05.02. Chapter First
Chapter First.—Historical And Critical Survey Of The Past And Present State Of Theological Opinion On The Subject. THE Typology of Scripture has been one of the most neglected departments of theological science. It has never altogether escaped from the region of doubt and uncertainty; and some still regard it as a field incapable, from its very nature, of being satisfactorily explored, or cultivated so as to yield any sure and appreciable results. Hence it is not unusual to find those who otherwise are agreed in their views of divine truth, and in the general principles of biblical interpretation, differing materially in the estimate they have formed of the Typology of Scripture. Where one hesitates, another is full of confidence; and the landmarks that are set up to-day are again shifted to-morrow. With such various and contradictory sentiments prevailing on the subject, it is necessary, in the first instance, to take an historical and critical survey of the field, that from the careful revision of what has been done in the past, we may the more readily perceive what still remains to be accomplished, in order that we may arrive at a well-grounded and scriptural Typology.
I. We naturally begin with the Christian Fathers. Their typological views, however, are only to be gathered from the occasional examples to be met with in their writings; as they nowhere lay down any clear and systematic principles for the regulation of their judgments in the matter. Some exception might, perhaps, be made in respect to Origen. And yet with such vagueness and dubiety has he expressed himself regarding the proper interpretation of Old Testament Scripture, that by some he has been understood to hold, that there is a fourfold, by others a threefold, and by others again only a twofold, sense in the sacred text. The truth appears to be, that while he contended for a fourfold application of Scripture, he regarded it as susceptible only of a twofold sense. And considered generally, the principles of interpretation on which he proceeded were not essentially different from those usually followed by the great majority of the Greek Fathers. But before stating how these bore on the subject now under consideration, it will be necessary to point out a distinction too often lost sight of, both in earlier and in later times, between allegorical and typical interpretations, properly so called. These have been very commonly confounded together, as if they were essentially one in principle, and differed only in the extent to which the principle may be carried. There is, however, a specific difference between the two, which it is not very difficult to apprehend, and which it is of some importance to notice in connection especially with the interpretations of patristic writers. An allegory is a narrative, either expressly feigned for the purpose, or—if describing facts which really took place—describing them only for the purpose of representing certain higher truths or principles than the narrative, in its literal aspect, whether real or fictitious, could possibly have taught. The ostensible representation, therefore, if not invented, is at least used, simply as a cover for the higher sense, which may refer to things ever so remote from those immediately described, if only the corresponding relations are preserved. So that allegorical interpretations of Scripture properly comprehend the two following cases, and these only: 1. When the scriptural representation is actually held to have had no foundation in fact—to be a mere myth, or fabulous description, invented for the sole purpose of exhibiting the mysteries of divine truth; or, 2. When—without moving any question about the real or fictitious nature of the representation—it is considered incapable as it stands of yielding any adequate or satisfactory sense, and is consequently employed, precisely as if it had been fabulous, to convey some meaning of an entirely different and higher kind. The difference between allegorical interpretations, in either of these senses, and those which are properly called typical, cannot be fully exhibited till we have ascertained the exact nature and design of a type. It will be enough meanwhile to say, that typical interpretations of Scripture differ from allegorical ones of the first or fabulous kind, in that they indispensably require the reality of the facts or circumstances stated in the original narrative. And they differ also from the other, in requiring, beside this, that the same truth or principle be embodied alike in the type and the antitype. The typical is not properly a different or higher sense, but a different or higher application of the same sense.
Returning, then, to the writings of the Fathers, and using the expressions typical and allegorical in the senses now respectively ascribed to them, there can be no doubt that the Fathers generally were much given both to typical and allegorical explanations,—the Greek Fathers more to allegorical than to typical,—and to allegorical more in the second than in the first sense, described above. They do not appear, for the most part, to have discredited the plain truth or reality of the statements made in Old Testament history. They seem rather to have considered the sense of the latter true and good, so far as it went, but of itself so meagre and puerile, that it was chiefly to be regarded as the vehicle of a much more refined and ethereal instruction. Origen, however, certainly went farther than this, and expressly denied that many things in the Old Testament had any real existence. In his Principia (Lib. iv.) he affirms, that “when the Scripture history could not otherwise be accommodated to the explanation of spiritual things, matters have been asserted which did not take place, nay, which could not have taken place; and others again, which, though they might have occurred, yet never actually did so.” Again, when speaking of some notices in the life of Rebecca, he says—“In these things, I have often told you, there is not a relation of histories, hut a concoction of mysteries.”[1] And, in like manner, in his annotations on the first chapters of Genesis, he plainly scouts the idea of God’s having literally clothed our first parents with the skins of slain beasts—calls it absurd, ridiculous, and unworthy of God, and declares that in such a case the naked letter is not to be adhered to as true, but exists only for the spiritual treasure which is concealed under it.[2] [1]
[2] Ibid., p. 29.
Statements of this kind are of too frequent occurrence in the writings of Origen to have arisen from inadvertence, or to admit of being resolved into mere hyperboles of expression. They were, indeed, the natural result of that vicious system of interpretation which prevailed in his age, when it fell, as it did in his case, into the hands of an ardent and enthusiastic follower. At the same time it must be owned, in behalf of Origen, that however possessed of what has been called a “the allegorical fury,” he does not appear generally to have discredited the facts of sacred history; and that he differed from the other Greek Fathers, chiefly in the extent to which he went in decrying the literal sense as carnal and puerile, and extolling the mystical as alone suited for those who had become acquainted with the true wisdom. It would be out of place here, however, to go into any particular illustration of this point, as it is not immediately connected with our present inquiry. But we shall refer to a single specimen of his allegorical mode of interpretation, for the purpose chiefly of showing distinctly how it differed from what is of a simply typological character. We make our selection from Origen’s homily on Abraham’s marriage with Keturah (Horn. vi. In Genes.). He does not expressly disavow his belief in the fact of such a marriage having actually taken place between the parties in question, though his language seems to point in that direction; but he intimates that this, in common with the other marriages of the patriarchs, contained a sacramental mystery. And what might this be? Nothing less than the sublime truth, “that there is no end to wisdom, and that old age sets no bounds to improvement in knowledge. The death of Sarah (he says) is to be understood as the perfecting of virtue. But he who has attained to a consummate and perfect virtue, must always be employed in some kind of learning—which learning is called by the divine Word, his wife. Abraham, therefore, when an old man, and his body in a manner dead, took Keturah to wife. I think it was better, according to the exposition we follow, that the wife should have been received when his body was dead, and his members were mortified. For we have a greater capacity for wisdom when we bear about the dying of Christ in our mortal body. Then Keturah, whom he married in his old age, is, by interpretation, incense, or sweet odour. For he said, even as Paul said, (We are a sweet savour of Christ. Sin is a foul and putrid thing; but if any of you in whom this no longer dwells, have the fragrance of righteousness, the sweetness of mercy, and by prayer continually offer up incense to God, ye also have taken Keturah to wife.” And forthwith he proceeds to show, how many such wives may be taken: hospitality is one, the care of the poor another, patience a third,—each Christian excellence, in short, a wife; and hence it was, that the patriarchs are reported to have had so many wives, and that Solomon is said to have possessed them even by hundreds, he having received plenitude of wisdom like the sand on the sea-shore, and consequently grace to exercise the largest number of virtues.
