Comments on Romans 5:15-17--Typology Primer

Timotheos,

I will divide my comments into two segments. This post will address the matter of typology. The next will comment on the text of Romans 5:14-17. Here, I summarize your four points concerning typology with a few comments of my own and with one additional and fifth observation.

1. God designed the type with the antitype in mind. Another way to express this is to say that God designed the reality to cast a shadow. The shadow, thus, foreshadows the coming reality. In other words, there is a historical feature to types. In history, the types predate the things that they foreshadow. Yet, in reality, the Messiah, the Son of God, is before Adam, the son of God, who is a type of the one to come (Romans 5:14). Thus, types are historical castings of the antitypical or eschatological realities to which they point or which they foreshadow.

2. Because God cast the type from the reality (i.e., the antitype), the type functions prophetically as it anticipates its own fulfillment in that which is greater than itself, namely, the reality from and for which it was cast.

3. Types fill the pages of Scripture, for God invested persons (Adam, Moses, Joshua, David, Sarah and Hagar, Isaac, etc.), events (creation, day/night, flood, exodus, etc.), things (darkness/light, trees, sacrifices, ark, etc.), places (Garden, rivers, plains, mountains), and other this with significances that point to things greater than themselves. On this principle, then, God invested these things with typological significances that anticipate things to come, So, in order to understand Scripture rightly, we need to understand types.

4. You are exactly right to distinguish what you are talking about from what many call typological interpretation. For some clarification on what I mean by types in distinction from typological interpretation click here to read a comment that confuses types with typological interpretation, and then click on my response (see the end of this entry also for my response). You correctly say, ”Though I know what those who use such a term are intending by the phrase, I think the phrase is wrong-headed. We do not need to do typological interpretation. Instead, we must simply interpret the Scriptures. In the Scriptures, God revealed types, but types do not take a certain science to understand them. Instead, what is required is that we simply read the Scriptures, and read them well.”
   

5. I want to add a fifth item to your list of four. The fifth element for rightly understanding types, I believe, is complementary to the first item indicated above. We have mentioned the temporal complexity concerning the relationship between type and antitype, particularly with regard to the relationship between Adam and Christ. Christ, the antitype, whom Paul calls the one who is to come (Romans 5:14), precedes Adam, the type, for Christ is God’s eternal Son and Adam is God’s created son. This complexity, then, requires that we also recognize that there is a spatial dimension to the relationship between types and antitypes. Types are principally earthly shadows of heavenly realities. Then, types are foreshadows of things to come. In other words, Christ is not only the antitype after which Adam, the type, is cast. Christ also is the heavenly Son of God who cast the shadow upon the earth in the form of Adam, the earthly son of God. This is how the Letter to the Hebrews understands the heavenly and earthly sanctuaries. The heavenly sanctuary, as Exodus 25:40, is the pattern after which Moses constructs the earthly sanctuary. The spatial axis—heavenly and earthly—is primary, it seems to me. The temporal axis—what is and what is to come—flows from the spatial axis, as I understand these. Hence, the earthly tabernacle was first the shadow of the heavenly sanctuary. Then the earthly tabernacle was the foreshadow of the sanctuary that was to come. Scripture uses shadow to refer to earthly things in both their spatial and temporal relationships to heavenly things. Hebrews 8:5 designates the earthly sanctuary a copy and a shadow of the heavenly sanctuary. Hebrews 10:1 speaks of the law of Moses as a shadow of the good things to come. For clarity’s sake, we may use the designation shadow to speak of the spatial (heavenly-earthly) relationship of the antitype to the type, and we may use the designation foreshadow to speak of the temporal (before/the coming) relationship of the antitype to the type.

Below, I illustrate how Hebrews 8-10 speak of the heavenly sanctuary as the pattern which the Lord showed Moses on the mountain, the sanctuary the Lord instructed Moses to copy exactly. “See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain” (Exodus 25:40). The following diagram attempts to show both the spatial and temporal relationships between earthly type and heavenly antitype.

