We’re storytellers and wordsmiths by nature. We also have an ability to think about abstract concepts. When our thoughts are deeper than words and logic can express on their own, we use pictures and symbols.
In his commentary on the gospel of Matthew, N.T. Wright says that “symbols are the most powerful form of communication”. Dorothy Sayers would have agreed. In The Mind of the Maker she says:
“To forbid the making of pictures about God would be to forbid thinking about God at all, for man is so made that he has no way to think except in pictures.”
So naturally, God has communicated with us through stories, pictures, and symbols. The writing styles in the Bible include historical narrative, law or instructions, letters, genealogies, parables, prophecy, and poetry. According to Vern Poythress, about half the Bible is poetry. Poetry uses symbolic language and word pictures to probe deeper meanings than prose alone could do. In addition, God also arranged for people to act out important concepts to form story pictures, or “living parables”. These are some of the most powerful stories in the Old Testament.
While Jesus was with us on Earth, he usually taught through stories and parables. Jesus never wrote anything down; he didn’t leave us a written book of systematic theology. So the doctrines and theology that we build are our interpretations of the reality of the pictures we find in the Bible. I think the pictures will always be more in-depth and complete than our interpretations of them.
So throughout this study, we’ll be looking for pictures, symbols, and metaphors, and searching for the meaning that God intended for us.
Most non-believers think the Bible is simply a rule book, though that’s never been God’s purpose for communicating with us. In the Bible, God addresses the big topics that he wants us to seriously think about, and act on: sin, evil, death, redemption, and restoration. These are the Bible’s overarching themes and they go way beyond rules. They’re the topics that are key to understanding our Creator and his reasons for creation.
“What is the Bible about? Without trying to minimize the diversity of Scripture, we can say that the Bible is centrally about what our triune Creator-covenant God has done to redeem us and to make everything new in Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Trent Hunter and Stephen Wellum, Christ from Beginning to End
This site will concentrate on sin, death, redemption, and restoration, seen through the lens of a broken, suffering world. These concepts form the factual structure that supports faith in God. Since the day that sin entered the world, it has been God’s objective to redeem all creation, and to restore the relationship between God and mankind to everything it was at the beginning in the Garden of Eden.