05.07. Chapter Sixth.
Chapter Sixth.—The Interpretation Of Particular Types—Specific Principles And Directions.
IT was one of the objections urged against the typological views of our elder divines, that their system admitted of no fixed or definite rules being laid down for guiding us to the knowledge and interpretation of particular types. Everything was left to the discretion or caprice of the individual who undertook to investigate them. The few directions that were sometimes given upon the subject were too vague and general to be of any material service. That the type must have borne, in its original design and institution, a pre-ordained reference to the Gospel antitype—that there is often more in the type than in the antitype, and more in the antitype than the type—that there must be a natural and appropriate application of the one to the other—that the wicked as such, and acts of sin as such, must be excluded from the category of types—that one thing is sometimes the type of different and even contrary things, though in different respects and that there is sometimes an interchange between the type and the antitype of the names respectively belonging to each:—These rules of interpretation, which are the whole that Glassius and other hermeneutical writers furnish for our direction, could not go far, either to restrain the licence of conjecture, or to mark out the particular course of thought and inquiry that should be pursued. They can scarcely be said to touch the main difficulties of the subject, and throw no light on its more distinguishing peculiarities. Nor, indeed, could any other result have been expected. The rules could not be precise or definite, when the system on which they were founded was altogether loose and indeterminate. And only with the laying of a more solid and stable foundation could directions for the practical treatment of the subject come to possess any measure of satisfaction or explicitness.
Even on the supposition that some progress has now been made in laying such a foundation, we cannot hold out the prospect, that no room shall be left for dubiety, and that all may be reduced to a kind of dogmatical precision and certainty. It would be unreasonable to expect this, considering both the peculiar character and the manifold variety of the field embraced by the Typology of Scripture. That there may still be particular cases in which it will be questionable whether anything properly typical belonged to them, and others in which a diversity of view may be allowable in explaining what is typical, seems to us by no means improbable. And in the specific rules or principles of interpretation that follow, we do not aim at dispelling every possible doubt and ambiguity connected with the subject, but only at fixing its more prominent and characteristic outlines. We believe, that with ordinary care and discretion, they will be sufficient to guard against material error.
1. The first principle we lay down has respect merely to the amount of what is typical in Old Testament Scripture; it is, that nothing is to be regarded as typical of the good things under the Gospel, which was itself of a forbidden and sinful nature. Something approximating to this has been mentioned among the too general and obvious directions which philological writers have been accustomed to give upon the subject. It is, indeed, so much of that description, that though in itself a principle most necessary to be observed and acted on, yet we should have refrained from any express announcement or formal proof of it here, were it not still frequently set at naught, alike in theological discussions and in popular discourses. The ground of the principle, in the form here given to it, lies in the connection which the type has with the antitype, and consequently with God. The antitype standing in the things which belong to God’s everlasting kingdom, is necessarily of God; and so, by a like necessity, the type, which was intended to fore shadow and prepare for it, must have been equally of Him. Whether a symbol in religion or a fact in providence, it must have borne upon it the Divine sanction and approval; otherwise there could have been no proper connection between the ultimate reality and its preparatory exhibitions. So far as the institutions of religion are concerned, this is readily admitted; and no one would think of contending for the idolatrous rites of worship which were sometimes introduced into the services of the sanctuary, being ranked among the shadows of the better things to come. But there is not the same readiness to perceive the incongruity of admitting to the rank of types, actions which were as far from being accordant with the mind of God, as the impurities of an idolatrous worship. Such actions might, no doubt, differ in one respect from the forbidden services of religion; they might in some way be overruled by God for the accomplishment of His own purposes, and thereby be brought into a certain connection with Himself. This was never more strikingly done than in respect to the things which befell Jesus—the great antitype—which were carried into effect by the operation of the fiercest malice and wickedness, and yet were the very things which the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God had appointed before to be done. It is one thing, however, for human agents and their actions being controlled and directed by God, so as, amid all their impetuosity and uproar, to be constrained to work out His righteous purposes; but another thing for them to stand in such close relationship to Him, that they become express and authoritative revelations of His will. This last is the light in which they must be contemplated, if a typical character is ascribed to them. For the time during which typical things lasted, they stood as temporary representations under God’s own hand of what He was going permanently to establish under the Gospel. And, therefore, as amid those higher transactions, where the antitype comes into play, we exclude whatever was the offspring of human ignorance or sinfulness; so in the earlier and inferior transactions, which were typical of what was to come, we must, in like manner, exclude the workings of all earthly and sinful affections. The typical and the antitypical alike must bear on them the image and superscription of God.
