The Interpretation of Types
FOREWORD
“The Bible is the most abused
book in the world. In the hands of both
scholars and laymen it has suffered the
indignity of being used to support all manner of dogmas, beliefs and fancies. Common sense, which has normally been
exercised in the interpretation of other works, seems to have been completely
abandoned with respect to the “Book of books”, and liberties have been taken which in other spheres would have been
condemned outright. It has been said
that anything may be proved from the Bible, a statement not so very far from
the truth if complete liberty of interpretation be allowed. There is therefore a great need ... to put the interpretation of Scripture on a sound basis...”
– Brian Sherring.
“... In an effort to find
comfort, or some personal application of Scripture, the literal and often primary meaning is often obscured or ignored. All
kinds of distortions have been made in order to prove a devotional point or
obtain a spiritual blessing. We all
know how easy it is to take a text from its context and make it mean something
that applies to us. There is a type of
believer whose only interest in the Bible is what he gets out of it for himself
and his own comfort. He assumes that the
whole of Scripture is written to him and about him. ... Such an attitude is destructive of all true interpretation of the Word
of God and must be rejected. In a
subtle way it keeps this sort of person occupied with himself,
instead of being occupied with Christ and God’s great and glorious redemptive
plan centered in Him. Such a narrow view of the Scriptures can
only produce a serious cramping effect upon growth in grace and knowledge, and
acknowledgement of the Truth. If the emphasis is completely devotional, the
necessary doctrinal and expository basis of Scripture is set aside...
“We should approach the
Scriptures from a literal standpoint,
making allowances for figures of speech, symbols, and types, and avoiding the
allegorical system of spiritualizing, which is destructive of true
understanding, we should note that this does not mean spiritual application
cannot be made. This can only be done safely when the primary, basic and literal
interpretation of the Bible has been settled. There is only one [correct] interpretation of a passage of Scripture, but there may be a number of applications of
that passage; these are secondary to the interpretation and must be kept so...
“To rest ones theology on a secondary meaning of the Bible is
not interpretation, but imagination, and human opinion, and in such a procedure
the real meaning of God’s Word is bound to be lost. The only certain way
of obtaining a correct understanding is
to anchor interpretation to literal exposition in the sense that we have
explained the word ‘literal’.”
- Stuart Allen.
“A religion which is rooted and
grounded in history, cannot ignore history. A historical understanding of the Bible is
not a superfluity which can be dispensed with in Biblical interpretation,
leaving a body of ideas and principles divorced from the process out of which
they were born”.
- H. H. Rowley.
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The relationship which the 0ld Testament sustains to the New, forms the basis for the consideration of types. The fact that the 0ld Testament has a
pronounced prophetic element links it indissolubly with the New, and
typological teaching is a form of prophecy.
On the Lord’s own authority He is
to be found in the 0ld Testament. To
the disciples on the road to Emmaus He expounded the 0ld Testament Scriptures:
“And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded
unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself”
(Luke 24:27).
And to the disciples He said:
“These are the words which I spake unto you, while
I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms,
concerning Me!” (Luke 24:44).
In John 5:39, the Lord Jesus said
to the Jews: “Search (or ye search) the Scriptures; for in them ye
think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me”. There can be therefore no doubt whatsoever
that Christ is prefigured by type and shadow in the 0ld Testament, and that
this is a separate study in itself.
There
are several Greek words used in the New Testament, which point back to the
nature of the Old. Hupodeigma means a representation, a copy, an
example and occurs six times. “Let us labour ...
lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief” (Heb. 4:11). As chapters three and four of Hebrews make
clear, the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness has a typical
meaning, which this verse reinforces. “... there are
priests that offer gifts according to the law: Who serve unto the example
and shadow of heavenly things,...” (Heb. 8: 4, 5). Here the earthly priesthood is typical of
heavenly realities.
Tupos and tupikos come from the verb tupto “to strike”, and mean the impression formed by a blow,
a pattern and then a type.
“Now all these things happened unto them (
These
words establish beyond doubt the typical character of much of the 0ld
Testament, and the whole of the epistle to the Hebrews revolves around these
types and adumbrations, without which it could not be understood. There is no doubt therefore that the doctrine
of the types is Scriptural and important to the student of the Scriptures and
the seeker after truth. The fact that
typical teaching has been abused does not invalidate its truth. The early church fathers doubtless erred in
this respect, as have many Roman Catholic theologians, realizing that such
teaching could strengthen Romish doctrines. But the Protestant has not been guiltless
either, for some, in order to support
devotional ideas, have pressed typological teaching beyond its proper limits.