We have here a genuine example of allegorical interpretation, if not actually holding the historical matter to be fabulous, at least treating it as if it were so. It is of no moment, for any purpose which such a mode of interpretation might serve, whether Abraham and Keturah had a local habitation among this world’s families, and whether their marriage was a real fact in history, or an incident fitly thrown into a fictitious narrative, constructed for the purpose of symbolizing the doctrines of a divine philosophy. If it had been handled after the manner of a type, and not as an allegory, whatever specific meaning might have been ascribed to it as a representation of gospel mysteries, the story must have been assumed as real, and the act of Abraham made to correspond with something essentially the same in kind some sort of union, for example, between parties holding a similar relation to each other, that Abraham did to Keturah. In this, though there might have been an error in the particular application that was made of the story, there would at least have been some appearance of a probable ground for it to rest upon. But sublimated into the ethereal form it receives from the fertile genius of Origen, the whole, history and interpretation together, presently acquires an uncertain and shadowy aspect. For what connection, either in the nature of things, or in the actual experience of the Father of the Faithful, can be shown to exist between the death of a wife, and the consummation of virtue in the husband; or the wedding of a second wife, and his pursuit of knowledge? Why might not the loss sustained in the former case as well represent the decay of virtue, and the acquisition in the latter denote a relaxation in the search after the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge?There would evidently be as good reason for asserting the one as the other; and, indeed, with such an arbitrary and elastic style of interpretation, there is nothing, either false or true in doctrine, wise or unwise in practice, which might not claim support in Scripture. The Bible would be made to reflect every hue of fancy, and every shade of belief in those who assumed the office of interpretation; and instead of being rendered serviceable to a higher instruction, it would be turned into one vast sea of uncertainty and confusion. In proof of this we need only appeal to the use which Clement of Alexandria, Origen’s master, has made of another portion of sacred history which relates to Abraham’s wives (Strom. L. I. p. 333). The instruction which he finds couched under the narrative of Abraham’s marriage successively to Sarah and Hagar, is that a Christian ought to cultivate philosophy and the liberal arts before he devotes himself wholly to the study of divine wisdom. This he endeavours to make out in the following manner:—Abraham is the image of a perfect Christian, Sarah the image of Christian wisdom, and Hagar the image of philosophy or human wisdom (certainly a far from agreeable likeness!). Abraham lived for a long time in a state of connubial sterility; whence it is inferred that a Christian, so long as he confines himself to the study of divine wisdom and religion alone, will never bring forth any great or excellent fruits. Abraham, then, with the consent of Sarah, takes to him Hagar, which proves, according to Clement, that a Christian ought to embrace the wisdom of this world, or philosophy, and that Sarah, or divine wisdom, will not withhold her consent. Lastly, after Hagar had borne Ishmael to Abraham, he resumed his inter course with Sarah, and of her begat Isaac; the true import of which is, that a Christian, after having once thoroughly grounded himself in human learning and philosophy, will, if he then devotes himself to the culture of divine wisdom, be capable of propagating the race of true Christians, and of rendering essential service to the Church. Thus we have two entirely different senses extracted from similar transactions by the master and the disciple; and still, far from being exhausted, as many more might be obtained, as there are fertile imaginations disposed to turn the sacred narrative into the channel of their own peculiar conceits.
It was not simply the historical portions of Old Testament Scripture which were thus allegorized by Origen, and the other Greek Fathers who belonged to the same school. A similar mode of interpretation was applied to the ceremonial institutions of the ancient economy; and a higher sense was often sought for in these, than we find any indication of in the epistle to the Hebrews, Clement even carried the matter so far as to apply the allegorical principle to the ten commandments, an extravagance in which Origen did not follow him; though we can scarcely tell why he should not have done so. For, even the moral precepts of the Decalogue touch at various points on the common interests and relations of life; and it was the grand aim of the philosophy, in which the allegorizing then prevalent had its origin, to carry the soul above these into the high abstractions of a contemplative theosophy. The Fathers of the Latin church were much less inclined to such airy speculations, and their interpretations of Scripture, consequently, possessed more of a realistic and common sense character. Allegorical interpretations are, indeed, occasionally found in them, but they are more sparingly introduced, and less extravagantly carried out.[3] Typical meanings, however, are as frequent in the one class as in the other, and equally adopted without rule or limit. If in the Eastern church we find such objects as the tree of life in the garden of Eden, the rod of Moses, Moses himself with his arms extended during the conflict with Amalek, exhibited as types of the cross; in the Western church, as represented, for example, by Augustine, we meet with such specimens as the following:—“Wherefore did Christ enter into the sleep of death? Because Adam slept when Eve was formed from his side, Adam being the figure of Christ, Eve as the mother of the living, the figure of the church. And as she was formed from Adam while he was asleep, so was it when Christ slept on the cross, that the sacraments of the church flowed from His side.”[4] So, again, Saul is represented as the type of death, because God unwillingly appointed him king over Israel, as He unwillingly subjected His people to the sway of death; and David’s deliverance from the hand of Saul foreshadowed our deliverance through Christ from the power of death; while in David’s escape from Saul’s hand, coupled with the destruction that befell Ahimelech on his account, if not in his stead, there was a prefiguration of Christ’s death and resurrection.[5] In the treatment of New Testament Scripture also, the same style of interpretation is occasionally resorted to,—as when in the six waterpots of John’s Gospel he finds imaged the six ages of prophecy; and in the two or three firkins which they severally held, the two are taken to indicate the Father and the Son, the three the Trinity; or, as he also puts it, the two represent the Jews and the Gentiles, and the third, Christ, making the two one (Tract ix. in Joan.). But we need not multiply examples, or prosecute the subject further into detail. Enough has been adduced to show, that the earlier divines of the Christian church had no just or well-defined principles to guide them in their interpretations of Old Testament Scripture, which could either enable them to determine between the fanciful and the true in typical applications, or guard them against the worst excesses of allegorical licence.[6]
[3]
II. Passing over the period of the middle ages, which produced nothing new in this line, we come to the divines of the Reformation. At that memorable era a mighty advance was made, not only beyond the ages immediately preceding, but also beyond all that had passed from the commencement of Christianity, in the sound interpretation of Scripture. The original text then at last began to be examined with something like critical exactness, and a stedfast adherence was generally professed, and in good part also maintained, to the natural and grammatical sense. The leading spirits of the Reformation were here also the great authors of reform. Luther denounced mystical and allegorical interpretations as “trifling and foolish fables, with which the Scriptures were rent into so many and diverse senses, that silly poor consciences could receive no certain doctrine of anything.”[7] Calvin, in like manner, declares that “the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning, by which we ought resolutely to abide;” and speaks of the “licentious system” of Origen and the allegorists, as “undoubtedly a contrivance of Satan to undermine the authority of Scripture, and to take away from the reading of it the true advantage.”[8] In some of his interpretations, especially on the prophetical parts of Scripture, he even went to an extreme in advocating what he here calls the natural and obvious meaning, and thereby missed the more profound import, which, according to the elevated and often enigmatical style of prophecy, it was the design of the Spirit to convey. On the other hand, in spite of their avowed and generally followed principles of interpretation, the writers of the Reformation-period not unfrequently fell into the old method of allegorizing, and threw out typical explanations of a kind that cannot stand a careful scrutiny. It were quite easy to produce examples of this from the writings of those who lived at and immediately subsequent to the Reformation; but it would be of no service as regards our present object, since their attention was comparatively little drawn to the subject of types; and none of them attempted to construct any distinct typological system.
III. We pass on, therefore, to a later period—about the middle of the seventeenth century—when the science of theology began to be studied more in detail, and the types consequently received a more formal consideration. About that period arose what is called the Cocceian school, which, though it did not revive the double sense of the Alexandrian (for Cocceius expressly disclaimed any other sense of Scripture than the literal and historical one), yet was chargeable in another respect with a participation in the caprice and irregularity of the ancient allegorists. Cocceius himself, less distinguished as a systematic writer in theology than as a Hebrew scholar and learned expositor of Scripture, left no formal enunciation of principles connected with typical or allegorical interpretations; and it is chiefly from his annotations on particular passages, and the more systematic works of his followers, that these are to be gathered. How freely, however, he was disposed to draw upon Old Testament history for types of Gospel things, may be understood from a single example—his viewing what is said of Asshur going out and building Nineveh, as a type of the Turk or Mussulman power, which at once sprang from the kingdom, and shook the dominion of Antichrist (cur. Prior, in Genesis 10:11). He evidently conceived that every event in Old Testament history, which had a formal resemblance to something under the New, was to be regarded as typical. And that, even notwithstanding his avowed adherence to but one sense of Scripture, he could occasionally adopt a second, appears alone from his allegorical interpretation of the eighth Psalm; according to which the sheep there spoken of, as being put under man, are Christ’s flock the oxen, those who labour in Christ’s service—the beasts of the field, such as are strangers to the city and kingdom of God, barbarians and savages—the fowl of the air and fish of the sea, persons at a still greater distance from godliness; so that, as he concludes, there is nothing so wild and intractable on earth but it shall be brought under the rule and dominion of Christ.
It does not appear, however, that the views of Cocceius differed materially from those which were held by some who preceded him; and it would seem rather to have been owing to his eminence generally as a commentator than to any distinctive peculiarity in his typological principles, that he came to be so prominently identified with the school, which from him derived the name of Cocceian. If we turn to one of the earlier editions of Glass’s Philologia Sacra, published before Cocceius commenced his critical labours (the first was published before he was born), we shall find the principles of allegorical and typical interpretations laid down with a latitude which Cocceius himself could scarcely have quarrelled with. Indeed, we shall find few examples in his writings that might not be justified on the principles stated by Glass; and though the latter, in his section on allegories, has to throw himself back chiefly on the Fathers, he yet produces some quotations in support of his views, both on these and on types, from some writers of his own age. There seems to have been no essential difference between the typological principles of Glass, Cocceius, Witsius, and Vitringa; and though the first wrote some time before, and the last about half a century later than Cocceius, no injustice can be done to any of them by classing them together, and referring indifferently to their several productions. Like the Fathers, they did not sufficiently distinguish between allegorical and typical interpretations, but regarded the one as only a particular form of the other, and both as equally warranted by New Testament Scripture. Hence, the rules they adopted were to a great extent applicable to what is allegorical in the proper sense, as well as typical, though for the present we must confine ourselves to the typical department. They held, then, that there was a twofold sort of types, the one innate, consisting of those which Scripture itself has expressly asserted to possess a typical character; the other inferred, consisting of such as, though not specially noticed or explained in Scripture, were yet, on probable grounds, inferred by interpreters as conformable to the analogy of faith, and the practice of the inspired writers in regard to similar examples.[9] This latter class were considered not less proper and valid than the other; and pains were taken to distinguish them from those which were sometimes forged by Papists, and which were at variance with the analogies just mentioned. Of course, from their very nature they could only be employed for the support and confirmation of truths already received, and not to prove what was in itself doubtful. But not on that account were they to be less carefully searched for, or less confidently used, because thus only, it was maintained, could Christ be found in all Scripture, which throughout testifies of Him.
