Typology

in New Covenant Theology

Interpretation 1
The Biblical Theology Study Center
Chad Richard Bresson
 Principles of NT use of the OT
The New Testament use of the Old Testament shows and/or explains fulfillment of the Old Testament types,
shadows, and promises in Christ. Typology is inherent to understanding NT use of the OT.
Old Testament passages are interpreted by the NT authors (and Jesus) in light of Jesus, his life, death,
resurrection, and exaltation.
The New Testament uses the Old Testament as interpretive support for its various conclusions.
New Testament use of the Old Testament is contextual, making it important to read and even understand the
entire context of the Old Testament passage to get the full impact of its use.
The Old Testament quote provides backdrop for the New Testament passage and moves along the
thesis/theme of the NT author’s book, even as the New Testament passage interprets the Old Testament
passage from which the quote is taken.
While the whole canon is the Scriptures for the New Covenant community, the New Testament provides
definitive interpretation of the Old Testament quotations and the quotations’ context.
The New Testament’s use of the Old Testament provides an interpretive pattern to follow in understanding
the Old Testament in light of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and exaltation (the Christ event).
Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament grounds Jesus’ story in the story of Old Testament Israel.
Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament provides continuity between the testaments in telling the
one grand story of Jesus in the progress of redemptive history.
Use of the Old Testament in the NT draws similarities between Jesus and the Old Testament, and highlights
dissimilarities between Jesus and the OT.
Often the OT quotation is a memory-marker for the larger Old Testament unit.
The NT authors portray Christ as both the Grand Interpreter and Grand Interpretation of the Old Testament.
 Typology
Goldsworthy (GCH, p. 242-243):
1. The things recorded in the Old Testament (as the history of salvation) are to be
interpreted teleologically – that is, as purposeful and directed to the final goal.
2. Those things in the Old Testament are shaped by the nature of the goal, while
being modified by their respective place in history.
3. God acting in history presumes a goal toward which history moves.
4. The eschatological resolution of history is arrived at in and through Jesus
Christ.
5. Typology rests on the recognition that the way God spoke and acted in the Old
Testament was preparatory and anticipatory of the definitive word and act of
God in Christ.
6. Type and antitype express the organic relationship between the events of the
Old Testament that pattern and foreshadow their fulfillment in the New.
7. The heart of the antitype in the New Testament is the person and work of Jesus
Christ, especially the resurrection.
 Typology
McCartney & Clayton (LTRU, p. 163ff):
1. Typology is the interpretation of earlier events, persons, and
institutions in biblical history as anticipating later events, persons, and
institutions.
2. Typology cannot exist without history.
3. Typology is possible only if history has a purpose, that purpose being
ordained by an intending Person who
1. controls it
2. intimates within it where it is going (Eph. 1:9-10).
4. Christological typology is not only possible, but necessary to truly
understand the ultimate point of OT history as well as prophecy.
5. Typology implies:
1. earlier revelation is understood only in the light of later revelation
2. later revelation can only be understood in relation to the earlier.
6. The NT understands events and institutions of the OT to be “types”.
 Typology and fulfillment
McCartney & Clayton (LTRU, p. 163ff):
1. The NT writers understood Christianity as the fulfillment of OT
expectation.
2. The NT writers understood the OT as pointing to Jesus.
3. If the NT fulfills the OT tradition, then we cannot understand the
NT apart from the typological expectations of the OT.
4. By showing how the later revelation reflects and completes the
earlier, the earlier revelation itself can be seen to take on expanded
meaning.
5. The typology of promise and fulfillment permeates the thinking of
Jesus and the early church.
6. The typology of promise and fulfillment is the ultimate validation
for Jesus’ and the early church’s extensive use of the Old Testament
to depict and characterize their own situation.
 Promise and Fulfillment
Goldsworthy:
1. The Old Testament is incomplete as to the working
out of God’s purposes.
2. The Old Testament cannot be fully understood apart
from the fulfillment in the New Testament.
3. The two Testaments are interdependent:
1. The New must complete the Old
2. The New needs the Old to show what it is that is being
fulfilled.
4. The New is the definitive interpretation of the Old.
 The nature of typology
Goldsworthy:
1. The way Christ and his apostles use the Old
Testament forms the theological substructure of the
New Testament canon.
2. The comprehensive use of the Old Testament in the
New Testament as referring ultimately to Jesus
constitutes typology.
 The importance of typology to
hermeneutics
Goldsworthy:
1. The canonical approach to typology presupposes a unity to
the Bible.
2. The canonical approach to typology allows the canon to
establish the primary context from within which every text
is interpreted.
3. The New Testament provides the only evidence that we have
for the hermeneutical procedures of Jesus and the apostles.
