Bully's Blog

Tim writes:

“[Totus Christus is] a book which certainly makes you think. While I have read other books on Biblical theology, looking at the structure of the Bible in that way (the Dominion pattern, feasts, etc.) is an idea which I’d never considered at all before. At first I didn’t quite get what each part of the pattern involves, even after you’d explained it, but after seeing it applied to a few sections of the Bible I was fine. I think its helped me get a better understanding of how God has revealed himself through the Bible. Continue reading

Who’d have thought Genesis 1 unlocks the whole Bible?
Someone suggested that Totus Christus is a pill-too-big for most to swallow, and that I should write an introductory how-to (Thanks, Eric!). Then, with a big grip on the heptamerous handle, readers can tackle the commentary more easily. I’m trying to keep this intro to 150-200 pages, including some particularly fetching diagrams.

“Ever wish someone could give you a big handle on the whole Bible without years of study? You pick up that book in a Christian bookstore and think you have finally found the answer, only to be bombarded with an endless stream of data to make sense of? All you discovered was that the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.

Well, this book not only promises to give you that big handle—it will deliver on the promise. Yes, you will realise how much you don’t know, but you will have such a handle on God’s way of communicating, and on the big picture of Bible history, that you will be able to approach and study any passage with confidence. You should be asking, how is this possible?

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Some encouraging comments on the review edition of my book, just to balance things up a bit! Kelby in the U.S. blogged:

Very recently I was privileged enough to receive an electronic copy of a book penned by Australian graphic designer and theologian Mike Bull. It has been quite a harrowing experience. I’m not even a quarter of the way through the 800-page tome, and I’m already overwhelmed by all the things Bull expects me to internalize. This definitely isn’t armchair theology, folks.

The book in question is titled Totus Christus: A Biblical Theology of the Whole Christ. One of its foundational assertions is that there is a fundamental pattern laid out through the entire Bible–a pattern which his book is modeled on. This pattern is woven throughout all of Scripture, and can help us to understand Biblical structure and idioms…

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“And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.”  – Revelation 11:8

Revelation 20 makes it clear that the “second death” is the lake of fire. But an analysis of the literary structure of Revelation brings out an interesting factor.

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The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the [Land] came to the help of the woman, and the [Land] opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. (Revelation 12:15-17)

Satan mimicked the expanding gospel dominion with counterfeits at every step. Here, not only did he forge the water chariots of the true Temple (a false baptism), he would bring Noahic “rest” to the Land by destroying God’s mighty men. He would bring about his own twisted “new earth” by deluging the church with bogus teaching.

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or Typology: Deadly Weapon or game of Scattergories?

“Chiastic literary analysis has completely destroyed liberal literary criticism. Liberalism is in tatters, bleeding and dying. Liberalism cannot survive Dorsey’s chiastic proof of the total unity of Isaiah, for instance. Dorsey finds loads of 7-fold chiasms in the Bible. I’ve found scores more, quite independently. What Dorsey does not see is that these are recaps of the chiasm of the 7 days in Genesis 1. And that’s good, because it means he did not go through the Bible forcing passages into heptamerous chiasms. He just found them there, and others can see that these track Genesis 1 as ‘new creation’ passages.”

—James B. Jordan, A Reply on the Nature of the Psalter, Biblical Horizons blog, biblicalhorizons.wordpress.com, referring to David A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament.

If chiastic literary analysis (along with typology as I posted recently) is such a powerful weapon against a modernist interpretation of the Bible, why are these methods of study shunned by those who oppose liberal theology? Why are theologians hauled over the coals for using it if it leaves the enemy in shreds?

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Isaiah’s visions of Israel’s restoration have nothing to do with a future millennial golden age for the Jews, or even directly with the first century, except by the events of  the Restoration era prefiguring later history. His words were for his hearers, for both their condemnation and their hope in the near future. Why do we get him wrong?

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A couple of brave readers of my book Totus Christus have pointed out an apparent discrepancy in my ordering of the above three roles. One kindly writes:

The only question of substance I have for you concerns the prophet, priest and king flow of OT history. It may be that you disagree with Jim, but he’s quite insistent that the proper order is priest, king, prophet. He discusses this in From Bread to Wine, p. 9-15. In any case, it might be helpful to explain why you deviate…

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[This has been posted previously but it makes sense to include it under this banner. In fact, the article itself might now make more sense!]

Gold, Onyx and Bdellium

(The Tabernacle imagery is as much fun as it is grand and terrifying. I was thinking about rainbow striped onyx. In “Behind the Scenes”, James Jordan wrote:)

“These glorious gems represent the sons matured into tribes. A baby has not yet matured into anything specific. We don’t know if a child will become a good person or a bad one. We don’t know if he will be a musician or a minister or a farmer or a sailor or a computer engineer. As we grow, we grow from being “striped onyx” into a specific glory, which each of us has unique to himself. Thus, as the twelve sons of Jacob matured into tribes, each tribe took on a distinct glory of its own, represented by its gemstone.” Continue reading

Ascension Sunday

Andrew Katay posted a quote this week stating that when the church fails to emphasise the Ascension, a commitment to church programs instead of to Christ fills the vacuum. This should come as no surprise.

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