[9] Philologia Sac. Lib. II. P. I. Tract. II. Sect. 4. Vitringa Obs. Sac. Vol. II. Lib. VI. c. 20. Witsius De (Econom. Lib. IV. c. 6.
It is evident alone, from this general statement, that there was something vague and loose in the Cocceian system, which left ample scope for the indulgence of a luxuriant fancy. Nor can we wonder that, in practice, a mere resemblance, however accidental or trifling, between an occurrence in Old, and another in New Testament times, was deemed sufficient to constitute the one a type of the other. Hence in the writings of the eminent and learned men above referred to, we find the name of Abel (emptiness) viewed as prefiguring our Lords humiliation; the occupation of Abel, Christ’s office as the Shepherd of Israel; the withdrawal of Isaac from his father’s house to the land of Moriah, Christ’s being led out of the temple to Calvary; Adam’s awaking out of sleep, Christ’s resurrection from the dead; Samson’s meeting a young lion by the way, and the transactions that followed, Christ’s meeting Saul on the road to Damascus, with the important train of events to which it led; David’s gathering to himself a party of the distressed, the bankrupt, and discontented, Christ’s receiving into His Church publicans and sinners; with many others of a like nature.
Multitudes of examples perfectly similar—that is, equally destitute of any proper foundation in principle—are to be found in writers of our own country, such as Mather,[10] Keach,[11] Worden,[12] J. Taylor,[13] Guild,[14] who belonged to the same school of interpretation, and who nearly all lived toward the latter part of the seventeenth century. Excepting the two first, they make no attempt to connect their explanations with any principles of interpretation, and these two very sparingly. Their works were all intended for popular use, and rather exhibited by particular examples, than systematically expounded the nature of their views. They, however, agreed in admitting inferred as well as innate types, but differed more perhaps from constitutional temperament than on theoretical grounds in the extent to which they respectively carried the liberty they claimed to go beyond the explicit warrant of New Testament Scripture. Mather in particular, and Worden, usually confine themselves to such types as have obtained special notice of some kind from the writers of the New Testament; though they held the principle, that “where the analogy was evident and manifest between things under the law and things under the Gospel, the one were to be concluded (on the ground simply of that analogy) to be types of the other.” How far this warrant from analogy was thought capable of leading, may be learned from Taylor and Guild, especially from the latter, who has no fewer than forty-nine typical resemblances between Joseph and Christ, and seven teen between Jacob and Christ, not scrupling to swell the number by occasionally taking in acts of sin, as well as circumstances of an altogether trivial nature. Thus, Jacob’s being a supplanter of his brother, is made to represent Christ’s supplanting death, sin, and Satan; his being obedient to his parents in all things, Christ’s subjection to His heavenly Father and His earthly parents; his purchasing his birthright by red pottage, and obtaining the blessing by presenting savoury vension to his father, clothed in Esau’s garment, Christ’s purchasing the heavenly inheritance to us by His red blood, and obtaining the blessing by offering up the savoury meat of His obedience, in the borrowed garment of our nature, etc.
[10] The Figures and Types of the Old Testament.
[11] Key to open the Scripture Metaphors and Types.
[12] The Types Unveiled; or, The Gospel Picked out of the Legal Ceremonies.
[13] Moses and Aaron.
[14] Moses Unveiled.
Now, we may affirm of these, and many similar examples occurring in writers of the same class, that the analogy they found upon was a merely superficial resemblance appearing between things in the Old and other things in the New Testament Scriptures. But resemblances of this sort are so extremely multifarious, and appear also so different according to the point of view from which they are contemplated, that it was obviously possible for anyone to take occasion through them to introduce the most frivolous conceits, and to caricature rather than vindicate the grand theme of the Gospel. Then, if such weight was fitly attached to mere resemblances between the Old and the New, even when they were altogether of a slight and superficial kind, why should not profane as well as sacred history be ran sacked for them? What, for example, might prevent Romulus (seeing that God is in all history, if this actually were history) assembling a band of desperadoes, and founding a world-wide empire on the banks of the Tiber, from serving, as well as David in the circumstances specified above, to typify the procedure of Christ in calling to him publicans and sinners at the commencement of His kingdom? As many points of resemblance might be found in the one case as in the other; and the two transactions in ancient history, as here contemplated, stood much on the same footing as regards the appointment of God; for both alike were the offspring of human policy, struggling against outward difficulties, and endeavouring with such materials as were available to supply the want of better resources. And thus, by pushing the matter beyond its just limits, we reduce the sacred to a level with the profane, and, at the same time, throw an air of uncertainty over the whole aspect of its typical character.[15]
[15]
IV. These inherent errors and imperfections in the typo logical system of the Cocceian school, were not long in leading to its general abandonment. But theology had little reason to boast of the change. For the system that supplanted it, without entering at all into a more profound investigation of the subject, or attempting to explain more satisfactorily the grounds of a typical connection between the Old and the New, simply contented itself with admitting into the rank of types what had been expressly treated as such in the Scripture itself, to the exclusion of all besides. This seemed to be the only safeguard against error and extravagance.[16] And yet, we fear, other reasons of a less justifiable nature contributed not a little to produce the result. An unhappy current had begun to set in upon the Protestant Church in some places while Cocceius still lived, and in others soon after his death, which disposed many of her more eminent teachers to slight the evangelical element in Christianity, and, if not utterly to lose sight of Christ Himself, at least to disrelish and repudiate a system which delighted to find traces of Him in every part of revelation. It was the redeeming point of the earlier typology, which should be allowed to go far in extenuating the occasional errors connected with it, that it kept the work and kingdom of Christ ever prominently in view, as the grand scope and end of all God’s dispensations. It felt, if we may so speak, correctly, whatever it may have wanted in the requisite depth and precision of thought. But towards the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, a general coldness very commonly discovered itself, both in the writings and the lives of even the more orthodox sections of the Church. The living energy and zeal which had achieved such important results a century before, either inactively slumbered, or spent itself in doctrinal controversies; and the faith of the Church Was first corrupted in its simplicity, and then weakened in its foundations by the pernicious influence of a widely cultivated, but essentially anti-Christian philosophy. In such circumstances Christ was not allowed to maintain His proper place in the New Testament; and it is not to be wondered at if He should have been nearly banished from the Old.
[16] The following critique of Buddeus, which belongs to the earlier part of last century, already points in this direction: “It cannot certainly be denied that the Cocceians, at least some of them, have carried this matter too far. For, besides that they everywhere seem to find images and types of future things, where other people can discern none, when they come to make the application to the antitype, they not unfrequently descend to minute and even trifling things, nay, advance what is utterly insignificant and ludicrous, exposing holy writ to the mockery of the profane. And here it may be proper to notice the fates of exegetical theology; since that in temperate rage for allegories which appeared in Origen and the Fathers, and which had been condemned by the schoolmen, was again, after an interval, though under a different form, produced anew upon the stage. For this typical interpretation differs from the allegorical only in the circumstance, that respect is had in it to the future things which are adumbrated by the types; and so, the typical may be regarded as a sort of allegorical interpretation. But in either way the amplest scope is afforded for the play of a luxuriant fancy and a fertile invention.”—I. F. Buddei Isagoge II. hist. Theolog. 1830.
