Bully's Blog

Doug Wilson on Twilight:

Let me take this opportunity to point out the theological logic of this whole sorry business, offered as yet another reason why Christians ought to be having nothing whatever to do with this, as I say, sorry business. After all, what sense does it make to say, “Yes, well, I know the writing is terrible, but at least it has lots of Mormon weirdness!”

So there is something of a spoiler here, so if it is your policy to avoid spoilers, then stop reading now. At the end of the series, Bella does get it in the neck, so to speak. She gets vampirized, although I don’t exactly know how, having no intention myself of reading that far. Why does that matter?

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Victor left some comments on Mother of Invention which I think deserve a new post:

Hello Mike!

I’m a student of typology – endlessly fascinating endeavor! – and am not and never have been Catholic myself. I would like to comment on your point about the Ark of the Covenant. (I just noticed that MS Word wants to capitalize “ark of the covenant”!)

I understand that you recognize the many parallels between the “Visitation” account in Luke 1 and the Ark’s journey narrated in 2 Samuel 6. The cumulative effect of the many commonalities between them makes the typological connection impossible to be denied. I can’t help but recognize its validity.

OTOH, I understand that you’re trying to say that in the specific context of Luke 1 the Ark should be interpreted as an image of Christ, not of Mary.

I can see a link between the person of Christ and the Ark, but, in the precise context of Luke 1, it seems inescapable to me that the comparison is made between the Ark and the person of Mary the mother of Jesus. That’s the whole gist of the correlation between the stories of 2 Samuel and Luke.

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These modern atheists are totally blind. Besides the fact that they give all the credit for the cultural achievements of Christianity to “human reason” (aren’t Muslims human, too?), they believe that social anarchy is freedom. After all, we are just pondscum, blindly—antinomiously— finding its full potential.

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or Drive-By Typology

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Rome has this whole nutty Oedipus thing going. They want the infantile security of Mary’s breast when God calls them to grow up, to be as individuals men worthy of a bride’s affections, and corporately a bride who adores only her Husband!
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Verifying typological connections is a tricky business. Like driving, it is not a skill but an art. This means that although there are certain rules to follow, above all of that there are situations where being steeped in the types and structures of the Bible is the only way to proceed with wisdom. James Jordan recently commented that any such exegesis should be carried out within the conversation of the church, and:

“The popular notion that everyone should be able to read and exegete the Bible equally, as a result of learning some so-called “science” of hermeneutics, is about as stupid as thinking everyone can write music like Bach and Beethoven by studying the rules of harmony and counterpoint; or that anyone can be a Shakespeare.”

I’m no Shakespeare, but James Jordan’s identification of the biblical “universals” and an explanation of biblical types has helped me enormously. The Bible matrix structure has also helped me enormously. They are typological “systematics.” It is this kind of grounding, like practising scales on a piano, that enables us to more easily identify abuses of typology — such as the claim that Mary is a “New Eve.” Dischordant notes can be used to great effect in great music, but it takes a practised musician to know when it is within a greater “harmony” and when it is not. This is beyond the basic scales.

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or New Covenant Stunt Double

Doug Wilson wrote something recently to correct our misunderstanding of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness:

When our Lord was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, He answered with Scripture, as we all know. Three times He was tested, and each time He replied in the words of Deuteronomy. But this is sometimes misunderstood. We tend to think that Jesus was quoting Scripture at the devil, as though the devil ought to start obeying it. But this was not His intent. When the Lord cited the words of Moses, each time it was because He would have been disobeying the text of Scripture if He had followed the suggestion of the tempter.

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Jeremiah was a Bullfrog?

The Seventh Sense

High Calibre and Forever Loaded

Liturgy as Prophecy

Bibles for Profit

My Backyard

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“The liberal says the end of religion is to make man happy while he’s alive, and the fundamentalist says the end of religion is to make man happy when he dies.”

“…the reason for you to go to the cross isn’t what you’re going to get out of it, but what He’ll get out of it…”

— Paris Reidhead, Ten Shekels and a Shirt.

Warren Gage/Christopher Barber and then James Jordan on Joseph’s wisdom:

“How strange Joseph’s behaviour toward his brothers appears to a modern reader! He recognises his brothers immediately but maintains his Egyptian disguise. He speaks harshly to them and then only through an interpreter. He charges them with spying — a capital crime for which he can sentence them to death. He takes one brother as a hostage. He returns their silver as they go home for the first time, and then he sets the brothers up in order to accuse them of stealing his silver cup on their second return trip, at which point he has them arrested. In short, he terrifies them.

What does this all mean? Is Joseph seeking revenge? Clearly that is not the case, for he so loves them he can hardly restrain himself fom revealing his identity — and his forgiveness — to them. Surely he is not vengeful. Why does he act this way? And why does the text go to such lengths to describe all of this?

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“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful
than you can possibly imagine.” —Ben Kenobi

Herod and Vader are maggot-filled men. They are the living dead. Christ and Kenobi are willing to die. They become the dead living.

One factor the Bible matrix continually brings out in its various occurrences throughout Scripture is the transformation of knowledge into wisdom — through death. In some profound way, knowledge is singular but wisdom is plural.

The Lord gives Adam the knowledge of the Law, and Adam is expected to obey and become wise. We can see, in his failure to confess his sin, that he was no wiser than before.

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ChristKirk in Moscow, Idaho is plowing ahead with the hard work of congregational psalm singing. If this keeps catching on, walls will come tumbling down.
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