God took on a body, from the dust, in Adam. A trillion particles of inanimate, dead stuff pulled together and organised into the most complex system in the cosmos, an organic machine capable of feats we are yet to discover.
Adam, as Covenant head, also took on a “body.” A Divine Handful of flesh and bone, dead or dying by any human measure, organised into a being more palatial and lavish than any male eye is worthy to behold.
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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.
This contribution by Kelby Carlson, who just finished my book. He deserves a big medal. He also thinks it should be longer!
For our English class we are reading The Scarlet Letter. It’s amazing how much symbolism there is in literature, and your book (Jordan’s, too, and a few others) have really started to help me see that. I think man fundmentally fits symbols into everything, even if sometimes it is unintentional. I am just amazed at how something that at first appears simple can say so much; which has me even more in awe of the Scriptures.
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.
I heard an analogy of Jesus’ death based on the Allied troops’ D-day invasion. A commanding officer threw himself onto the landmine infested beach. Whether he lived or died, the troops knew that bit of sand was safe. The head was sacrificed for the body, not just for the life of the body, but in order that the body could continue the invasion.
Enduring the cross is not simply to be an example, not simply to say, as True Shepherd, “I will not participate in a government of wolves.” It is throwing oneself down for the sake of the glory set before us—multiplied glory. The cross is many things, but it is also profoundly military.
In the case of Christ, He knew exactly where the landmine was. True masculinity is hungry for glory, the glory of Greater Eve as a mantle.
“…who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth and issued from the womb?” Job 38:8
As with all good government, important kingdom decisions are carried out in private. This is pictured in many ways, not least in God’s design of our everyday lives.
Matthew 1-10 follows the Dominion pattern. After Jesus’ testing in the wilderness, in 4:18-8:13 Jesus called His disciples and began mustering a new holy army - the “next generation”.[1] It was reported to Him that the last Old Covenant Nazirite (holy warrior) was dead. It was time for new warriors. Jesus healed the uncleanness of many, creating a new priesthood. His success in the wilderness as a new Head made possible this new body. Peter Leithart writes:
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.
The battle between the Son and the serpent rages throughout the Old Testament. Every time the Lord renews the Covenant, Satan is ready with a counterfeit. God uses the phonies to test and purify His people, wipes the failures off the slate, then starts again.
Aaron and Jeroboam set up patently false worship in their golden calves. But false worship in the guise of true was much more difficult to discern, especially when it usurped the exact location of the true. When the Lord took Ezekiel to the Temple as a legal witness, it was a whitewashed tomb. He dug through the wall and discovered that it was a house of hypocrisy, the synagogue of Satan. All that remained of Israel’s witness to the nations was a thin veneer.
After reading about the Bible’s use of robes as symbols of office (see The Dominion Trap by James B. Jordan), Tim Mitchell commented:
In Bible study we’ve been looking at John, so a few weeks ago was John 13. My Bible translated v.4-5 as “So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feel, drying them with the towel he had around him.”
So that recalled for me the couple of pages on robe imagery, and it seems to foreshadow what Jesus will do later on very well: He is willing to take off his authority and righteousness, and take on the dirt of our sin.
But then I got a bit unsure, since Jesus then goes on to say “you ought to wash each others’ feet” in v.14 and “Do as I have done to you” in v.15. So if the symbolism applies, how are we also supposed to take other peoples’ sin on us as Jesus did?
Firstly, what a great question. Many New Testament passages become so familiar that we often lose the ability to really think about their ramifications.
The structure of the Last Supper puts this action of Jesus at Atonement, the Laver (Day 6). Jesus is liturgically pre-enacting His role as High Priest. The Adam removed his glorious robes and wore linen for the Day of Covering. Jesus left this in the tomb with our sin on it. But that is not all the High Priest did. He approached the Most Holy twice.
Read the Foreword here