Vitringa, who lived when this degeneracy from better times had made considerable progress, attributed to it much of that distaste which was then beginning to prevail in regard to typical interpretations of Scripture. With special reference to the work of Spencer on the Laws of the Hebrews,—a work not less remarkable for its low-toned, semi-heathenish spirit, than for its varied and well-digested learning,—he lamented the inclination that appeared to seek for the grounds and reasons of the Mosaic institutions in the mazes of Egyptian idolatry, instead of endeavouring to discover in them the mysteries of the Gospel. These, he believed, the Holy Spirit had plainly intimated to be couched there; and they shone, indeed, so manifestly through the institutions themselves, that it seemed impossible for anyone not to perceive the type, who recognised the antitype. Nor could he conceal his fear, that the talent, authority, and learning of such men as Spencer would gain extensive credit for their opinions, and soon bring the Typology of Scripture, as he understood it, into general contempt.[17] In this apprehension he was certainly not mistaken. Another generation had scarcely passed away when Dathe published his edition of the Sacred Philology of Glass, in which the section on types, to which we have already referred, was wholly omitted, as relating to a subject no longer thought worthy of a recognised place in the science of an enlightened theology. The rationalistic spirit, in the progress of its anti-Christian tendencies, had now discarded the innate, as well as the inferred types of the elder divines; and the convenient principle of accommodation, which was at the same time introduced, furnished an easy solution for those passages in New Testament Scripture which seemed to indicate a typical relationship between the past and the future. It was regarded as only an adaptation, originating in Jewish prejudice or conceit, of the facts and institutions of an earlier age to things essentially different under the Gospel; but now, since the state of feeling that gave rise to it no longer existed, deservedly suffered to fall into desuetude. And thus the bond was virtually broken by the hand of these rationalizing theologians between the Old and the New in Revelation; and the records of Christianity, when scientifically interpreted, were found to have marvellously little in common with those of Judaism.
[17] Obs. Sac. Vol. II., p. 460, 461. In Britain various causes contributed to hold in check this downward tendency, and to prevent it from reaching the same excess of dishonour to Christ, which it soon attained on the Continent. Even persons of a cold and philosophical temperament, such as Clarke and Jortin, not only wrote in defence of types, as having a certain legitimate use in Revelation, but also admitted more within the circle of types than Scripture itself has expressly applied to Gospel times.[18] They urged, indeed, the necessity of exercising the greatest caution in travelling beyond the explicit warrant of Scripture; and in their general cast of thought they undoubtedly had more affinity with the Spencerian than the Cocceian school. Yet a feeling of the close and pervading; connection between the Old and the New Testament dispensations restrained them from discarding the more important of the inferred types. Jortin especially falls so much into the vein of earlier writers, that he employs his ingenuity in reckoning up as many as forty particulars in which Moses typically prefigured Christ. A work composed about the same period as that to which the Remarks of Jortin belong, and one that has had more influence than any other in fashioning the typological views generally entertained in Scotland—the production of a young dissenting minister in Dundee (Mr M’Ewen)[19]—is still more free in the admission of types not expressly sanctioned in the Scriptures of the New Testament. The work itself being posthumous, and intended for popular use, contains no investigation of the grounds on which typical interpretations rest, and harmonizes much more with the school that had flourished in the previous century, than that to which Clarke and Jortin belonged. As indicative of a particular style of biblical interpretation, it may be classed with the productions of Mather and Taylor, and partakes alike of their excellences and defects.
[18] Clarke’s Evidences, p. 420, sq. Jortin’s Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, Vol. I., p. 138-152.
[19] Grace and Truth, or the Glory and Fulness of the Redeemer displayed, in an attempt to explain the Types, Figures, and Allegories of the Old Testament, by the Rev. AY. M’Ewen.
There was, therefore, a considerable unwillingness in this country to abandon the Cocceian ground on the subject of types. The declension came in gradually, and its progress was rather marked by a tacit rejection in practice of much that was previously held to be typical, than by the introduction of views specifically different. It became the practice of theologians to look more into the general nature of things for the reasons of Christianity, than into the pre-existing elements and characteristics of former dispensations; and to account for the peculiarities of Judaism by its partly antagonistic, partly homogeneous relation to Paganism, rather than by any covert reference it might have to the coming realities of the Gospel. As an inevitable consequence, the typological department of theology fell into general neglect, from which the Old Testament Scriptures themselves did not altogether escape. Those portions of them especially which narrate the history and prescribe the religious rites of the ancient Church, were but rarely treated in a manner that bespoke any confidence in their fitness to minister to the spiritual discernment and faith of Christians. It seems, partly at least, to have been owing to this growing distaste for Old Testament inquiries, and this general depreciation of its Scriptures, that what is called the Hutchinsonian school arose in England, which, by a sort of recoil from the prevailing spirit, ran into the opposite extreme of searching for the elements of all knowledge, human and divine, in the writings of the Old Testament. This school possesses too much the character of an episode in the history of biblical interpretation in this country, and was itself too strongly marked by a spirit of extravagance, to render any formal account of it necessary here. It was, besides, chiefly of a physico-theological character, combining the elements of a natural philosophy with the truths of revelation, both of which it sought to extract from the statements, and sometimes even from the words and letters of Scripture. The most profound meanings were consequently discovered in the sacred text, in respect alike to the doctrines of the Gospel and the truths of science. One of the maxims of its founder was, that “every passage of the Old Testament looks backward and forward, and every way, like light from the sun; not only to the state before and under the law, but under the Gospel, and nothing is hid from the light thereof.”[20] When such a depth and complexity of meaning was supposed to be involved in every passage, we need not be surprised to learn, respecting the exactness of Abraham’s knowledge of future events, that he knew from preceding types and promises, that “one of his own line was to be sacrificed, to be a blessing to all the race of Adam;” and not only so, but that when he received the command to offer Isaac, he proceeded to obey it, “not doubting that Isaac was to be that person who should redeem man.”[21] [20]
[21] Ibid., Vol. VII., p. 325. The cabalistic and extravagant character of the Hutchinsonian system, if it had any definite influence on the study of types and other cognate subjects, could only tend to increase the suspicion with which they were already viewed, and foster a disposition to agree to whatever might keep investigation within the bounds of sobriety and discretion. Accordingly, while nothing more was done to unfold the essential and proper ground of a typical connection between Old and New Testament things, and to prevent abuse by tracing the matter up to its ultimate and fundamental principles, the more scientific students of the Bible came, by a sort of common consent, to acquiesce in the opinion, that those only were to be reckoned types to which Scripture itself, by express warrant, or at least by obvious implication, had assigned that character. Bishop Marsh may be named as perhaps the ablest and most systematic expounder of this view of the subject. He says, —“There is no other rule by which we can distinguish a real from a pretended type, than that of Scripture itself. There are no other possible means by which we can know that a previous design and a pre-ordained connection existed. Whatever persons or things, therefore, recorded in the Old Testament, were expressly declared by Christ or by His apostles to have been designed as prefigurations of persons or things relating to the New Testament, such persons or things so recorded in the former, are types of the persons or things with which they are compared in the latter. But if we assert that a person or thing was designed to prefigure another person or thing, where no such prefiguration has been declared by divine authority, we make an assertion for which we neither have, nor can have, the slightest foundation.”[22] This is certainly a very authoritative and peremptory decision of the matter. But the principle involved in this statement, though seldom so oracularly announced, has long been practically received. It was substantially adopted by Macknight, in his Dissertation on the Interpretation of Scripture, at the end of his Commentary on the Epistles, before Bishop Marsh wrote; and it has been followed since by Vanmildert and Conybeare in their Bampton Lectures, by Nares in his Warburtonian Lectures, by Chevalier in his Hulsean Lectures, by Home in his Introduction, and a host of other writers.
[22] Lectures, p. 373.
Judging from an article in the American Biblical Repository, which appeared in the number for January 1841, it would appear that the leading authorities on the other side of the Atlantic concurred in the same general view. The reviewer himself advocates the opinion, that “no person, event, or institution, should be regarded as typical, but what may be proved to be such from the Scriptures,” meaning by that their explicit assertion in regard to the particular case. And in support of this opinion he quotes, besides English writers, the words of two of his own countrymen, Professor Stowe and Moses Stuart, the latter of whom says,—“That just so much of the Old Testament is to be accounted typical as the New Testament affirms to be so, and no more. The fact, that anything or event under the Old Testament dispensation was designed to prefigure something under the New, can be known to us only by revelation; and of course all that is not designated by divine authority as typical, can never be made so by any authority less than that which guided the writers of the New Testament.”[23] [23]
Now, the view embraced by this school of interpretation lies open to one objection, in common with the school that preceded it. While the field, as to its extent, was greatly circumscribed, and in its boundaries ruled as with square and compass, nothing was done in the way of investigating it internally, or of unfolding the grounds of connection between type and antitype. Fewer points of resemblance are usually presented to us between the one and the other by the writers of this school than arc found in works of an older date; but the resemblances themselves are quite as much of a superficial and outward kind. The real harmony and connection between the Old and the New in the divine dispensations, stood precisely where it was. But other defects adhere to this more recent typological system. The leading excellence of the system that preceded it was the constant reference it conceived the Scriptures of the Old Testament to bear toward Christ and the Gospel dispensation; and the practical disavowal of this may be said to constitute the great defect of the more exact, but balder system, which supplanted it with the general suffrage of the learned. It drops a golden principle for the sake of avoiding a few lawless aberrations. With such narrow limits as it sets to our inquiries, we cannot indeed wander far into the regions of extravagance. But in the very prescription of these limits, it wrongfully withholds from us the key of knowledge, and shuts us up to evils scarcely less to be deprecated than those it seeks to correct. For it destroys to a large extent the bond of connection between the Old and the New Testament Scriptures, and thus deprives the Christian Church of much of the instruction in divine things which they were designed to impart. Were men accustomed, as they should be, to search for the germs of Christian truth in the earliest Scriptures, and to regard the inspired records of both covenants as having for their leading object “the testimony of Jesus,” they would know how much they were losers by such an undue contraction of the typical element in Old Testament Scripture. And in proportion as a more profound and spiritual acquaintance with the divine word is cultivated, will the feeling of dissatisfaction grow in respect to a style of interpretation that so miserably dwarfs and cripples the relation which the preparatory bears to the ultimate in God’s revelations.