Violations of this obvious principle are much less frequently met with now, than they were in the theological writings of last century. Still, however, instances are occasionally forcing themselves on one’s notice. And in popular discourses, none perhaps occurs more frequently than that connected with Jacob’s melancholy dissimulation and cunning policy for obtaining the blessing. His receiving the blessing, we are sometimes told, in the garments of Esau, which his mother arrayed him with, “is to be viewed as a faint shadow of our receiving the blessing from God in the garments of Jesus Christ, which all the children of the promise wear. It was not the feigned venison, but the borrowed garments, that procured the blessing. Even so, we are not blessed by God for our good works, however pleasing to Him, but for the righteousness of our Redeemer.” What a confounding of things that differ! The garments of the “profane” Esau made to image the spotless righteousness of Jesus! And the fraudulent use of the one by Jacob, viewed as representing the believer’s simple and confiding trust in the other! Between things so essentially different there can manifestly be nothing but superficial resemblances, which necessarily vanish the moment the real facts of the case rise into view. It was not Jacob’s imposing upon his father’s infirmities, either with false venison or with borrowed garments, which in reality procured for him the blessing. The whole that can be said of these is, that in the actual circumstances of the case they had a certain influence, of an instrumental kind, in leading Isaac to pronounce it. But what had been thus spoken on false grounds and under mistaken apprehensions, might surely have been recalled when the truth came to be known. The prophet Nathan, at a later age, found no difficulty in revoking the word he had too hastily spoken to David respecting the building of the temple, though it had been elicited by something very different from falsehood by novel and unexpected display of real goodness.—(2 Samuel 7:3) And in the case now under consideration, if there had been nothing more in the matter than the mock venison and the hairy garments of Esau, there can be little doubt that the blessing that had been pronounced would have been instantly withdrawn, and the curse which Jacob dreaded made to take its place. In truth, Isaac erred in what he purposed to do, not less than Jacob in beguiling him to do what he had not purposed. He was going to utter in God’s name a prophetic word, which, if it had taken effect as he intended, would have contravened the oracle originally given to Rebekah concerning the two children, even prior to their birth—that the elder should serve the younger. And there were not wanting indications in the spirit and behaviour of the sons, after they had sprung to manhood, which might have led a mind of spiritual discernment to descry in Jacob, rather than Esau, the heir of blessing. But living as Isaac had done for the most part of his life in a kind of luxurious ease, in his declining years especially yielding too much to the fleshly indulgences assiduously ministered to by the hand of Esau, the eye of his mind, like that of his body, grew dim, and he lost the correct perception of the truth. But when he saw how the providence of God had led him to bestow the blessing, otherwise than he himself had designed, the truth rushed at once upon his soul. “He trembled exceedingly”—not simply, nor perhaps chiefly, because of the deceit that had been practised upon his blindness, but because of the worse spiritual blindness which had led him to err so grievously from the revealed purpose of God. And hence, even after the discovery of Jacob’s fraudulent behaviour, he declared with the strongest emphasis, “Yea, and he shall be blessed.”
Thus, when the real circumstances of the case are considered, there appears no ground whatever for connecting the improper conduct of Jacob with the mode of a sinner’s justification. The resemblances that may be found between them are quite superficial or arbitrary. And such always are the resemblances which appear between the workings of evil in man, and the good that is of God. The two belong to essentially different spheres, and a real analogy or a divinely ordained connection cannot possibly unite them together. The principle, however, may be carried a step farther. As the operations of sin cannot prefigure the actings of righteousness, so the direct results and consequences of sin cannot justly be regarded as typical representations of the exercises of grace and holiness. When, therefore (to refer again to the history of Jacob), the things that befell him in God’s providence, on account of his unbrotherly and deceitful conduct, are represented as typical foreshadowings of Christ’s work of humiliation—Jacob’s withdrawal from his father’s house, prefiguring Christ’s leaving the region of glory and appearing as a stranger on the earth—Jacob’s sleeping on the naked ground with nothing but a stone for his pillow, Christ’s descent into the lowest depths of poverty and shame, that he might afterwards be exalted to the head-stone of the corner, and so forth;[81] —in such representations there is manifestly a stringing together of events which have no fundamental agreement, and possess no mutual relations. In the one case Jacob was merely suffering the just reward of his misdeeds; while the Redeemer in the other and alleged parallel transactions, was voluntarily giving the highest display of the holy love that animated His bosom for the good of men. And whatever there might be in certain points of an outward and formal resemblance between them, it is in the nature of things impossible that there could be a real harmony and an ordained connection.
[81] Kanne’s Christus in Alleii Testament, Th. ii., p. 133, etc.
It is to be noted, however, that we apply the principle now under consideration to the extent merely of denying a typical connection between what in former times appeared of evil on the part of man, and the good subsequently introduced by God. And we do so on the ground that such things only as He sanctioned and approved in the past, could foreshadow the higher and better things which were to be sanctioned and approved by Him in the future. But as all the manifestations of truth have their corresponding and antagonistic manifestations of error, it is perfectly warrantable and scriptural to regard the form of evil which from time to time confronted the type, as itself the type of something similar, which should afterwards arise as a counter form of evil to the antitype. Antichrist, therefore, may be said to have had his types as well as Christ. Hagar was the type of a carnal church, that should be in bondage to the elements of the world, and of a spirit at enmity with God, as Sarah was of a spiritual church, that should possess the freedom and enjoy the privileges of the children of God. Egypt, Edom, Assyria, Babylon without, and Saul, Ahithophel, Absalom, and others within the circle of the Old Covenant, have each their counterpart in the things belonging to the history of Christ and His Church of the New Testament. In strictness of speech, it is the other class of relations alone which carry with them the impress and ordination of God; but as God’s acts and operations in His Church never fail to call into existence the world’s enmity and opposition, so the forms which this assumed in earlier times might well be regarded as prophetic of those which were after wards to appear. And if so with the evil itself, still more with the visitations of severity sent to chastise the evil; for these come directly from God. The judgments, therefore, He inflicted on iniquity in the past, typified like judgments on all similar aspects of iniquity in the future. And the period when the good shall reach its full development and final triumph, shall also be that in which the work of judgment shall pour its floods of perpetual desolation upon the evil.
II. We pass on to another, which must still also be a somewhat negative principle of interpretation, viz., that in determining the existence and import of particular types, we must be guided, not so much by any knowledge possessed, or supposed to be possessed, by the ancient worshippers concerning their prospective fulfilment, as from the light furnished by their realization in the great facts and revelations of the Gospel.
