Bully's Blog

Systematic theology is like a man’s brain. A friend emailed me an audio of someone describing a man’s brain. It has a box for everything:  a box for the job, a box for the car, a box for the kids, a box for the money, and yes, a box for the wife. And the rule was, he said, the boxes don’t touch.

“When a man discusses a particular subject, we go to that particular box, we pull that box out, we open the box, we discuss only what is in that box … alright? Then we close the box and put it away, being very careful not to touch any of the other boxes.

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All the names and the numbers in Revelation are symbols based on historical facts. The names are easy. Jezebel, Antipas, Balaam… But we mathematical moderns have trouble taking numbers as symbols. We are only interested in descriptions, not relationships. In the Bible, symbols describe relationships. As David Chilton observes in The Days of Vengeance [PDF], the symbolic value of someone or something is not a description of its nature, but a description of its relationship to someone or something else. Hence, as Jordan observes, Satan is both a dragon and a serpent in Revelation 12. He is a serpent to the Woman and a dragon to her children. Continue reading

or Submissible Evidence According to Paul

“…it is instructive that when the issue was so decisively drawn with his legalist opponents, Paul, at the climax of his argument, appealed to an allegory to refute the gainsayers of grace…”

Warren Gage writes:

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or There Is No Conscription In Christianity, So Stop Picturing It.

I’m not opposed to apparently weird and wonderful ideas from the Bible (anyone who visits this blog knows that), as long as they can be backed up repeatedly from Scripture. This is inevitably typological, and this is why I take issue with infant baptism. As I have written elsewhere here, the entire Old Testament typological freight train is against it, but I just want to hammer one point here, and I have a silver hammer.

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“There are two main ‘checks and balances’ that restrain us from misusing the Bible’s symbols. The first is the Bible’s consistent use of the same symbols. Continue reading

The Insiders

“For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” 1 Chron. 16:9

The Bible was written to be understood by word-search software, or by believers who think that way. There are many expressions and phrases that are used repeatedly—very deliberately—so that the reader makes connections.

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This beautiful gem from Paul Huxley (reposted here with his permission):

A man finds some treasure in a field, he covers it up, joyfully buys the field and gets the treasure. Does that sound familiar? That’s right. It’s the plot of the book Ruth.

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“In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground…” (Genesis 3:19)

The book of Judges continually uses the imagery of the crushing of the heads of the Lord’s enemies, whether this is literal skulls or heads of state. The Bible makes a big deal of heads and bodies, whether this is the sacrifices picturing the totus Christus, or His rival, Gog and Magog.

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This passage is arranged symmetrically (chiasmus) but is also progressive, following the pattern of the Feasts (which also follow the pattern of Genesis to Judges).

Sabbath/Genesis – Paul’s word of greeting (Grace and peace)

……….Passover/Exodus – Divisions in the church

………………..Firstfruits/Leviticus – Wisdom of Christ

…………………………Pentecost/Numbers – Crucifixion of Christ

………………..Trumpets/Deuteronomy – Mind of Christ

……….Atonement/Joshua – Divisions in the church

Tabernacles/Judges – The Day will declare (judge) it (Church as Sabbath-Temple)

Kelby asked if these patterns are simply the work of the Holy Spirit, or if the authors of the Bible were consciously composing their writings in this manner. Good question. I think the answer is both. Bible books sometimes arrange events out of chronological order to fit this pattern. But then, Bible history also follows this pattern at various levels. The authorship of Scripture is like the humanity and divinity of Christ: inseparable.

A quote from Theological Poetics: Typology, Symbol and the Christ, by Warren Gage of Knox Seminary:

A modern introduction to biblical typology should begin inductively with several examples of certain shadows and types from Old Testament passages widely acknowledged to be prefigurative in character, seeking to understand those types as interpreted by the authors of the New Testament.  After a number of such passages are examined, an index of the “criteria of certainty” should be proposed to distinguish legitimate “types” from suspected “allegories.” Principles of interpretation should then be announced, along with the obligatory caveats necessarily qualifying tentative proposals, all of which should be rationally defensible and clearly recognizable to reputable scholarship in the field.

Our approach will be quite different.  Continue reading