It is necessary, however, to take a closer view of the subject. The principle on which this typological system takes its stand, is, that nothing less than inspired authority is sufficient to deter mine the reality and import of anything that is typical. But what necessary reason or solid ground is there for such a principle? No one holds the necessity of inspiration to explain each particular prophecy, and decide even with certainty on its fulfilment; and why should it be reckoned indispensable in the closely related subject of types?This question was long ago asked by Witsius, and yet waits for a satisfactory answer. A part only, it is universally allowed, of the prophecies which refer to Christ and His kingdom have been specially noticed and interpreted by the pen of inspiration. So little necessary, indeed, was inspiration for such a purpose, that even before the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, our Lord reproved His disciples as “fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken.” And from the close analogy between the two subjects—for what is a type but a prophetical act or institution?— we might reasonably infer the same liberty to have been granted, and the same obligation to be imposed, in regard to the typical parts of ancient Scripture. But we have something more than a mere argument from analogy to guide us to this conclusion. For the very same complaint is brought by an inspired writer against private Christians concerning their slowness in understanding the typical, which our Lord brought against His disciples in respect to the prophetical portions of ancient Scripture. In the epistle to the Hebrews a sharp reproof is administered for the imperfect acquaintance believers among them had with the typical character of Melchizedek, and subjects of a like nature—thus placing it beyond a doubt that it is both the duty and the privilege of the Church, with that measure of the Spirit’s grace which it is the part even of private Christians to possess, to search into the types of ancient Scripture, and come to a correct understanding of them. To deny this, is plainly to withhold an important privilege from the Church of Christ; to dissuade from it, is to encourage the neglect of an incumbent duty. But the unsoundness of the principle, which would thus limit the number of types to those which New Testament Scripture has expressly noticed and explained, becomes still more apparent when it is considered what these really are, and in what manner they are introduced. Leaving out of view the tabernacle, with its furniture and services, which, as a whole, is affirmed in the epistles to the Hebrews and the Colossians to have been of a typical nature, the following examples are what the writers now referred to usually regard as having something like an explicit sanction in Scripture: 1. Persons or characters: Adam (Romans 5:11-12;1 Corinthians 15:22; Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:1-28); Sarah and Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac, and by implication Abraham (Galatians 4:22-31); Moses (Galatians 3:19; Acts 3:22-26); Jonah (Matthew 12:40); David (Ezekiel 37:24; Luke 1:32, etc.); Solomon (2 Samuel 7:1-29); Zerubbabel and Joshua (Zechariah 3:1-10, Zechariah 4:1-14; Haggai 2:23). 2. Transactions or events: the preservation of Noah and his family in the ark (1 Peter 3:20); the redemption from Egypt and its passover-memorial (Luke 22:15-16; 1 Corinthians 5:7; the exodus (Matthew 2:15); the passage through the Red Sea, the giving of manna, Moses veiling of his face while the law was read; the water flowing from the smitten rock; the serpent lifted up for healing in the wilderness, and some other things that befell the Israelites there (1 Corinthians 10:1-33; John 3:14; John 5:33; Revelation 2:17).[24]
[24]
Now, let any person of candour and intelligence take his Bible, and examine the passages to which reference is here made, and then say, whether the manner in which these typical characters and transactions are there introduced, is such as to indicate, that these alone were held by the inspired writers to be prefigurative of similar characters and transactions under the Gospel? that in naming them they meant to exhaust the typical bearing of Old Testament history? On the contrary, we deem it impossible for anyone to avoid the conviction, that in whatever respect these particular examples may have been adduced, it is simply as examples adapted to the occasion, and taken from a vast storehouse, where many more were to be found. They have so much at least the appearance of having been selected merely on account of their suitableness to the immediate end in view, that they cannot fairly be regarded otherwise than as specimens of the class they belong to. And if so, they should rather have the effect of prompting further inquiry than of repressing it; since, instead of themselves comprehending and bounding the whole field of Scriptural Typology, they only exhibit practically the principles on which others of a like description are to be discovered and explained.
Indeed, were it otherwise, nothing could be more arbitrary and inexplicable than this Scriptural typology. For, what is there to distinguish the characters and events, which Scripture has thus particularized, from a multitude of others, to which the typical element might equally have been supposed to belong? Is there anything on the face of the inspired record to make us look on them in a singular light, and attribute to them a significance altogether peculiar respecting the future affairs of God’s kingdom? So far from it, that we instinctively feel, if these really possessed a typical character, so also must others, which hold an equally, or perhaps even more prominent place in the history of God’s dispensations. Can it be seriously believed, for example, that Sarah and Hagar stood in a typical relation to Gospel times, while no such place was occupied by Rebekah, as the spouse of Isaac, and the mother of Jacob and Esau? What reason can we imagine for Melchizedek and Jonah having been constituted types—persons to whom our attention is comparatively little drawn in Old Testament history—while such leading characters as Joseph, Sampson, Joshua, are omitted? Or, for selecting the passage through the Red Sea, and the incidents in the wilderness, while no account should be made of the passage through Jordan, and the conquest of the land of Canaan?
We can scarcely conceive of a mode of interpretation which should deal more capriciously with the word of God, and make so anomalous a use of its historical records. Instead of investing these with a homogeneous character, it arbitrarily selects a few out of the general mass, and sets them up in solitary grandeur, like mystic symbols in a temple, fictitiously elevated above the sacred materials around them. The exploded principle, which sought a type in every notice of Old Testament history, had at least the merit of uniformity to recommend it, and could not be said to deal partially, however often it might deal fancifully, with the facts of ancient Scripture. But according to the plan now under review, for which the authority of inspiration itself is claimed, we perceive nothing but arbitrary distinctions and groundless preferences. And though unquestionably it were wrong to expect in the word of God the methodical precision and order which might naturally have been looked for in a merely human composition, yet as the product, amid all its variety, of one and the same Spirit, we are warranted to expect that there shall be a consistent agreement among its several parts, and that distinctions shall not be created in the one Testament, which in the other seem destitute of any just foundation or apparent reason. But then, if a greater latitude is allowed, how shall we guard against error and extravagance? Without the express authority of Scripture, how shall we be able to distinguish between a happy illustration and a real type?In the words of Bishop Marsh: “By what means shall we determine, in any given instance, that what is alleged as a type, was really designed for a type?The only possible source of information on this subject is Scripture itself. The only possible means of knowing that two distant, though similar historical facts, were so connected in the general scheme of Divine Providence that the one was designed to prefigure the other, is the authority of that book in which the scheme of Divine Providence is unfolded.”[25] This is an objection, indeed, which strikes at the root of the whole matter, and its validity can only be ascertained by a thorough investigation into the fundamental principles of the subject. That Scripture is the sole rule, on the authority of which we are to distinguish what is properly typical from what is not, we readily grant—though not in the straitened sense contended for by Bishop Marsh and those who hold similar views, as if there were no way for Scripture to furnish a sufficient direction on the subject, except by specifying every particular case. It is possible, surely, that in this, as well as in other things, Scripture may indicate certain fundamental views or principles, of which it makes but a few individual applications, and for the rest leaves them in the hand of spiritually enlightened consciences. The rather may we thus conclude, as it is one of the leading peculiarities of New Testament Scripture to develop great truths, much more than to dwell on minute and isolated facts. It is a presumption against, not in favour of, the system we now oppose, that it would shut up the Typology of Scripture, in so far as connected with the characters and events of sacred history, within the narrow circle of a few scattered and apparently random examples. And the attempt to rescue it from this position, if in any measure successful, will also serve to exhibit the unity of design which pervades the inspired records of both covenants, the traces they contain of the same Divine hand, the subservience of the one to the other, and the mutual dependence alike of the Old upon the New, and of the New upon the Old.
[25] Lectures, p. 372.