4. In hermeneutics we are concerned with:
1. Jesus’ attitude to the Old Testament as his authoritative Scripture
2. The way Jesus employed the Old Testament as the Scripture that he
himself fulfilled.
 The importance of typology to
hermeneutics
Schreiner:
1. Typology is fundamental to biblical theology.
2. What is promised in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New
Testament.
3. The New Testament represents the culmination of the history of
redemption begun in the Old Testament.
4. The progress of revelation recognizes:
1. The preliminary nature of the Old Testament
2. The definitive word of the New Testament
5. We can only understand the NT when we have also grasped the
meaning of the OT, and vice-versa.
6. Typology is not limited to the New Testament.
7. There is an escalation in typology in the Old Testament.
8. Typology acknowledges a divine pattern and purpose in history.
 Reventlow’s two approaches to typology
1. The correspondence of facts, persons, and events as
they occur in both Testaments.
1. The type fails to be the full reality.
2. Any person, fact, or event in the Old Testament is a type
of Christ to the degree that its theological function
foreshadows that of Christ.
2. Typology as a method of salvation history
hermeneutics.
1. Typology is a means of discovering structural analogies
between the saving events attested by both Testaments.
2. The correspondence between Testaments is primarily
entire epochs or stages within salvation history.
Edmond Jacob on the relationship between
type and Christ, the antitype
1. A relation of similarity
2. A relation of opposition (contrast)
3. A relation of progress
John Currid’s four essentials in identifying
typology
1. Typology must be grounded in history
2. There must be notable historical and theological
(and literary; crb) resemblance between the type and
antitype
3. The antitype must intensify the type (must be more
theologically significant)
4. There must be evidence of the divine intention for
the type to represent the antitype.
 McCartney & Clayton’s five controls to
identifying types
1. To be identified as a type, an event’s redemptive-historical
function:
1. Must be known
2. Must show an organic relationship to the later redemptive
history that it foreshadows.
2. The nature of the type must lie in the main message of the
material, not in some incidental detail.
3. The antitype (fulfillment) must be greater than the type.
4. The original human meaning (the linguistic sense) must be
organically related to any more extensive meaning.
5. All meaning must be related to the redemptive-historical
purpose of God.
 The analogy of faith
1. Christ said that all of the Scriptures are about Him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-47).
2. If all of the Scriptures are about Christ, we must allow Scripture to
interpret Scripture.
3. The New fulfills and interprets the Old.
4. Examples of Analogy of Faith in the NT.
1. Peter preaches from Joel 2:28-29 and invokes the Davidic Covenant, both as
relating to the church (Acts 2).
2. The author of Hebrews interprets Jeremiah 31:31-34, containing the promise
of the New Covenant, as pertaining to the church (Heb 8).
3. Jesus is the “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah 53 (Matthew 8; Acts 8).
4. Jesus is “the Rock” of Exodus 17 (1 Cor. 10).
5. Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ (John 8:56).
6. The gospel was preached to Abraham (Galatians 3:8).
7. Moses gave up the treasures of Egypt for the reproach of Christ (Hebrews
11:26).
 The Analogy of Scripture (Goldsworthy)
1. The sole content of Scripture is Christ. Every text in some way testifies
of Christ.
2. Because Christ is the incarnate Word, the Bible can only be the Word
of God if it deals with Christ.
3. Interpretation cannot succeed without reference to the reality of the
gospel.
4. That every text speaks in some way to Christ gives rise to the analogy
of Scripture: Scripture interprets Scripture.
5. The total scriptural context interprets any given text of Scripture.
6. We assert the unity of the Bible, not because it is a matter of empirical
observation, but because the teachings of Jesus and the apostles
render it unavoidable.
7. Biblical theology is an important discipline in enabling us to discover
both the revealed propositions of unity and the empirical shape of it.
 The Analogy of Scripture (Goldsworthy)
1. Scripture is self-authenticating.
2. The church can only recognize the canon and the authority
Scripture; it does not donate them.
3. No one is in a position to validate, or invalidate, Scripture.
4. The same Word who called the universe into existence calls
the church into existence and rules it.
5. The WORD is known to us only through the Word of
Scripture.
6. The church’s witness to Scripture is nothing more than
obedient recognition of the witness that Scripture bears to
itself as God’s word.
7. The Scripture validates the church.
 The Analogy of Scripture (Goldsworthy)
1. Scripture is clear and self-interpreting.
2. God must interpret his word.
3. The standard for Scripture’s interpretation must come from
within itself.
4. God, the author of Scripture, can only speak clearly and
understandably.
5. God speaks so as to be understood.
6. The external clarity of Scripture does not evaporate because of
the problem of internal clarity.
7. Inherent to the external clarity of Scripture in relationship to
internal clarity is the thematic clarity of the person and work of
Christ.