So we
ask ourselves, have we any Biblical guiding principle to lift us above mere
human-opinion and the doctrines of men? The
answer is, yes, and it is this: a character or event in the 0ld Testament is
a type, if the New Testament specifically designates it to be such. This may be too narrow for some interpreters,
but at least we are on sure ground when we put it into practice. It may be true that they are inferred
types, but we need to be careful
here and make certain that the immediate or the remote context justifies them. That Adam was in some respects a type of
Christ Romans 5:14 makes clear:
“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them
that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure (type) of Him
that was to come”.
Melchizedek, who appears suddenly in the
narrative of Genesis fourteen and disappears
mysteriously is typical of the Priesthood of the Lord
Jesus. This is expressly stated in Hebrews 7: 3, 15-17. Moses the Prophet, the mouthpiece of God, is a
picture of the greatest of all prophets, Christ Himself (Deut. 18: 15-19; Acts 3: 22-23). The sacrificial lambs of the 0ld Testament
were all foreshadowing the Saviour (John 1: 29; 1 Cor. 5: 7). The
manna in the wilderness finds its fulfilment in Christ (John 6: 30-35). The
brazen serpent of the 0ld Testament was likewise a type of Christ, (John 3: 14, 15). The veil of the Tabernacle was a picture of
the Lord’s humanity, (Heb. 10: 20). The smitten rock (Num. 20: 11), typified the Lord Jesus Christ as 1 Corinthians 10: 4 asserts “for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and
that Rock was Christ”.
Joshua, the captain of
And so
we might go on. A rich field for study
is opened here, and when we have the
controlling guide of the New Testament we are delivered from interpretive
schools, and many fanciful ideas and the opinions of men. Some students of Scripture identify typology
with allegory, but this is a mistake ... allegory is a figure of speech, a
continued metaphor, whereby one story or aspect of truth is given in terms of
another, not necessarily that of the New Testament, whereas true typology is based on the unity of Old Testament and New
whereby something in the Old foreshadows something in the New. In dealing with types we must be careful to
note dissimilarity as well as similarity. As well as there being points of similarity
between Christ and Adam, or Christ and Moses, there are many points of
dissimilarity, specially when we consider the sin and
weaknesses of both Adam and Moses. One
of the errors that can arise is to make typical
the elements of dissimilarity in a type, but this is guarded against if we
carefully note how the New Testament comments upon the types of the Old.
True
typology is a species of prophecy, and in the 0ld Testament we have some of the
major and basic doctrines of the New Testament set forth in picture form, such
as redemption, justification and atonement. We should take care in typical study to avoid
extremes and flights of fancy. Some have
been put off such study because of the extremes to which certain expositors
have gone. The doctrine lying behind the
Tabernacle needs care. A spiritual
equivalent cannot be found for every single detail, and to try and produce this
is not a mark of spirituality, nor is it sound. Another important thing to
remember is that we should never seek to prove doctrine from types unless there
is New Testament authority. There are at
least six kinds of types in the Word of God:
(1) Persons,
as we have seen, (2) Institutions such as 0ld Testament sacrifices, (3) Offices, Moses as prophet, Melchizedek as
Priest King, (4) Events, The wilderness wanderings, (5) Actions, The lifting up of the brazen serpent
in the wilderness, (6) Things, such as the Tabernacle and
its furnishings...
There are systems of Bible
interpretation that envisage all the redeemed being blessed in future on
the earth, while another interpretation finally puts all the
redeemed in heaven and has no place for an earthly kingdom. Both are wrong and have only a part of the Divine picture. What they need, and what we all need, is our
minds stretched and enlarged to grasp more of the fullness of God’s mighty plan
of redemption and reconciliation that touches the highest heavens as well as
the earth beneath (Col. 1: 20), finding its
final fulfilment in a “new heaven and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2
Pet. 3: 13). The understanding of
many of us is clouded because of our poverty of conception. We have a God that is too small, and a divine
purpose that is little more than parochial.
When
Paul urged Timothy to keep in the forefront of his mind the object of receiving
God’s approval, he was told this was bound up with “rightly
dividing the Word of Truth” (2 Tim. 2:15),
showing that the way we handle and
interpret the Word of God is of supreme importance, and God’s future assessment
of our Christian testimony and whether we meet Him with joy or shame, depends upon our obedience to this command.