Whether we look to the symbolical or to the historical types, neither their own nature, nor God’s design in appointing them, could warrant us in drawing very definite and conclusive inferences regarding the insight possessed by the Old Testament worshippers into their prospective or Gospel import. The one formed part of an existing religion, and the other of a course of providential dealings; and in that more immediate respect there were certain truths they embodied, and certain lessons they taught, for those who had directly to do with them. Their fitness for unfolding such truths and lessons formed, as we have seen, the groundwork of their typical connection with Gospel times. But though they must have been understood in that primary aspect by all sincere and intelligent worshippers, these did not necessarily perceive their further reference to the things of Christ’s kingdom. Nor does the reality or the precise import of their typical character depend upon the correctness or the extent of the knowledge held respecting it by the members of the Old Covenant. For the connection implied in their possessing such a character between the preparatory and the final dispensations was not of the Church’s forming, but of God’s; and a very considerable part of the design which He intended these to serve with ancient believers, may have been accomplished, though they knew little, and perhaps in some cases nothing, of the germs that lay concealed in them of better things to come. These germs were concealed in all typical events and institutions, considered simply by themselves—since the events and institutions had a significance and use for the time then present, apart from what might be evolved in the future purposes of God. Now, we are expressly told, even in regard to direct prophecies of Gospel times, that not only the persons to whom they were originally delivered, but the very individuals through whom they were communicated, did not always or necessarily understand their precise meaning. Sometimes, at least, they had to assume the position of inquirers, in order to get the more exact and definite information which they desired (Daniel 12:8; 1 Peter 1:12); and it would seem, from the case of Daniel, that even then they did not always obtain it. The prophets were not properly the authors of their own predictions, but spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Their knowledge, therefore, of the real meaning of the prophecies they uttered, was an entirely separate thing from the prophecies themselves; and if we knew what it was, it would still by no means conclusively fix their full import. Such being the case in regard even to the persons who uttered the spoken and direct prophecies of the Old Testament, how preposterous would it be to make the insight obtained by believers generally into the indirect and veiled prophecies (as the types may be called), the ground and standard of the Gospel truth they embodied! In each case alike, it is the mind of God, not the discernment or faith of the ancient believer, that we have properly to do with.
Obvious as this may appear to some, it has been very commonly overlooked; and typical explanations have in consequence too often taken the reverse direction of what they should have done. Writers in this department are constantly telling us, how in former times the eye of faith looked through the present to the future, and assigning that as the reason why our present should be contemplated in the remote past. Thus, in a once popular work, Adam is represented as having “believed the promise concerning Christ, in whose commemoration he offered continual sacrifice; and in the assurance thereof he named his wife Eve, that is to say, life, and he called his son Seth, settled, or persuaded in Christ.”[82] Another exalts in like manner the faith of Zipporah, and regards her, when she said to Moses, “A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision,” as announcing “through one of her children, the Jehovah as the future Redeemer and bridegroom.”[83] Another presents Moses to our view as wondering at the great sight of the burning bush, “because the great mystery of the incarnation and sufferings of Christ was there represented; a great sight he might well call it, when there was represented God manifest in the flesh, suffering a dreadful death, and rising from the dead.”[84] And Owen, speaking of the Old Testament believers generally, says, “Their faith in God was not confined to the outward things they enjoyed, but on Christ in them, and represented by them. They believed that they were only resemblances of Him and His mediation, which, when they lost the faith of, they lost all acceptance with God in their worship.”[85] Writers of a different class, and of later date, have followed substantially in the same track. Warburton maintains with characteristic dogmatism, that the transaction with Abraham, in offering up Isaac, was a typical action, in which the patriarch had scenically represented to his view the sufferings, death, and resurrection of Christ; and that on any other supposition there can be no right understanding of the matter.[86] Dean Graves expresses his concurrence in this interpretation, as does also Mr Faber, who says that “Abraham must have clearly understood the nature of that awful transaction by which the day of Christ was to be characterized, and could not have been ignorant of the benefits about to be procured by it.”[87] And, to mention no more, Chevallier intimates a doubt concerning the typical character of the brazen serpent, because “it is not plainly declared, either in the Old or the New Testament, to have been ordained by God purposely to represent to the Israelites the future mysteries of the Gospel revelation.”[88] [82]
[83] Kanne’s Christus in Alt. Test., I., p. 100.
[84] History of Redemption, by Jonathan Edwards. Period I., p. 4.
[86] Legation of Moses, B. vi., sec. 5.
[87] Treatise on the Three Dispensations, vol. ii., p. 57.
[88] Historical Types, p. 221.
These quotations sufficiently show how current the opinion has been, and still is, that the persons who lived amid the types must have perfectly understood their typical character, and that by their knowledge in this respect we are bound in great measure, if not entirely, to regulate ours. It is, however, a very difficult question, and one (as we have already had occasion to state) on which we should seldom venture to give more than an approximate deliverance, how far the realities typified even by the more important symbols and transactions of ancient times were distinctly perceived by any individual who lived prior to their actual appearance. The reason for this uncertainty and probable ignorance is the same with that which has been so clearly exhibited by Bishop Horsley, and applied in refutation of an infidel objection, in the closely related field of prophecy. It was necessary, for the very ends of prophecy, that a certain disguise should remain over the events it foretold, till they became facts in providence; and therefore, “whatever private information the prophet might enjoy, the Spirit of God would never permit him to disclose the ultimate intent and particular meaning of the prophecy.”[89] Types being a species of prophecy, and from their nature less precise and determinate in meaning, they must certainly have been placed under the veil of a not inferior disguise. Whatever insight more advanced believers might have had into their ultimate design, it could neither be distinctly announced, nor, if announced, serve as a sufficient directory for us; it could only furnish, according to the measure of light it contained, comfort and encouragement to themselves.
