Bible Matrix
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?
The Bible is one story told over and over again, with many variations on the same theme. The variations are based on Genesis chapters 1-3, and so they all follow a similar structure.
Christian scholars disagree on many things, but I believe that a lot of misinterpretation can be avoided if we recognise these basic patterns—the Bible’s DNA. This is not some weird kabbala-type mysticism. When we learn to recognise the shape of God’s sovereign work in the past it helps us understand both the present and the future. It puts the temptations and suffering we all experience into the big picture—and helps us to appreciate them as God’s dealings with us for the sake of ourselves and others.
God is not the author of confusion. His work is engineered and carried out with mechanical precision and artistic beauty. He does all things well.”
That’s a big promise for a little book, but I believe it will deliver. To make the idea more palatable for the boffin naysayers and the modern gnostics, think of it as an introduction to Systematic Typology. I sincerely hope that more average Christians will see that the Bible isn’t nearly as complicated as the compromised evangelical monks think it is.