We believe that if we carry out the
guiding principle [the correct interpretation
of types] we shall be doing just this, and in
doing so, we are allowing God’s Word to
mean exactly what it says, and every statement of Scripture can be taken in
the setting we find it without alteration, addition or subtraction.
It then
ceases to be the word of man, but is in truth the Word of God. The critic may say that such a system is “devisive”, that it “chops the Bible up into unrelated parts”, and
destroys the organic unity of Scripture. But rightly applied, this is not true. One could retort that the critic
who recognizes the division of the Old and New Testaments, has chopped the
Bible into halves.
When we
“rightly divide the Word” we shall recognize the
basic doctrine of redemption and the final Headship of Christ that binds
together the callings of the redeemed and the spheres of blessing, as well as
noting the distinctions that God has made. Ephesians
1:10 looks forward to a future dispensation of the fulness of the
seasons when all heaven and earth are gathered under the headship of Christ, expressing
a unity that will be unbreakable and eternal. “United yet divided”
expresses the position, and to ignore one and hold to the other is unscriptural
and can only lead to imbalance, and a partial or clouded view of God’s great
goal. It is quite pathetic to see how
some expositors in their over-anxiety to overthrow “dispensationalism”, erect a great man of
straw, someone’s particular brand of dispensational teaching, and then proceed
with great show to knock it down, and imagine when they have done this that the
dispensational approach to the Scriptures has been proved erroneous and
overthrown. This is usually the attitude
of the a-millennialist, but a-millennialism
is a denial of the historic grammatical system of exposition, at least as far
as prophecy is concerned, and as such it is an unsound and inconsistent method
of study with its allegoritation, opening the door
wide to human opinion and error. A
further example of this can be seen in the a-millennial treatment of the two
resurrections of Revelation chapter twenty. The first is held to be spiritual, taking
place at the salvation of the sinner; the second, the general physical
resurrection of all the dead of all time. It is well to note the comments by Dean Alford on this passage in his Greek
New Testament, and he had no
leanings toward the dispensational viewpoint:
“It will have been long ago anticipated by the readers of
this commentary, that I cannot consent to distort its words (that of the
passage) from their plain sense and chronological
place in the prophecy, on account of any consideration of difficulty, or any
risk of abuse which the doctrine of the millennium may bring with it. Those who lived next to the apostles, and the
whole church for 300 years, understood them in the plain, literal sense, and it is a strange sight in these days to see
expositors who are among the first in reverence of
antiquity, complacently casting aside the most cogent instance of consensus
which primitive antiquity presents. As
regards what is known as the spiritual interpretation now in fashion. If, in a passage where two resurrections are
mentioned, where certain psuchai ezesan at the first, and the rest of the nekroi ezesan
only at the end of a specified period after the first if in such a passage the first resurrection may be understood to mean
spiritual rising with Christ, while the second means literal rising from the
grave then, there is an end of all significance in language, and Scripture is
wiped out as a definite testimony to anything. If the first resurrection is spiritual, then
so is the second, which I suppose none will be hardy enough to maintain; but if
the second is literal, then so is the first, which in common with the whole
primitive church and many of the best modern expositors, I do maintain, and
receive as an article of faith and hope” -The Greek New Testament
in loco.
These
are sane and weighty words, and there is no doubt that Dean Alford has the majority of sound scholars with him. Hardly anywhere else is the futility of
a-millennial interpretation shown up more than in its handling of Revelation
chapter twenty.
The
a-millennialist may call the pre-millennialist’s
views of the future as ‘carnal’ and ‘unscriptural’, but he needs reminding that
spiritual things are not necessarily better than the material. There
is such a thing as spiritual wickedness (Eph.
6:12). When God put Adam and Eve
into the garden of Eden, was this carnal because it
was material and on the earth? And when
the earthly part of God’s kingdom is realized and becomes like
In
conclusion, the honest interpreter will always keep a supreme regard for truth
at all costs. Nor will he forget
the words of the Saviour: “ ... sanctify them through Thy Truth; Thy Word is Truth”. (John
17: 17), nor His constant reverence for the Holy Scriptures (Matt. 5: 17-18; John 5: 46, 47; 10: 25; Matt. 22: 29)
whose primary aim is to “make wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3: 15). To interpret the Scriptures is a high and
holy task. God will not hold guiltless
any who carelessly handle or tamper with His Word, substituting the folly and
error of man for His wisdom and His Truth.
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