Deep Weird Stuff and Why the Serpent was a Sexual Linguist
Thoughts on Sexual Confusion in the Garden and the Gavin Ortlund Controversy
I live in a world of deep weirdness. One of my mentors, James B. Jordan, taught me well, and his protege, Peter Leithart, has not strayed far from his Sensei. This all means that much of what we say can initially sound a bit strange to the ears. Someone once said that James Jordan is usually on something or on to something.
I don’t write in the deep-weird paradigm for the shock-value. It’s just deep in my bones. In fact, I am not a click-baiter by nature, though I have played one on TV once or twice. If you listen to or read my material, I don’t play around with essential topics, and I am more than happy to trust our ancestors on all of the Nicene orthodoxy they mustered in the early church.
But when it comes to the connectionalism of the Bible, I try to work with fresh insights. Too much exegesis is dry because modern hermeneutics is afraid to go where no man has gone before. And because we have excommunicated Matthew Henry to the devotional aisle of the Christian bookstore, we miss his theological and typological insights. But truly, the man was a genius. Leithart demonstrates this in his “Deep Exegesis.” In his commentary on Genesis, Henry makes one of the most exquisite analyses of Eve’s creation I have ever heard:
Eve was taken from Adam’s side, “near his heart, and under his arms, to show that she should be affectionately loved by him; and always under his care and protection.”
The absence of creative reading is among the many blissful overlooks in contemporary work. The less consideration we give to the Bible’s redemptive flow, the less capable we will be of seeing the Bible for all its worth. We need to connect dots and colors and robes and kings together. We can’t treat them like lost artifacts to hide behind a screen in a museum far, far, away. We need to see basic types and shadows and then build on them. David was a good king, but Jesus is a great David-King. Joseph was a faithful ruler, but Jesus is the greater brother who rules faithfully. And so on, and so on.
But we should not content ourselves with layer number one. These types and fulfillment are good as an appetizer. But we should move to more dangerous things. Like so many rhythms, this deep weird dive needs time and practice. It’s not only for professionals, but if you try it at home, be sure there are people around you testing you. Don’t go rogue on typology. You may end up on something instead of on to something.
The Linguistic-Serpent
Typology is possible because we live in the Western civilization and, therefore, breathe the best of the Western tradition. Shakespeare and P.G. Wodehouse are ours. C.S. Lewis worked out his types and shadows and gardens. We should cherish these things. Among the many blessings of this noble history is the ability to give order to our grammar. The orcs of the Left don’t do typology because LGBTQ+ culture hates the West. They want alphabet cereal in real life. They don’t see the order in language. They can’t see shadow and fulfillment. They confuse all rules of engagement. They exchange the glory of the text for the misogyny or the motherhood of the text. The more confused gender-language is, the better for their cause. They won’t cease until thei sussceed att disorieteeng our language. They won’t stop until our letters are turned upside down. They want evil to be legislated into all our textbooks. They want typology gone from our interpretive lenses.
We need to put a stop to this madness.
But this insanity is not the result of academic queers in the 1960’s. Gender confusion began long ago in the Garden. The Serpent is the embodiment of gender confusion. The serpent is the LGBT entrepreneur and the head of the Public Relations department. We understand rightly because we can see that the Serpent in the Garden was a type of every Lesbian Studies academic in American universities.
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