V. We have still, however, another stage of our critical survey before us, and one calling in some respects for careful discrimination and inquiry. The style of interpretation which we have connected with the name of Marsh could not, in the nature of things, afford satisfaction to men of thoughtful minds, who must have something like equitable principles as well as external authority to guide them in their interpretations. Such persons could not avoid feeling that, if there was so much in the Old Testament bearing a typical relation to the New, as was admitted on Scriptural authority by the school of Marsh, there must be considerably more; and also, that underneath that authority there must be a substratum of fundamental principles capable of bearing what Scripture itself has raised on it, and whatever besides may fitly be conjoined with it. But some, again, might possibly be of opinion that the authority of Scripture cannot warrantably carry us so far; and that both Scriptural authority, and the fundamental principles involved in the nature of the subject, apply only in part to what the disciples of Marsh regarded as typical. Accordingly, among more recent inquirers we have examples of each mode of divergence from the formal rules laid down by the preceding school of interpretation. The search for first principles has disposed some greatly to enlarge the typological field, and it has disposed others not less to curtail it.
1. To take the latter class first, as they stand most nearly related to the school last discoursed of, representatives of it are certainly not wanting on the Continent, among whom may be named the hermeneutical writer Klausen, to whom reference will presently be made in another connection. But it is the less needful here to call in foreign authorities, as the view in question has had its advocates in our own theological literature. It was exhibited, for example, in Dr L. Alexander’s Connection and Harmony of the Old and New Testament (1841), in which, while coinciding substantially with Bahr in his mode of explaining and applying to Gospel times the symbolical institutions of the Old Covenant, he yet declared himself opposed to any further extension of the typical sphere. He would regard nothing as entitled to the name of typical, which did not possess the character of “a divine institution;” or, as he formally defines the entire class, “they are symbolical institutes expressly appointed by God to prefigure to those among whom they were set up certain great transactions in connection with that plan of redemption which, in the fulness of time, was to be unfolded to mankind.” Hence the historical types of every description, even those which the school of Marsh recognised on account of the place given to them in New Testament Scripture, were altogether disallowed; the use made of them by the inspired writers was held to be “for illustration merely, and not for the purpose of building anything on them;” they are not thereby constituted or proved to be types. The same view, however, was taken up and received a much keener and fuller advocacy by the American writer Mr. Lord, in a periodical not unknown in this country—the Ecclesiastical and Literary Journal (No. XV). This was done in connection with a fierce and elaborate review of the first edition of the Typology, in the course of which its system of exposition was denounced as “a monstrous scheme,” not only “without the sanction of the word of God,” but “one of the boldest and most effective contrivances for its subversion.” It is not my intention now less, indeed, when issuing this new edition (the fourth) than formerly to attempt to rebut such offensive charges, or to expose the misrepresentations on which to a large extent they were grounded. I should even have preferred, had it been in my power to do so, repairing to some vindication of the same view, equally strenuous in its advocacy, but conducted in a calmer and fairer tone, in order that the discussion might bear less of a personal aspect. But as my present object is partly to unfold the gradual progress and development of opinion upon the subject of Scriptural Typology, justice could scarcely be done to it without hearing what Mr Lord has to say for the section of British and American theologians he represents, and meeting it with a brief rejoinder. The writer’s mode was a comparatively easy one for proving a negative to the view he controverted. He began with setting forth a description of the nature and characteristics of a type, so tightened and compressed as to exclude all from the category but what pertained to “the tabernacle worship, or the propitiation and homage of God.” And having thus with a kind of oracular precision drawn his enclosure, it was not difficult to dispose of whatever else might claim to be admitted; for it is put to flight the moment he presents his exact definitions, and can only be considered typical by persons of dreamy intellect, who are utter strangers to clearness of thought and precision of language. In this way it is possible, we admit, and also not very difficult, to make out a scheme and establish a nomenclature of one’s own; but the question is, Does it accord with the representations of Scripture? and will it serve, in respect to these, as a guiding and harmonizing principle? We might, in a similar way, draw out a series of precise and definite characteristics of Messianic prophecy,—such as, that it must avowedly bear the impress of a prediction of the future—that it must in the most explicit terms point to the person or times of Messiah that it must be conveyed in language capable of no ambiguity or double reference; and then, with this sharp weapon in our hand, proceed summarily to lop off all supposed prophetical passages in which these characteristics are wanting—holding such, if applied to Messianic times, to be mere accommodations, originally intended for one thing, and afterwards loosely adapted to another. The rationalists of a former generation were great adepts in this mode of handling prophetical Scripture, and by the use of it dexterously got rid of a goodly number of the passages which in the New Testament are represented as finding their fulfilment in Christ. But we have yet to learn, that by so doing they succeeded in throwing any satisfactory light on the interpretation of Scripture, or in placing on a Scriptural basis the connection between the Old and the New in God’s dispensations.
How closely the principles of Mr Lord lead him to tread in the footsteps of these effete interpreters, will appear presently. But we must first lodge our protest against his account of the essential nature and characteristics of a type, as entirely arbitrary and unsupported by Scripture. The things really possessing this character, he maintains, must have had the three following distinctive marks: They must have been specifically constituted types by God; must have been known to be so constituted, and contemplated as such by those who had to do with them; and must have been continued till the coming of Christ, when they were abrogated or superseded by something analogous in the Christian dispensation. These are his essential elements in the constitution of a type; and an assertion of the want of one or more of them forms the perpetual refrain, with which he disposes of those characters and transactions that in his esteem are falsely accounted typical. We object to every one of them in the sense understood by the writer, and deny that Scriptural proof can be produced for them, as applying to the strictly religious symbols of the Old Testament worship, and to them alone. These were not specifically constituted types, or formally set up in that character, no more than such transactions as the deliverance from Egypt, or the preservation of Noah in the deluge, which are denied to have been typical. In the manner of their appointment, viewed by itself, there is no more to indicate a reference to the Messianic future in the one than in the other. Neither were they for certain known to be types, and used as such by the Old Testament worshippers. They unquestionably were not so used in the time of our Lord; and how far they may have been at any previous period, is a matter only of probable inference, but nowhere of express revelation. Nor, finally, was it by any means an invariable and indispensable characteristic, that they should have continued in use till they were superseded by something analogous in the Christian dispensation. Some of the anointings were not so continued, nor the Shekinah, nor even the Ark of the Covenant; and some of them stood in occasional acts of service, such as the Nazarite vow, in its very nature special and temporary. The redemption from Egypt was in itself a single event, yet it was closely allied to the symbolical services; for it was linked to an ever-recurring and permanent ordinance of worship. It was a creative act, bringing Israel as a people of God into formal existence, and as such capable only of being commemorated, but not of being repeated. It was commemorated, however, in the passover-feast. In that feast the Israelites continually freshened the remembrance of it anew on their hearts. They in spirit re-enacted it as a thing that required to be constantly renewing itself in their experience, as in the Lord’s Supper is now done by Christians in regard to the one great redemption-act on the cross. This, too, considered simply as an act in God’s administration, is incapable of being repeated; it can only be commemorated, and in its effects spiritually applied to the conscience. Yet so far from being thereby bereft of an antitypical character, it is the central antitype of the Gospel. Why should it be otherwise in respect to the type?The analogy of things favours it; and the testimony of Scripture not doubt fully requires it. To say nothing of other passages of Scripture which bear less explicitly, though to our mind very materially, upon the subject, our Lord Himself, at the celebration of the last passover, declared to His disciples, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer; for I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”—(Luke 22:15-16) That is, there is a prophecy as well as a memorial in this commemorative ordinance,—a prophecy, because it is the rehearsal of a typical transaction, which is now, and only now, going to meet with its full realization. Such appears to be the plain and unsophisticated import of our Lord’s words. And the Apostle Paul is, if possible, still more explicit when he says, “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us (more exactly, For also our passover has been sacrificed, Christ): therefore let us keep the feast,” etc.—(1 Corinthians 5:7-8) What, we again ask, are we to understand by these words, if not that there is in the design and appointment of God an ordained connection between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Passover, so that the one, as the means of redemption, takes the place of the other? In any other sense the language would be only fitted to mislead, by begetting apprehensions regarding a mutual correspondence and connection which had no existence. It is alleged on the other side, that “Christ is indeed said to be our passover, but it is by a metaphor, and indicates only that it is by His blood we are saved from everlasting death, as the first-born of the Hebrews were saved by the blood of the paschal lamb from death by the destroying angel.” Were this all, the Apostle might surely have expressed himself less ambiguously. If there was no real connection between the earlier and the later event, and the one stood as much apart from the other as the lintels of Goshen in themselves did from the cross of Calvary, why employ language that forces upon the minds of simple believers the reality of a proper connection?Simply, we believe, because it actually existed; and our “exegetical conscience,” to use a German phrase, refuses to be satisfied with Mr Lord’s mere metaphor. But when he states further, that the passover, having been “appointed with a reference to the exemption of the first born of the Israelites from the death that was to be inflicted on the first-born of the Egyptians, it cannot be a type of Christ’s death for the sins of the world, as that would imply that Christ’s death also was commemorative of the preservation from an analogous death,” who does not perceive that this is to confound between the passover as an original redemptive transaction, and as a commemorative ordinance, pointing back to the great fact, and perpetually rehearsing it?It is as a festal solemnity alone that there can be anything commemorative belonging either to the Paschal sacrifice or to Christ’s. Viewed, however, as redemptive acts, there was a sufficient analogy between them: the one redeemed the first-born of Israel (the firstlings of its families), and the other redeems “the Church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven.”