[89] Horsley’s Works, vol. i., p. 271-273. And whether that measure might be great or small, vague and general, or minute and particular, we should not be bound, even if we knew it, to abide by its rule; for here, as in prophecy, the judgment of the early Church “must still bow down to time as a more informed expositor.” That the sincere worshippers of God in former ages, especially such as possessed the higher degrees of spiritual thought and discernment, were acquainted not only with God’s general purpose of redemption, but also with some of its more prominent features and results, we have no reason to doubt. It is impossible to read those portions of Old Testament Scripture which disclose the feelings and expectations of gifted minds, without being convinced that considerable light was sometimes obtained respecting the work of salvation. We shall find an opportunity for inquiring more particularly concerning this, when we come to treat, in a subsequent part of our investigations, respecting the connection between the moral legislation and the ceremonial institutions of Moses. But that the views even of the better part of the Old Testament worshippers must have been comparatively dim, and that their acceptance as worshippers did not depend upon the clearness of their discernment in regard to the person and kingdom of Christ, is evident from what was stated in our second chapter as to the relatively imperfect nature of the earlier dispensations, and the childhood-state of those who lived under them. It was the period when, as is expressly stated in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 9:8), “the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest;” or, in other words, when the method of salvation was not fully disclosed to the view of God’s people. And though we may not be warranted to consider what is written of the closing age of Old Testament times as a fair specimen of their general character, yet we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that not only did much prevailing ignorance then exist concerning the better things of the New Covenant, but that instances occur even of genuine believers, who still betrayed an utter misapprehension of their proper nature. Thus Nathaniel was pronounced “an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile,” while he obviously laboured under inadequate views of Christ’s person and work. And no sooner had Peter received the peculiar benediction bestowed, on account of his explicit confession of the truth, than he gave evidence of his ignorance of the design, and his repugnance to the thought, of Christ’s sufferings and death. Such things occurring on the very boundary-line between the Old and the New, and after the clearer light of the New had begun to be partially introduced, render it plain, that they may also have existed, and in all probability did not unfrequently prevail, even among the believing portion of Israel in remoter times. But such being the case, it would manifestly be travelling in the wrong direction to make the knowledge, which was possessed by ancient believers regarding the prospective import of particular types, the measure of our own. The providential arrangements and religious institutions which constitute the types, had an end to serve, independently of their typical design, in ministering to the present wants of believers, and nourishing in their souls the life of faith. Their more remote and typical import was for us, even more than for those who had immediately to do with them. It does not rest upon the more or less imperfect information such persons might have had concerning it; but chiefly on the light furnished by the records of the New Testament, and thence reflected on those of the Old. “It is Christ who holds the key of the types, not Moses;” and instead of making everything depend upon the still doubtful inquiry, What did pious men of old descry of Gospel realities through the shadowy forms of typical institutions?we must repair to these realities themselves, and by the light radiating from them over the past, as well as the present and future things of God, read the evidence of that “testimony of Jesus,” which lies written in the typical not less than in the prophetical portions of ancient Scripture.
III. But if in this respect we have comparatively little to do with the views of those who lived under former dispensations, there is another respect in which we have much to do with them. And our next principle of interpretation is, that we must always, in the first instance, be careful to make ourselves acquainted with the truths or ideas exhibited in the types, considered merely as providential transactions or religious institutions. In other words, we are to find in what they were in their immediate relation to the patriarchal or Jewish worshipper, the foundation and substance of what they typically present to the Christian Church.
There is no contrariety between this principle and the one last announced. We had stated, that in endeavouring to ascertain the reality and the nature of a typical connection between Old and New Testament affairs, we are not to reason downward from what might be known of this in earlier times, but rather upward from what may now be known of it, in consequence of the clearer light and higher revelations of the Gospel. What we farther state now is, that the religious truths and ideas which were embodied in the typical events and institutions of former times, must be regarded as forming the ground and limit of their prospective reference to the affairs of Christ’s kingdom. That they had a moral, political, or religious end to serve for the time then present, so far from interfering with their destination to typify the spiritual things of the Gospel, forms the very ground and substance of their typical bearing. Hence their character in the one respect, the more immediate, may justly be regarded as the essential key to their character in respect to what was more remote. This principle of interpretation grows so necessarily out of the views advanced in the earlier and more fundamental parts of our inquiry, that it must here be held as in a manner proved. Its validity must stand or fall with that of the general principles we have sought to establish, as to the relation between type and antitype. That relation, it has been our object to show, rests on something deeper than merely outward resemblances. It rests rather on the essential unity of the things so related, on their being alike embodiments of the same principles of Divine truth; but embodiments in the case of the type, on a lower and earthly scale, and as a designed preparation for the higher development afterwards to be made in the Gospel. That, therefore, which goes first in the nature of things, must also go first in any successful effort to trace the connection between them. And the question, What elements of Divine truth are symbolized in the type I must take precedence of the other question, How did the type foreshadow the greater realities of the antitype?For it is in the solution we obtain for the one, that a foundation is to be laid for the solution of the other.