The above diagram also attempts to illustrate the typological relationship between Adam and Christ. As with the heavenly and earthly sanctuaries, so it is with Adam and Christ. Adam stands in relation to Christ spatially but also temporally. We would be seriously mistaken, as you, Timotheos, point out so well, to suppose that because Adam precedes Christ in history that Christ, who comes in the last days, is like or unlike Adam. Exactly the reverse is true, and the way Paul writes his discussion of these things in Romans 5:14-17 also reinforces this important point. Adam is like or unlike Christ. The trespass by Adam is like or unlike the gift that comes through Christ Jesus.

I will post a second note in which I will offer a few further comments on Paul’s text itself. This present note concerns only the matter of understanding biblical types.

I am indebted to Geerhardus Vos for the basic diagram concerning biblical types. See his The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Nutley, N.J.: P&R, 1975), 56-57.

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Is there not a significant difference between "typological interpretation" and the proper recognition of the presence of divinely authorized types throughout the biblical text? I believe there is. "Typological interpretation" is a flawed and wrong-headed imposition of types onto the biblical text in a backward movement from later text to earlier text, something biblical writers do not do, including the author of Hebrews. To recognize the almost ubiquitous presence of types throughout the Old Testament is simply to read the Bible correctly, to follow God's thoughts after him. We are obviously aided by having the later and clearer disclosure from God, but it is not the later revelation that renders anything a type after the fact. Hosea did not invent the type when he said, "Out of Egypt I called my son" (Hosea 11:1). Rather, by reading the Scriptures, Hosea recognized the divinely cast type in the exodus narrative. Likewise, Matthew did not invent the type when he recognized that Hosea's words found fulfillment (plerōthe) in the events falling out from Herod's murderous decree (Matt 2:15).

The forging of biblical types is not the property of hermeneutics (interpretation). Typology is not the work of readers. We do not get to invent our own types. The author of Hebrews did not get to invent types either. Rather, the casting of types is the property of revelation. It is the work of God who authored the biblical text through his holy men of old, the prophets. Therefore, as readers, we are obliged to recognize the types God cast. We should recognize them by reading the Old Testament forward. Jesus chided Nicodemus and others for failing to recognize that all the Scriptures testify concerning the Christ, largely by way of types. If we do not see types clearly by reading the Old Testament forward, surely we ought to recognize them by reading the Old Testament from the standpoint of fulfillment, by way of divinely authorized analogy, that the latter fulfillment (e.g., Jesus' coming "out of Egypt") brings to light the promissory nature of the type forged by God (e.g., God's bringing Israel, his son, "out of Egypt"). The type was cast by God in his deed and in his word which narrates his deed. The type may be made obvious by the later fulfillment, but the later fulfillment is not what renders the type to be a type. Divine design (intent) in the authoring of the biblical text of old is what renders types to be types.

Divine authorization through the divine authoring of Scripture rendered Israel's experiences types. This is what Paul means when he says, "these things came to pass typologically. . ." (tauta tupikōs sunebainen ekeinois). The adverb tupikōs describes the manner of their coming to pass. In other words, God cast the experiences of Israel to bear his purposed imprint of foreshadowing things to come, things that find their fulfillment for us in Christ at the end of the ages. The apostle Paul, in other words, did not have liberty to invent types. How could he and at the same time expect his hearers to examine the Scriptures to see whether the things he taught them are right and true (Acts 17:11)? Paul's whole gospel is confirmed by the Old Testament. We need to be able to trace out Paul's reasoning from the Old Testament Scriptures, or else how can we be confident that Paul did not pull a fast one on us? If we claim that Paul could do so because of apostolic authority, as Richard Longenecker argued long ago and reiterated again recently with the reprint of his book (Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period), we leave ourselves out on a fideistic lurch, with no reasonable biblical warrant for the things we believe.

With some of the above comments on types in mind, you may find How a Christian Can Read Any Old Testament Passage useful. I would offer some crucial qualifications concerning what this document says concerning types, but this should be obvious to anyone who has already read my comments above.