There is manifested a like tendency to evacuate the proper meaning of Scripture in most of the other instances brought into consideration. Christ, for example, calls Himself, with pointed reference to the manna, “the bread of life;” and in Revelation 2:17, an interest in His divine life is called “an eating of the hidden manna,” but it is only “by a metaphor,” precisely as Christ elsewhere calls Himself the vine, or is likened to a rock. As if there were no difference between an employment of these natural emblems and the identifying of Christ with the supernatural food given to support His people, after a provisional redemption, and on the way to a provisional inheritance! It is not the simple reference to a temporal good on which, in such a case, we rest the typical import, but this in connection with the whole of the relations and circumstances in which the temporal was given or employed. Jonah was not, it is alleged, a type of Christ; for he is not called such, but only a “sign;” neither was Melchizedek called by that name. Well, but Adam is called a type
One specimen more of this school of interpretation, and we leave it. Among the passages of Scripture that were referred to, as indicating a typical relationship between the Old and the New in God’s dispensations, is Matthew 2:15, where the evangelist speaks of Christ being in Egypt till the death of Herod, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called My Son.” The allusion to this passage in the first, as well as in the present, edition of this work, was never meant to convey the idea that it was the only Scriptural authority for concluding a typical relationship to have subsisted between Israel and Christ. It was, however, referred to as one of the passages most commonly employed by typological writers in proof of such a relationship, and in itself most obviously implying it. But what says our opponent? “The language of Matthew does not imply that it (the passage in Hosea) was a prophecy of Christ; he simply states, that Jesus continued in Egypt till Herod’s death, so that that occurred in respect to Him which had been spoken by Jehovah by the prophet, Out of Egypt have I called My Son; or, in other words, so that that was accomplished in respect to Christ which had been related by the prophet of Israel.” Was there not good reason for indicating a close affinity between the typological principles of this writer, and the loose interpretations of rationalism? One might suppose that it was a comment of Paulas or Kuinoel that we are here presented with, and we transfer their paraphrase and notes to the bottom of the page, to show how entirely they agree in spirit.[26] If the Evangelist simply meant what is ascribed to him, it was surely strange that he should have taken so peculiar a way to express it. But if the words he employs plainly intimate such a connection between Christ and Israel, as gave to the testimony in Hosea the force of a prophecy (which is the natural impression made by the reference), who has any right to tame down his meaning to a sense that would entirely eliminate this prophetical element,—the very element to which, apparently, he was anxious to give prominence? What we have here to deal with is inspired testimony respecting the connection between Israel and Christ; and it cannot have justice done to it, unless it is taken in its broad and palpable import. (See further, under Ch. IV., and Appendix A., c. 4.)
2. We turn now to the other class of writers, whose aim it has been in recent times to enlarge and widen the typological field. The chief, and for some time the only distinguished representatives of it were to be found in Germany; as it was there also that the new and more profound spirit of investigation began to develop itself. Near the commencement of the present century the religions of antiquity began to form the subject of more thoughtful and learned inquiry, and a depth of meaning was discovered (sometimes perhaps only thought to be discovered) in the myths and external symbols of these, which in the preceding century was not so much as dreamt of. Creuzer, in particular, by his great work (Symbolik) created quite a sensation in this department of learning, and opened up what seemed to be an entirely new field of research. He was followed by Baur (Symbolik und Mythologie), Görres (Mythengeschichte), Müller, and others of less note, each endeavouring to proceed farther than preceding inquirers into the explication of the religious views of the ancients, by weaving together and interpreting what is known of their historical legends and ritual services. These inquiries were at first conducted merely in the way of antiquarian research and philosophical speculation; and the religion of the Old Testament was deemed, in that point of view, too unimportant to be made the subject of special consideration. Creuzer only here and there throws out some passing allusions to it. Even Baur, though a theologian, enters into no regular investigation of the symbols of Judaism, while he expatiates at great length on all the varieties of Heathenism. By and by, however, a better spirit appeared. Mosaism, as the religion of the Old Testament is called, had a distinct place allotted it by Görres among the ancient religions of Asia. And at last it was itself treated at great length, and with distinguished learning and ability, in a separate work the Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus of Bähr (published in 1837-9). This continues still (1863) to hold an important place in Germany on the subject of the Mosaic symbols, although it is pervaded by fundamental errors of the gravest kind (to which we shall afterwards have occasion to advert), and not unfrequently falls into fanciful views on particular parts. Some of these were met by Hengstenberg in the second volume of his Authentie des Pentateuchus, who has also furnished many good typical illustrations in his Christology and other exegetical works. Tholuck, in his Commentary on the Hebrews, has followed in the same tract, generally adopting the explanations of Hengstenberg, and still more recently (chiefly since the publication of our first edition), further contributions have been made particularly by Kurtz, Baumgarten, Delitzsch. Even De Wette, in his old age, caught something of this new spirit; and after many an effort to depreciate apostolic Christianity by detecting in it symptoms of Judaical weakness and bigotry, he made at least one commendable effort in the nobler direction of elevating Judaism, by pointing to the manifold germs it contained of a spiritual Christianity. In a passage quoted by Bähr (vol. i., p. 16, from an article by De Wette on the “Characteristik des Hebraismus”), he says—“Christianity sprang out of Judaism. Long before Christ appeared, the world was prepared for His appearance: the entire Old Testament is a great prophecy, a great type of Him who was to come, and has come. Who can deny that the holy seers of the Old Testament saw in spirit the advent of Christ long before He came, and in prophetic anticipations, sometimes more, sometimes less clear, descried the new doctrine? The typological comparison, also, of the Old Testament with the New, was by no means a mere play of fancy; nor can it be regarded as altogether the result of accident, that the evangelical history, in the most important particulars, runs parallel with the Mosaic. Christianity lay in Judaism as leaves and fruits do in the seed, though certainly it needed the divine sun to bring them forth.”
Such language, especially as coming from such a quarter, undoubtedly indicated a marked change. Yet it must not be supposed, on reading so strong a testimony, as if everything were already conceded; for what by such writers as De Wette is granted in the general, is often denied or explained away in the particular. Even the idea of a coming Messiah, as expressed in the page of prophecy, was held to be little more than a patriotic hope, the natural product of certain circumstances connected with the Israelitish nation (see Hengs. Christology, vol. iv., p. 391, Trans.). Nor did the new light thus introduced lead to any well-grounded and regularly developed system of typo logy, based on a clear and comprehensive view of the Divine dispensations. Bähr confined himself almost entirely to the mere interpretation of the symbols of the Mosaic dispensation, and hence, even when his views were correct, rather furnished the materials for constructing a proper typological system, than himself provided. And it has been noted by Tholuck and other learned men as a defect in their literature, that they are without any work on the subject suited to the existing position and demands of theological science.[27]
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It is to be observed, however, that this new current of opinion among the better part of theologians on the Continent, leads them to find the typical element widely diffused through the historical and prophetical, as well as the more strictly religious portions of the Old Testament. No one who is in any degree acquainted with the exegetical productions of Hengstenberg and Olshausen, now made accessible to English readers, can have failed to perceive this, from the tone of their occasional references and illustrations. Their unbiassed exegetical spirit rendered it impossible for them to do otherwise; for the same connection, they perceived, runs like a thread through all the parts, and binds them together into a consistent whole. Indeed, the only formal attempt made to work out a new system of typological interpretation, prior to the incomplete treatise mentioned in the last note,—the essay of Olshausen (published in 1824, and consisting only of 124 widely printed pages), entitled, Ein Wort uber tiefern Schriftsinn,—has respect almost exclusively to the historical and prophetical parts of ancient Scripture. When he comes distinctly to unfold what he calls the deeper exposition of Scripture, he contents himself with a brief elucidation of the following points:—That Israel’s relation to God is represented in Scripture as forming an image of all and each of mankind, in so far as the divine life is possessed by them—that Israel’s relation to the surrounding heathen in like manner imaged the conflict of all spiritual men with the evil in the world that a parallelism is drawn between Israel and Christ as the one who completely realized what Israel should have been—and that all real children of God again image what, in the whole, is found imperfectly in Israel and perfectly in Christ (pp. 87-110).