It is only by keeping stedfastly to this rule, that we shall be able, in the practical department of our inquiry, to direct our thoughts to substantial, as opposed to merely superficial and fanciful, resemblances. The palpable want of discrimination in this respect, between what is essential and what is only accidental, formed one of the leading defects in our elder writers. And it naturally sprang from too exclusive a regard to the antitype, as if the things belonging to it being fully ascertained, we were at liberty to connect it with everything formally resembling it in ancient times, whether really akin in nature to it or not. Thus, when Kanne, in a passage formerly referred to, represents the stone which Jacob took for his pillow at Bethel, as a type of Christ in His character as the foundation-stone of His Church, there is, no doubt, a kind of outward similarity, so that the same language may, in a sense, be applied to both; but there is no common principle uniting them together. The use which Jacob made of the stone was quite different from that in respect to which Christ is exhibited as the stone laid in Zion—being laid not for the repose or slumber, but for the stability and support, of a ransomed people. For this the strength and durability of a rock were absolutely indispensable; but they contributed nothing to the fitness of what Jacob’s necessities drove him to employ as a temporary pillow. It was his misfortune, not his privilege, to be obliged to resort to a stone for such a purpose.
We had occasion formerly to describe in what manner the lifting up of the brazen serpent in the wilderness might be regarded as typical of the lifting up of a crucified Redeemer; by showing how the inferior objects and relations of the one had their correspondence in the higher objects and relations of the other![90] But suppose we should proceed in the opposite direction, and should take these higher objects and relations of the antitype as the rule and measure of what we are to expect in the type; then, having a far wider and more complicated subject for our starting-point, we should naturally set about discovering many slight and superficial analogies in the type, to bring it into a fuller correspondence with the antitype. This is what many have actually done who have treated of the subject. Hence we find them expatiating upon the metal of which the serpent was formed, and which, from being inferior to some others, they regard as foreshadowing Christ’s outward meanness, while in its solidity they discern His Divine strength, and in its dim lustre the veil of His human nature![91] What did it avail to the Israelite, or for any purpose the serpent had to serve, of what particular stuff it was made? A dead and senseless thing in itself, it must have been all one for those who were called to look to it, whether the material was brass or silver, wood or stone. And yet, as if it were not enough to make account of these trifling accidents, others were sometimes invented, for which there is no foundation in the inspired narrative, to obtain for the greater breadth of the one subject a corresponding breadth in the other. Thus Guild represents the serpent as not having been forged by man’s hand or hammer, but by a mould, and in the fire, to image the Divine conception of Christ’s human nature; and Justin Martyr, with still greater licence, supposes the serpent to have been made in the form of a cross, the more exactly to represent a suffering Redeemer. Suppose it had been modelled after this form, would it have been rendered thereby a more effective instrument for healing the diseased? Or would one essential idea have been added to what either an Israelite or a Christian were otherwise at liberty to associate with it? All such puerile straining of the subject arose from an inverted order being taken in tracing the connection between the spiritual reality and the ancient shadow. It would no longer be thought of, if the principle of interpretation here advanced were strictly adhered to; that is, if the typical matter of an event or institution were viewed simply as standing in the truths or principles which it brought distinctly into view; and if these were regarded as actually comprising all that in each particular case could legitimately be applied to the antitypical affairs of Christ’s kingdom.
[90] Chap. III., p. 81.
[91] Guild’s Moses Unveiled, and Watson’s Holy Eucharist. The judicious application of this principle will serve also to rid us of another class of extravagances, which are of frequent occurrence in writers of the Cocceian school, and which mainly consist, like those already noticed, of external resemblances, deduced with little or no regard to any real principle of agreement. We refer to the customary mode of handling typical persons or characters, with no other purpose apparently than that of exhibiting the greatest possible number of coincidences between these and Christ. As many as forty of such have been reckoned between Moses and Christ, and even more between Joseph and Christ. Of course, a great proportion of such resemblances are of a quite superficial and trifling nature, and are of no moment, whether they happen to be perceived or not. For any light they throw on the purposes of Heaven, or any advantage they yield to our faith, we gain nothing by admitting them, and we lose as little by rejecting them. They would never have been sought for had the real nature of the connection between type and antitype been understood, and the proper mode of exhibiting it been adopted; nor would typical persons or individuals, sustaining a typical character through the whole course and tenor of their lives, have been supposed to exist. It was to familiarize the Church with great truths and principles, not to occupy her thoughts with petty agreements and fanciful analogies, that she was kept so long conversant with preparatory dispensations. And as that end might have been in part served by a single transaction, or a special appointment in a lifetime; so, whenever it was served, it must have been by virtue of its exhibiting important aspects of Divine truth—such as were to reappear in the person and work of Christ. It is not, in short, individuals throughout the entire compass of their history, but individuals in certain divinely appointed offices or relations, in which we are to seek for what is typical in this province of sacred history.[92]
[92]
IV. Another conclusion flowing not less clearly than the foregoing from the views already established, and which we propose as our next leading principle of interpretation, is, that while the symbol or institution constituting the type has properly but one radical meaning, yet the fundamental idea or principle exhibited in it may often be capable of more than one application to the realities of the Gospel; that is, it may bear respect to, and be developed in, more than one department of the affairs of Christ’s kingdom. But in illustrating this proposition, we must take in succession the several parts of which it consists.
