U nder about 65 feet of water, I had an epiphany. We were anchored off the back side of Catalina Island toward its western tip at a place called Lands End and I had been struggling with the subject Rick Ritchie and I had been discussing for this series. Since diving is an incredible, otherworldly experience, much like studying Scripture, it occurred to me that this might be a great metaphor for Biblical Theology. Sounds like a stretch, eh? Let's find out.
Sharing the Mysteries of the Deep
Usually, everyone figures it's the pastor's job to dive into the text of Scripture. He goes down into the deep (or, maybe not so deep), usually as a solo diver, to find something to bring up to his parishioners who wait on the shore — food, pictures and whatnot. These things won't stand without some sort of explanation, so he gives a little spiel on each item trying to tie the various pieces in to something that is relevant. Because the people on the shore are not truly connected to the experience of diving (all they see are the waves hitting the shore and the swirls of kelp in the distance), they eventually lose interest in his long slideshow. The pastor, thinking that what he has found is important and wishing to make what he's brought up from sea of Scripture applicable, decides to tell some stories to make things more palatable, forgetting, of course, that this particular sea is full of stories with gripping detail, stories that might even be inviting and adventurous enough to draw his whole congregation down with him under the waves to meet the Lord of the Sea and of Story.
The kelp forests of Catalina are breathtaking from underneath (quite literally if you are in current or cold water). The beauty of swimming twenty feet off the ocean floor, surrounded by huge stocks of unearthly vegetation which go up to form cathedral-like arches and canopies overhead is not something you can truly convey with a camera. It's an underwater version of Tolkien's Mirkwood Forest. Fish of every size and shape from the little garibaldi (who know they are a protected species, by the way) to the huge sea bass swim into and out of your path. Sunlight bends its way in here and there; strong islands of light at the surface that drift down like rain into the blue of the deep. Everything is silent except for the bubbles which go up in curtains and plumes from you and the divers with you. You are inside a mystery — a part of it.
When you're reading the Bible, not just as literature (though it is that too, make no mistake), but as a book written by God through the agency of men, you are inside a mystery. You see the very real connections that are missed by those who only see it as a collection of ancient genres. The Bible is like the ocean in this way. You cannot do a decent job studying a part of it without considering the whole. Biblical Theology can be as complex as Marine Biology. Whether you are studying the Gospel of John or groupers, the Books of Moses or morey eels, the Psalms or great white sharks, context and background are going to be vital. Both the ocean and the Bible are organic — an ecosystem. Everything in them works together. You can learn this easily enough by running a saltwater tank or interpreting a difficult biblical passage. In either case, if you abstract the parts from the whole, you may come up with a few practical applications, but at the expense of missing the big picture, which could kill all of the fish or put you and others in danger of heresy with regard to the Scriptures. Keep this in mind: whole kingdoms have been constructed on misunderstood Bible passages.
Heavenly Splashdown
Another way to misunderstand Scripture is to miss the primacy of the eternal. This is something that must be considered whether we are looking at nature or God's Word. Everything works together organically in the sea and in the Scriptures, because they were both formed by the one who chooses to progressively reveal the eternal through the churnings of the surf of time. This is Gerhardus Vos's crucial contribution to the field of Biblical Theology that few practitioners understand and yet, it is a very simple thing. That is, which came first? The sea, or the one who made the sea? The answer is obvious. Usually we think of Eschatology as the study of last things or the end of the age as pictured in the book of Revelation. The word "eschatology" covers far more ground (or water, if you'll have it) than this basic usage. It means the final and complete; the last and the perfected. And here's the really important point: it is not necessarily to be understood in a chronological sense. It is the Omega point to which all things lead, culminating in the last man, Jesus and therefore, the point to which all things will ultimately go. The Alpha point, or the Protological, are prefigurements of that final and complete reality (pretty fitting for the one who is called the Alpha and Omega). Throughout Scripture, the eschatological supercedes and ultimately supplants the protological and can be seen moving down into and through it. Boy, that was a mouthful — sorry. What I'm attempting to say is that Heaven comes down to Earth like an invading army and bursts through the imagery of the Old and New Testament at every point along the line of the History of Redemption. God's ultimate purpose for the sea is the underpinning of the sea itself. When we study how the sea is described in Scripture, we understand how its ultimate purpose in salvation breaks through into the present moment of the text and becomes the primary reading.
Very little "breaks through" in much of modern preaching. There is no invasion of God. Even the ultimate invasion — the Incarnation itself — takes a back seat. At this point I am forced to decry the horizontal, flat (read "moral") reading of the text that we are up against when we deal with what passes for preaching in far too many pulpits. The supernatural, vertical reading, where God comes down to dwell in our midst and invites us to share in His life through the shedding of His blood has been waved aside in favor of practical advice to help us cope. Why must we have a flaccid moral reading when the text is inviting us to look for Jesus in its words and find our life there in Him. The preacher who dives into the sea of scripture for various items and then tries to make a practical application with them — even if it is a gospel application — is doing a very different thing than inviting the listener into the world of Scripture.
John Stott, the author of the popular preaching treatise "Between Two Worlds" is right. The preacher does stand between two worlds. But Mr. Stott is wrong in thinking that the preacher's primary duty is to bridge the gap between the ancient and the modern world. The view that the pastor is the go-between in this way tends to look at Scripture as a collection of material that needs to be processed by a professional before it can be consumed by the hearer or reader. The question arises, does the Bible simply provide theological seaweed for the processing plant in the pastor's head, or is it in and of itself sufficient to speak and tell the story?