These positions, it must be confessed, indicate a considerable degree of vagueness and generality; and the treatise, as a whole, is defective in first principles and logical precision, as well as fulness of investigation. Klausen, in the following extract from his Hermeneutik, pp. 334-345, has given a fair outline of Olshausen’s views: “We must distinguish between a false and a genuine allegorical exposition, which latter has the support of the highest authority, though it alone has it, being frequently employed by the inspired writers of the New Testament. The fundamental error in the common allegorizing, from which all its arbitrariness has sprung, bidding defiance to every sound principle of exposition, must be sought in this, that a double sense has been attributed to Scripture, and one of them consequently a sense entirely different from that which is indicated by the words. Accordingly, the characteristic of the genuine allegorical exposition must be, that it recognises no sense besides the literal one none differing from this in nature, as from the historical reality of what is recorded; but only a deeper-lying sense
Later writers generally, however, on the Continent, who have meditated with a profound and thoughtful spirit on the history of the Divine dispensations, have shown a disposition to tread in the footsteps of Olshausen rather than of Klausen. And it cannot but be regarded as a striking exemplification of the revolving cycles through which theological opinion is sometimes found to pass, that after two centuries of speculation and inquiry, a substantial return has been made by some of the ablest of these divines—though by diverse routes—to the more fundamental principles of the Cocceian school. It was characteristic of that school to contemplate the dispensations chiefly from the divine point of view; according to which, the end being eyed from the beginning, the things pertaining to the end were often, by a not unnatural consequence, made to throw back their light too distinctly on those of the beginning, and the progressive nature of the Divine economy was not sufficiently regarded. It was further characteristic of the same school, that, viewing everything in the scheme of God as planned with reference to redemption, they were little disposed to discriminate in this respect between one portion of the earlier things belonging to it and another; wherever they could trace a resemblance, there also they descried a type; and everything in the history as well as in the institutions of the Old Covenant, was brought into connection with the realities of the Gospel. Now, these two fundamental characteristics of Cocceianism, somewhat differently grounded, and still more differently applied, are precisely those to which peculiar prominence is given in the writings of such men as Hofmann, Kurtz, Lange, and others of the present day. The first of these, in a work (Weissagung und Erfüllung, 1841-44) which, from its spirit of independent inquiry, and the fresh veins of thought it not unfrequently opened up, exerted an influence upon many who had no sympathy with the doctrinal conclusions of the author, made even more of the typical element in Old Testament history than was done by the Cocceians. It is in the typical character of history, rather than in the prophetic announcements which accompanied it, that he would find the germ and presage of the future realities of the Gospel: the history foreshadowed these; the prophets, acting as the men of superior discernment, simply perceived and interpreted what was in the history. Therefore, to elevate the historical and depress the prophetical in Old Testament Scripture, might be regarded as the general aim of Hofmann’s undertaking; yet only formally and relatively to do so: for, as expressive of the religious state and development of the covenant people, both were in reality depressed, and the sacred put much on a level with the profane. This will sufficiently appear from the following illustration:—“Every triumphal procession which passed through the streets of Rome was a prophecy of Augustus Cassar; for what he displayed through the whole of his career, was here displayed by the triumphant general on his day of honour,—namely, the God in the man, Jupiter in the Roman citizen. In the fact that Rome paid such honours to its victorious commanders, it pointed to the future, when it should rule the world through the great emperor, to whom divine honours would be paid.” This he brings into comparison with the allusion made in John 19:36 to the ordinance respecting the passover lamb, that a bone of it should not be broken; and then adds, “The meaning of the triumph was not fully realized in the constantly recurring triumphal processions; and so also the meaning of the passover was not fully realized in the yearly passover meals; but the essential meaning of both was to be fully developed at some future period, when the prophecy contained in them should also be fully confirmed” (I., p. 15). But what, one naturally asks, did the prophecy in such cases amount to?It will scarcely be alleged, that even the most gifted Roman citizen, who lived during the period of triumphal processions, could with any certainty have descried in these the future possessor of the imperial throne. It could at the most have been but a vague anticipation or probable conjecture,—if so much as that; for, however the elevation of Augustus to that dignity might, after the event actually occurred, have come to be regarded “as the top-stone and culminating point in the history,” assuredly the better spirits of the commonwealth were little disposed to long for such a culmination, or to think of it beforehand as among the destinies of the future. It is only as contemplated from the divine point of view, that the triumphal procession could with any propriety be said to foreshadow the imperial dignity,—a point of view which the event alone rendered it possible for men to apprehend; and the so-called prophecy, therefore, when closely considered and designated by its proper name, was merely the divine purpose secretly moulding the events which were in progress, and, through these, marching on to its accomplishment. This, and nothing more (since Zion is put on a footing with Rome) is the kind of prophecy which Hofmann would find, and find exclusively, in the facts and circumstances of Israelitish history. Because they in reality culminated in the wonders of redemption, they might be said to mark the progression of the Divine procedure toward that as its final aim. But who could meanwhile conjecture that there was any such goal in prospect? The prophets, it is affirmed, could not rise above the movements of the current history; not even the seers, by way of eminence, could penetrate further into the future than existing relations and occurrences might carry them. What signified it, then, that a latent prophecy lay enwrapped in the history?There was no hand to remove the veil and disclose the secret. The prophecy as such was known only in the heavenly sphere; and the whole that could be found in the human was some general conviction or vague hope that principles were at work, or a plan was in progress, which seemed to be tending to loftier issues than had yet been reached. This scheme of Hofmann is too manifestly an exaggeration of a particular aspect of the truth to be generally accepted as a just explanation of the whole; by soaring too high in one direction, fixing the eye too exclusively on the Divine side of things, it leaves the human bereft of its proper significance and value—reduces it, in fact, to a rationalistic basis. Hengstenberg has justly said of it, in the last edition of his Christology (vol. iv., p. 389), that “by overthrowing prophecy, in the strict sense, it necessarily involves acted prophecy (or type) in the same fate; and that it is nothing but an illusion to attempt to elevate types at the expense of prophecy.” Without, however, attempting after this fashion to sacrifice the one of these for the sake of the other, various theologians have sought to combine them, so as to make the one the proper complement of the other two divinely-appointed factors in the production of a common result, such as the necessities of the Church required. Thus Kurtz (Hist, of Old Cov., Introd., § 7, 8), while he contends for the proper function of prophecy, as having to do with the future not less than the present, maintains that the history also of the Old Covenant was prophetic, “both because it fore shadows, and because it stands in living and continuous relation to, the plan of salvation which was going to be manifested.” He thinks it belongs to prophecy alone to disclose, with requisite freedom and distinctness, the connection between what at any particular time was possessed and what was still wanted, or between the fulfilments of promise already made and the expectations which remained to be satisfied; but, in doing this, prophecy serves itself of the history as not only providing the occasion, but also containing the germ of what was to come. He therefore holds that the sacred history possesses a typical character, which appears prominently, continuously, markedly in decided outlines, and in a manner patent not only to posterity, but, by the assistance of prophecy, to contemporaries also, according to the measure that their spiritual capacity might enable them to receive it. This character belongs alike to events, institutions, and dispensations; but in what manner or to what extent it is to be carried out in particular cases, nothing beyond a few general lines have been indicated.
These views of the typical element contained in the history and institutions of the Old Covenant, while they present certain fundamental agreements with the principles of the Cocceian school, have this also in common with it, that they take the need for redemption—the fall of man—as the proper starting-point alike for type and prophecy. But another and influential class of theologians, having its representatives in this country as well as on the Continent, has of late advanced a step further, and holds that creation itself, and the state and circumstances of man before as well as after the fall, equally possessed a typical character, being from the outset inwrought with prophetic indications of the person and kingdom of Christ. To this class belong all who have espoused the position (not properly a new one, for it is well known to have been maintained by some of the scholastic divines), that the incarnation of Godhead in the person of Christ was destined to take place irrespective of the fall, and that the circumstances connected with this only determined the specific form in which He was to appear, and the nature of the work He had to do, but not the purpose itself of a personal indwelling of Godhead in the flesh of man, which is held to have been indispensable for the full manifestation of the Divine character, and the perfecting of the idea of humanity. The advocates of this view include Lange, Dorner, Liebner, Ebrard, Martensen, with several others of reputation in Ger many, and in this country, Dean Trench (in his Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge). Along with these there are others—in particular, Dr M’Cosh, the late Hugh Miller, also the late Mr M Donald of Edinkillie—who, without properly committing themselves to this view of the incarnation, yet, on the ground of the analogy pervading the fields alike of nature and redemption in respect to the prevalence of typical forms, on this ground at least, more especially and peculiarly, hold not less decidedly than the theologians above named, the existence of a typical element in the original frame and constitution of things.
Such being the turn that later speculations upon this subject have taken, it manifestly becomes necessary to examine all the more carefully into the nature and properties of a type. We must endeavour to arrive (if possible) at some definite ideas and fundamental principles on the general subject, before entering on the consideration of the particular modes of revelation by type, which undoubtedly constitute the great mass of what in Scripture is invested with such a character, and to which, with a view to the right understanding and proper application of these, our inquiry must be mainly directed.