1. The first part asserts each type to be capable of but one radical meaning. It has a definite way of expressing some fundamental idea—that, and no more. Were it otherwise, we should find any consistent or satisfactory interpretation of typical things quite impracticable, and should often lose ourselves in a sea of uncertainty. An example or two may serve to show how far this has actually been the case in the past. Glassius makes the deluge to typify both the preservation of the faithful through baptism, and the destruction of the wicked in the day of judgment; and the rule under which he adduces this example is, that “a type may be a figure of two, and even contrary things, though in different respects.”[93] In like manner, Taylor, taking the full liberty of such a canon, when interpreting the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea as a type of baptism, sees in that event, first, “the offering of Jesus Christ to their faith, through the Red Sea, of whose death and passion they should find a sure and safe way to the celestial Canaan;” and then this other truth, that “by His merit and mediation He would carry them through all difficulties and dangers, as deep as the bottom of the sea, unto eternal rest.”[94] In this last specimen the Red Sea is viewed as representing at the same time, and in relation to the same persons, both the atoning blood of Christ and the outward trials of life. The other example is not so palpably incorrect, nor does it in fact go to the entire length, which the rule it is designed to illustrate properly warrants; for the action of the waters in the deluge is considered by it with reference to different persons, as well as in different respects. It is at fault, however, in making one event typical of two diverse and unconnected results. Many other examples might be produced of similar false interpretations from what has been written of the tabernacle and its services, equally indicative, on the part of the writers, of a capricious fancy, and in themselves utterly destitute of any solid foundation.
[93] Philolog. Sac. Lib. II., p. 1, Trac. II., sec. 4, § 8. He quotes from Cornelius à Lapide, but adopts the rule as good.
[94] Moses and Aaron, p. 237. Our previous investigations, we trust, have removed this prolific source of ambiguity and confusion; for, if we have not entirely failed of our object, we have shown that the typical transactions and symbols of the Old Testament are by no means so vague and arbitrary as to be capable of bearing senses altogether variable and inconsistent. Viewed as a species of language, which they really were—a speaking by action instead of words—they could only reach the end they had to serve by giving forth a distinct and intelligible meaning. Such language can no more do this than oral or written discourse, if constructed so as to be susceptible of the most diverse and even opposite senses. By the necessities of the case, therefore, we are constrained to hold, that whatever instruction God might design to communicate to the Church, either in earlier or in later times, by means of the religious institutions and providential arrangements of past times, it must have been such as admits of being derived from them by a fixed and reasonable mode of interpretation. To suppose that their virtue consisted in some capacity to express meanings quite variable and inconsistent with each other, would be to assimilate them to the uncertain oracles of heathenism.
2. This is to be understood in the strictest sense of such typical acts and symbols, as, from their nature, were expressive of a simple, uncompounded idea. In that case, it would be an incongruity to make what was one in the type, present, like a revolving light, a changeful and varying aspect toward the antitype. But the type itself might possibly be of a complex nature; that is, it might embody a process which branched out into two or more lines of operation, and so combined two or more related ideas together. In such a case, there will require to be a corresponding variety in the application that is made from the type to the antitype. The twofold, or perhaps still more complicated, idea contained in the one must have its counterpart in the other, as much as if each idea had received a separate representation; though due regard must be paid to the connection which they appear to have one with another, as component elements of the same type. For example, the event of the deluge, recently adverted to, which at once bore on its bosom an elect seed, in safe preservation for the peopling of a new world, and overwhelmed in perdition the race of ungodly men who had corrupted the old, unquestionably involves a complex idea. It embodies in one great act a double process—a process, however, which was accomplished simultaneously in both its parts; since the doing of the one carried along with it the execution of the other. In thinking, therefore, of the New Testament antitype, we must have respect not only to the two ideas themselves severally represented, but also to their relation to each other; we must look for some spiritual process, which in like manner combines a work of preservation with a work of destruction. In the different fates of the righteous and the wicked,—the one as appointed to salvation, and the other to perdition,—we have certainly a twofold process and result; but have we the two in a similar combination? We certainly have them so combined in the personal history and work of Christ, as His triumph and exaltation inevitably involved the bruising of Satan; and the same shall also be found in the final judgment, when, by putting down for ever all adverse authority and rule, Christ shall raise His Church to the dominion and the glory. If the typical connection between the deluge and God’s grander works of preservation and destruction, is put in either of these lights, the objection we lately offered to the interpretation of Glassius will be obviated, and the requirements of a Scriptural exegesis satisfied. A like combination of two ideas is found in the application made of the deluge by the Apostle Peter to the ordinance of baptism, as will be shown in due time. And there are, besides, many things connected with the tabernacle and its services—for example, the use made in them of symbolical numbers, the different kinds of sacrifice, the ritual of cleansing—which are usually so employed as to convey a complex meaning, and a meaning that of necessity assumes different shades, according to the different modifications employed in the use of the symbolical materials. Such differences, however, can only be of a minor kind; they can never touch the fundamental character of the typical phenomena, so as to render them expressive in one relation of something totally unlike to what they denoted in another. A symbolical act or institution can as little be made to change its meaning arbitrarily, as a term in language. Its precise import must always be determined first by an intelligent consideration of its inherent nature, and then by the connection in which it stands.