8. The clarity of Scripture has as its aim the witness to Christ.
 The Analogy of Scripture (Goldsworthy)
1. Christocentric interpretation is inherent in
Scripture.
2. The analogy of Scripture is nothing less that the
analogy of the gospel.
3. All of Scripture is interpreted by its relationship to
the gospel.
4. Christ must redeem hermeneutics.
5. Every principle of interpretation must be drawn from
Scripture.
 McCartney & Clayton on the analogy of
faith
1. Scripture interprets Scripture is simply to say that God determines the
meaning of his own words.
2. Scripture interprets Scripture is a control on meaning.
3. Scripture interprets Scripture confines the meaning of any text to that
which fits with the rest of Scripture.
4. Obscure passages should be interpreted in light of clear passages.
5. Whenever a NT writer explicitly interprets and OT text, this
interpretation is true.
6. If God is author of both the history and the text, then surely the later
is latent in all the former, and meaning in the former is expanded by
the appearance of the later.
7. The NT gives the correct understanding of the OT.
8. The meaning of any part of the Bible must be understood in the
context of the Bible as a whole.
 Hebert and Robinson’s three stages of
typology in salvation history
1. God’s kingdom is revealed in Israel’s history up to
David and Solomon.
2. God’s kingdom is revealed in prophetic eschatology.
3. God’s kingdom is revealed in the fulfillment of the
Old Testament expectations in Christ.
 Jesus and typology
Goldsworthy (GCH, pp. 249ff)
1. Christology in the New Testament shows Jesus to be the comprehensive
expression of reality in the purpose of God.
2. Understanding the Bible necessitates the centrality of Christ.
3. Jesus and the apostles regarded the whole of the Old Testament as
testimony to the Christ.
4. The whole of the Old Testament is all about Jesus.
5. There is no dimension of the Old Testament message that does not in some
way foreshadow Christ.
6. An Old Testament text is about Christ in that a meaningful portion of any
given book understood as part of that book and its overall message is about
Christ.
7. To say that an Old Testament text is about Christ is to point to the dynamics
of the canon of Scripture.
8. Christ defines the unity of the biblical message.
 Jesus and the interpretation of types
Goldsworthy (GCH, pp. 252)
1. Jesus says the whole Old Testament, not merely a few selected texts, is all
about him.
2. Jesus, as the one mediator between God and man, is the hermeneutic
principle for every word from God.
3. Jesus, as the reason for creation, interprets the ultimate significance of every
datum of reality.
4. The prime question to put to every text is about how it testifies to Jesus.
5. No text in either Testament exists without some connection to Christ.
6. That the connection between text and Christ is there is a matter determined
by the word of Christ and his apostles.
7. As the prime goal of all texts, Jesus is the interpreter of every biblical text.
8. No datum in the universe exists in isolation from Christ.
9. No datum in the universe exists in isolation from Christ’s interpretation of its
ultimate meaning.
 Goldsworthy’s macro-typology (GCH, pp.
253-256)
1. Macro-typology involves the correspondence of the
major stages of redemptive history.
2. The major events of Old Testament Salvation History
correspond to the prophetic eschatology of the text
and to the age/eschaton’s type fulfillment in Christ.
Goldsworthy’s macro-typology (GCH, pp.
253-256)
Goldsworthy’s macro-typology
Goldsworthy’s macro-typology
Goldsworthy’s macro-typology
 New Covenant Typology
1. New Covenant typology presumes the priority of the antitype over the type.
2. New Covenant typology presumes the superiority of the New Testament in interpreting the Old Testament and in
understanding the fulfillment of the type by the antitype in salvation history.
3. The antitype not only intensifies the type, but the antitype is also grander, more stupendous, and more glorious
than the type.
4. In New Covenant typology, the antitype fulfills the intentions of the type.
5. New Covenant typology presumes the incapability of the type to fulfill its own eschatological trajectory in salvation
history.
6. New Covenant typology presumes the imperfection, fallibility, and (many times) the negative context of the type.
7. New Covenant typology presumes not only similarity, contrast, and progress between type and antitype, but also
“inversion” (a kind of contrast) between type and antitype.
8. New Covenant typology presumes the antithesis between law and grace, while at the same time, presuming an
organic continuity between type and antitype.
9. New Covenant typology presumes the necessity of the type in understanding the antitype.
10. New Covenant typology presumes the progress of the type toward the antitype in redemptive history is primarily
anthropological, rather than creational.
11. New Covenant typology presumes the Old Testament's anticipated Messiah (and His work) is revealed in the Old
Testament types. These types have a messianic orientation.
12. New Testament typology presumes Jesus to be the interpretive key to understanding the Old Testament and its
types.
13. New Testament typology presumes the goal towards which history moves is the same towards which the types
move: Jesus.