The sad thing is that in their cells, many pastors get the story part: "The play is the thing", to quote the Bard. Therefore, having been trained in the fine tradition of making some sort of three point application from the material they find in their pericope, they know will totally bore their audience — like a high school detention monitor delivering a half hour lecture to a group of delinquents. (At its worst, good Lutheranism does this kind of presentation, but then maintains orthodoxy by pasting in some Gospel at the end, making you wonder if it's really to be found in the text at all.) So they decide to give the people a little of what they know they want — story! Unfortunately, instead of going to the words given by the Lord of story, they turn to their own little digressions: Mary Poppinses with their spoons full of narrative sugar. A recent bad application I heard mocked was one from the wedding at Cana: "Make sure you invite Jesus to your wedding!"
The vertical aspect of Scripture is missed completely. Contrary to what Mr. Stott believes, the worlds the pastor stands between are the already and the not yet; this age and the age to come. These are the biblical categories. The preacher is supposed to show you Heaven, to put you in it as a present reality even when you are toward the back of the church warming a pew. This doesn't mean an out-of-body experience. It means the preacher brings you into the scriptural world where you can sink through the crashing waves with Saint Peter as Jesus looks at both of you and reaches out His hand to save you in your weakness from the formidable sea (Matthew 14:22-33).
Heaven doesn't stay put any more than the sea does. The not yet is always invading the already.
Some of you may question the wisdom of using the sea as a metaphor for Scripture when the common understanding of the sea in Scripture seems to be as the source of every evil. To that I say, "May it never be!" You don't have to believe me — let us investigate the sea together. By the way, in the off chance you didn't pick this up, this section will also serve as an example (albeit a humble one) of the Biblical Theological task.
The Lord of the Sea
The Bible has a different spin on the sea than the ancient near-eastern cultures that surround it. Most have some sort of battle of the gods going on. Here, the sea is given the proportions of a mythical monster. In Mesopotamia it is Tiamat the dragon of chaos and destruction which Marduk, the god of order, renders impotent and uses to set up the cosmos. In the Mythology of Ugarit it is Yam, the sea god, against Baal in a battle for Heaven.
In the Bible, the sea is a creature upon which God pronounces benediction. God divides the waters of the abyss (Tehom) as Marduk did for Tiamat's body (Genesis 1:6). There is no struggle as in the myths of the region. God gave the waters limits and He invites it with the rest of creation to sing His praises (Psalm 69:34)
The sea is also used as a symbol for the demonic powers. The door to Sheol (Hell, the grave) (Jonah 2:1-10) is at its bottom. Reduced to its creaturely status in the anti-mythology of Scripture, it represents the enemies that God must overcome to win the battle and effect His plan of salvation. Often, the imagery of the surrounding cultures is used creatively to describe this battle (Job 7:12). In history, God kills and cuts the Red Sea in half and has the children of Israel walk between the pieces to witness His victory (Exodus 14-15). Isaiah takes up this sea dragon imagery (Isaiah 51:9-10). In Daniel and the Apocalypse of John we are given a vision of satanic forces rising out the sea. But the Creator knows how to handle them (Psalm 65:7, Psalm 89:9-10). The Lord of the story is the Lord of the sea.
Can you imagine being raised in a culture where you memorized the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible written by Moses) and the Psalms? Knowing God's relationship to the Sea; that the sea had been used by God time and time again in the history of redemption as a lesson to the children of Israel and to outsiders. The most powerful thing most men had seen, a power that was fickle and sometimes brought great evil, the place where evil dwelt was controlled by the one who created it. Since Jesus is the Lord of the Sea, He is able to calm it with a word. When the apostles witness the exorcism of the sea by Jesus, they ask a rhetorical question, "Who is this that even the wind and sea obey Him?" Mark, who records the story, is asking you, the reader/hearer. The answer is unavoidable if you have the background material like the apostles did. They knew well who Jesus' action acclaimed Him to be. If that wasn't enough, He walked on the sea, and cast demons into it to the great dismay of the pig herders.
Finally, the thought that every seafarer hates: In Revelation, there is no more sea. The enemies of Christ so often symbolized by the sea, have been put down and are vanquished forever. In this sense the sea of chaos goes away with them into a deeper deep.
What happened to that sea the Word called good at the dawn of creation? Yes, the satanic abyss is gone. Jesus exorcised the sea and now, at the end of the age, the sea will be fully exorcised.
Yet, there is another sea in the end, a sea of crystal which, like the bronze sea in the temple, stretches out before the throne of God, a symbol of peace instead of chaos in a renewed world.
Since we live in an in between age that is both "already" and "not yet", it comes as no surprise that the sea we experience now is both chaotic and peaceful, frightful and beautiful, replete with gliding monsters and rainbow pagodas of alien beauty. If we follow what the Bible tells us about the sea, we find Jesus waiting for us at the bottom. A "Pearl" of such great value that a man might dare to give up all he has to possess it. By the cross, our Lord becomes the ultimate Jonah of whom the Jonah of the Old Testament was only a type (Matthew 12:40). He goes though the gates of Sheol at the bottom of the sea and by His Resurrection, renders them impotent. He saves us from the power of the sea and of death, and in the end, He even saves the sea from itself.
The Writer
Steve Byrnes is a member of Faith Lutheran Church in Capistrano Beach California. He is a graduate of Christ College Irvine (now home to Concordia University), majoring in English Literature, and Westminster Seminary in Escondido, where he took a Master of Arts in Biblical studies. Steve lives in Mission Viejo.
Suggested Reading
Biblical Theology by Geerhardus Vos
Dictionary of Biblical Theology by Xavier Leon-Dufour
Kerux The Journal of Northwest Theological Seminary