3. It is one thing, however, to maintain that a type, either as a whole or in its component parts, can express only one meaning; and another, to allow more than one application of it to the affairs of Christ’s kingdom. Not only is there an organic connection between the Old and the New dispensations, giving rise to the relation of type and antitype, but also an organic connection between one part and another of the Gospel dispensation; in consequence of which the ideas and principles exhibited in the types may find their realization in more than one department of the Gospel system. The types, as well as the prophecies, hence often admit of “a springing and germinant accomplishment.” They do so especially in those things which concern the economical relation subsisting between Christ and His people; by reason of which He is at once the root out of which they grow, and the pattern after which their condition and destiny are to be formed. If, on this account, it be necessary that in all things He should have the pre-eminence, it is not less necessary that they should bear His image, and share in His heritage of blessing. So closely are they identified with Him. In their present experience and their future prospects, that they are now spoken of as having “fellowship with him in His sufferings,” being “planted with Him in the likeness of His death,” and again “planted with Him in the likeness of His resurrection,” “sitting with Him in heavenly places,” having “their life hid with Him in God,” and being at last raised to “inherit His kingdom, and sit with Him upon His throne.” In short, the Church as a whole is conformed to His likeness; while, again, in each one of her members is reproduced an image of the whole. Therefore the principles and ideas which, by means of typical ordinances and transactions, were perpetually exhibited before the eye of the Old Testament Church, while they must find their grand development in Christ Himself, must also have further developments in the history of His Church and people. They have respect to our relations and experiences, our state and prospects, in so far as these essentially coincide with Christ’s; for, so far, the one is but a partial renewal or a prolonged existence of the other.
There are things of a typical nature, it is proper to add, which in a more direct and special manner bear respect to the Church and people of Christ. The rite of circumcision, for example, the passage through the Red Sea, the judgments in the wilderness, the eating of manna, and many similar things, must obviously have their antitypes in the heirs of salvation rather than in Him, who, in this respect, stood alone; He was personally free from sin, and did not Himself need the blessings He provided for others. So that, when the Apostle writes of the ordinances of the law, that they were “shadows of good things to come, but the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:17), he is not to be understood as meaning that Christ personally and alone is the object they prospectively contemplated, but Christ together with His body the Church—the events and interests of the Gospel dispensation. In this collective sense Christ is mentioned also in 1 Corinthians 12:12, and Galatians 3:16. Nor is it by any means an arbitrary sense; for it is grounded in the same vital truth, on which we have based the admissibility of a twofold application or bearing of typical things, viz., the organic union subsisting between Christ and His redeemed people—“He in them, and they in Him.”
V. Another principle of interpretation arising out of the preceding investigations, and necessary to be borne in mind for the right understanding of typical symbols and transactions, is, that due regard must be had to the essential difference between the nature of type and antitype. For, as the typical is Divine truth on a lower stage, exhibited by means of outward relations and terrestrial interests, so, when making the transition from this to the antitypical, we must expect the truth to appear on a loftier stage, and, if we may so speak, with a more heavenly aspect. What in the one bore immediate respect to the bodily life, must in the other be found to bear immediate respect to the spiritual life. While in the one it is seen and temporal objects that ostensibly present themselves, their proper counterpart in the other are the unseen and eternal:—there, the outward, the present, the worldly; here, the inward, the future, the heavenly. A change and advance of the kind here supposed, enters into the very vitals of the subject, as unfolded in the earlier part of our inquiry. The reason why typical symbols and institutions were employed by God in His former dealings with His Church, arose from the adoption of a plan which indispensably required that very progression in the mode of exhibiting Divine truth. The world was treated for a period as a child that must be taught great principles, and prepared for events of infinite magnitude and eternal interest, by the help of familiar and sensible objects, which lay fully open to their view, and came within the grasp of their comprehension. But now that we have to do with the things themselves, for which those means of preparation were instituted, we must take care, in tracing the connection between the one and the other, to keep steadily in view the essential difference between the two periods, and with the rise in the Divine plan give a corresponding rise to the application we make of what belonged to the ancient economy. To proceed without regard to this—to look for the proper counterpart of any particular type in the same class of objects and interests, as that to which the type itself immediately referred, would be to act like those Judaizing Christians, who, after the better things had come, held fast at once by type and antitype, as if they stood upon the same plane, and were constructed of the same materials. It would be to remain at the old foundations, while the scheme of God has risen to a higher place, and laid a new world, as it were, open to our view. If, therefore, we enter aright into the change which has been effected in the position of the Divine kingdom, and give to that its proper weight in determining the connection between type and antitype, we must look for things in the one, corresponding, indeed, to those in the other, but, at the same time, proportionally higher and greater; and, in particular, must remember that, according to the rule, internal things now take the place of external, and spiritual of bodily.
