Ruth Bancewicz

When he came to Faraday in October 2012, Meric Srokosz brought Biblical scholar Dr Rebecca Watson on board, and together they have been looking at ‘the sea in Scripture’. Their aim is to study the Biblical material on the oceans in order to develop a theology of the sea, and think about how Christians should treat the ocean, the creatures living in it and the resources it contains.

One of the things Rebecca has looked at in this study is the great fear and vulnerability that the Old Testament writers felt in relation to the sea. Here were forces over which they had no control, and they relied on God to protect them. There was also a sense that trying to completely master the sea is an act of pride against God – that we are most at home on land, and can’t fully ‘own’ the sea.

© Bschwehn, freeimages.com

More positively, there was a feeling of wonder and awe in some passages, and an appreciation that the great dangerous beasts in the sea could be a source of pride and enjoyment to God, even though they seemed to offer nothing useful to humankind. Job and the Psalms are great examples of this, with ‘Leviathan’ frolicking in the waves[1]. Finally, some of the biblical writers saw the fish in the sea as a finite resource that needs protection.[2]

Having lived in ships for months as a time, Meric can identify with the Biblical writers’ sense of vulnerability and awe. “You realise how big the world is and how puny human beings are… Scientifically we know a lot more, but it’s [still] beyond our control… When you’re stuck in a force eleven storm in a rather small research ship in the middle of the North Atlantic and there’s not much help around, you get an impression of the majesty of creation, the scariness of some of it, the force of the waves and the winds … and then you see a pod of pilot whales swimming around, and they appear to be enjoying themselves, body surfing down the front of breaking waves!”

Read it all here.