons of God” without checking its history in the Old Testament. [1]
The danger with dealing in all the “big picture” stuff is that it can become self-serving. The heart is deceitfully wicked, and theology can become a kind of escapism, an ideology. Like the worst of the 20th century’s political ideologies, it can be divorced from reality so that in practice it rides roughshod over people to achieve its goals. Any big theology must maintain a big pastoral heart.
[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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January 27th, 2010 at 12:28 am
Dear Mike:
Yes, you are correct.
One might say that daily life and the grand scheme of deep structure should rhyme, or resonate. One is an octave of the other.
Rosenstock-Huessy called it ‘typological totality’.
Chuck
PS: To incarnate one’s speech, to speak true speech that makes eras, under God, it is wise to recapitulate and precapitulate, in a micro-chron, or micro-kairos, all times, as in Opus 17 of T.H.E. Symphony of History. (Typological Hospitality Evangelism). In TSOH, we pay attention, deep attention, each individual heart and Jordan, and to the total song.
January 27th, 2010 at 1:39 am
That reminds me of Doug’s earlier comment about finding chiasms and neglecting the text. You’re right to point out: the heart is deceitful beyond all things.