One of the contributions of twentieth-century Catholic nouvelle theologie, and of Henri de Lubac and Hean Danielou in particular, was a rehabilitation of patristic and medieval typological exegesis of the Bible. Typological interpretation assumes that events and institutions of the Old Testament present, to use Augustine’s terminology, “latent” pictures of Christ. Typological interpretation, in short, sees the whole Bible as gospel, with the gospel narrowly conceived (the story of Jesus) as the culmination of a larger story.
Well, here’s Day 6 at last, and the end of Genesis 1 (this is a really bad chapter division!)
Here’s the rest of this series: 12345
In this final act of Creation, the Lord puts the lords in the palace. As James Jordan observes, ancient kings sat on thrones of beasts. As king, Solomon was enthroned over lions. His priestly government, imaged in the bronze sea, was enthroned over twelve “tribal” sacrificial bulls, carrying the living water to the nations. And in the Revelation, we see the four beasts filled with eyes beneath the throne of God. The animal kingdom was, in some important sense, to become Adam’s throne.
If you’ve read Bible Matrix, you’ll also have seen that Israel’s history follows the Creation Week, with the four Gentile “beast” empires preceding the final “empire of The Man” Christ Jesus (Daniel 7). Using the matrix, we can also see that the initial history in Daniel 1-6 follows the same pattern, with Daniel’s “dominion” over the lions (turning them into “mutes”) situated at Day 6. And, of course, Noah was also enthroned over those “from afar off.” And then, looking at the entire biblical history, at the Last Day, Jesus will be the one fully enthroned over every enemy, with every “beastly” mouth stopped.
.
All of God’s Covenant quests involve risk. If we attempt to avoid the danger of the mission, and seek results through the false safety of our own wisdom, we are prone to far worse perils.
To understand a narrative art so bare of embellishment and explicit commentary, one must be constantly aware of two features: the repeated use of narrative analogy, through which one part of the text provides oblique commentary on another; and the richly expressive function of syntax, which often bears the kind of weight of meaning that, say, imagery does in a novel by Virginia Woolf or analysis in a novel by George Eliot.
“Living with crisis is a major part of leaders’ lives. The crises come in two major varieties: (1) those that are not of their own making but are imposed on them from outside or within the system; and (2) those that are actually triggered by the leaders through doing precisely what they should be doing.”
(A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, p. 27)
“The modernist sees the Bible not as a revelation from God to man but as a history of certain (arbitrary) thoughts of men about God, wrapped in environment-friendly disposable packaging. Theology becomes a process of wringing the text for these abstract truths. These ‘truths’ are refined out of the ‘flux’ of the Biblical history and defined by their inability to contradict our own thinking.
The Bible is full of mediators. Creation is full of mediators. Mediation is required for relationship. The Spirit mediates between the Son and the Father because they are distinct.
Mike Bull is a graphic designer who lives and works in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. His passion is understanding and teaching the Bible, and he writes occasionally for Theopolis Institute in Birmingham AL, USA.