Much discretion, however, which it is impossible to bound by such precise and definite rules as might meet all conceivable cases, will be necessary in applying the principle now indicated to individual examples. In the majority of cases there will be no difficulty; for the distinction we mention between the Old and the New is so manifest, as to secure a certain degree of uniformity even among those who are not remarkable for discrimination. And, indeed, the writers most liable to err in other respects,—persons of delicate sensibilities and spiritual feeling,—are less in danger of erring here, as they have usually a clear perception of the more inward and elevated character of the Gospel dispensation. The point in regard to which they are most likely to err concerning it, and that which really forms the chief difficulty in applying the principle now under consideration, arises from what may be called the mixed nature of the things belonging to Messiah’s kingdom. As contradistinguished from those of earlier dispensations, and rising above them, we denominate the realities of the Gospel spiritual, heavenly, eternal. And yet they are not totally disconnected with the objects of flesh and time. The centre-point of the whole, Jesus Christ, not only sojourned in bodily form upon the earth, but had certain conditions to fulfil of an outward and bodily kind, which were described beforehand in prophecy, and may also, of course, have had their typical adumbrations. In the case of the Church, too, her life of faith is not altogether of an inward nature, and confined to the hidden man of the heart. It touches continually on the corporeal and visible; and certain events essentially connected with her progress and destiny—such as the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, the calling of the Gentiles, the persecutions of the world, the doom of Antichrist—could not take place without assuming an outward and palpable form. What, then, it may be asked, becomes of the characteristic difference between the Old and the New, so far as such things are concerned? Must not type and antitype still be found substantially on the same level? By no means. The proper inference is, that there are cases in which the difference is less broadly marked; but it still exists. The operations, experiences, and blessings peculiar to the dispensation of the Gospel, are not all of a simply inward and spiritual nature; but they all bear directly on the interests of a spiritual salvation, and the realities of a heavenly and eternal world. The members of Christ’s kingdom, so long as they are in flesh and blood, must have their history interwoven on every side with the relations of sense and time, and be themselves dependent upon outward ordinances for the existence and nourishment of their spiritual life. Yet, whatever is external in their privileges and condition, has its internal side, and even its avowed reason, in things pertaining to the soul’s salvation, and the coming inheritance of glory. So that the spiritual and heavenly is here always kept prominently in view, as the end and object of all; while in Old Testament times everything was veiled under the sensible relations of flesh and time, and, excepting to the divinely illuminated eye, seemed as if it did not look beyond them. For example, the deluge and baptism so far agree in form, that they have both an outward operation; but the operation, in the one case, has to do directly with the preservation and destruction of an earthly life, while in the other it bears immediately upon the life of immortality in the soul. The crucifixion of Christ and the slaying of the paschal lamb were alike outward transactions; but the direct and ostensible result contemplated in the first, was salvation from the condemnation and punishment of sin; in the second, escape from corporeal death, and deliverance from the yoke of an earthly bondage. In like manner, it might be said to be as much an outward transaction for Christ to ascend personally into the presence of the Father, as for the high priest to go within the veil with the blood of the yearly atonement; but to rectify men’s relation to a worldly sanctuary and an earthly inheritance, was the immediate object sought by this action of the high priest, while the appearance of Christ in the heavenly places was to secure for His people access to the everlasting kingdom of light and glory. In such cases, the common property of a certain outwardness in the acts and operations referred to, is far from placing them on the same level; a higher element still appears in the one as compared with the other. But if, on the other hand, we should say, as has often been said, that Isaac’s bearing the wood for the altar typified Christ’s bearing His cross to Calvary, we bring together two circumstances which do stand precisely upon the same level, are alike outward in their nature, and in the one no more than in the other involve any rise to a higher sphere of truth. Else, how should a common man, Cimon the Cyrenian, have shared with Christ in the bearing of the burden?
But, undoubtedly, the most pernicious examples of this false style of typical applications are those which, from comparatively early times, have been employed to assimilate the New Testament economy in its formal appearance and administration to the Old, and for which Koine is able to avail herself of the authority of many of the more distinguished fathers. By means chiefly of mistaken parallels from Jewish to Christian times, mistaken, because they virtually ignored the rise that had taken place in the Divine economy,—everything was gradually brought back from the apostolic ideal of a spiritual community, founded on the perfect atonement and priesthood of Christ, to the outwardness and ritualism of ancient times. The sacrifices of the law, it was thought, must have their correspondence in the offering of the Eucharist; and as every sacrificial offering must have a priest to present it, so the priest hood of the Old Covenant, determined by genealogical descent, must find its substitute in a priesthood determined by apostolical succession. It was but a step farther, and one quite natural in the circumstances, to hold that as the ancient hierarchy culminated in a High-priest of Jerusalem, so the Christian must have a similar culmination in the Bishop of Rome. In these and many similar applications of Old Testament things to the ceremonial institutions and devices of Romanism, there is a substantial perpetuation of the Judaizing error of apostolic times an adherence to the oldness and carnality of the letter, after the spiritual life and more elevated standing of the New has come. According to it, everything in Christianity as well as in Judaism is made to turn upon formal distinctions and ritual observances: and that not the less because of a certain introduction of the higher element, as in the substitution of apostolical succession and the impressed character of the new priesthood, for the genealogical descent and family relationship of the old. Such slight alterations only affect the mode of getting at the outward things established, but leave the outwardness itself unaffected; they are of no practical avail in lifting Christianity above the old Judaistic level.[95]
[95]
[96]
Turning to the things of the New dispensation, we have simply to reverse the statement now made. While here the spiritual and divine are exhibited in unveiled clearness, it is quite conceivable that they may at times have appeared under the distinctive guise of the Old, imbedded in fleshly and material forms. Especially might this be expected to happen at the beginning of the Gospel, when the transition was in the course of being made from the Old to the New, as the Messiah came forth to lay the foundations of His spiritual and everlasting kingdom on the external theatre of a present world. It was natural at such a time for God graciously to accommodate His ways to a weak faith, and facilitate its exercise, by making the things that appeared under the New, wear the very livery of those that prefigured them under the Old. This is precisely what was done in some of the more noticeable parts of Christ’s earthly history. But in so far as it was done,—that is, in so far as some outward transaction in the Old reappeared in a like outward transaction in the New,—their relation to each other could not properly be that of type and antitype, but only of exemplar and copy, unless the New Testament transaction, while it bore a formal resemblance to that of the Old, was itself at the same time the sensible exponent of some higher truth. If it were this, then the relation would still be substantially that of type and antitype. And such indeed it is, in the few cases which actually fall within the range of these remarks, and which, when superficially viewed, seem at variance with the principle of interpretation we are seeking to establish.
Let us, in conclusion, glance at the cases themselves. The recall of the infant Jesus from the land of Egypt, after a temporary sojourn there, is regarded by the Evangelist Matthew as the correlative in New Testament times to the deliverance of Israel under the Old. It is impossible to overlook the indication of a similar connection, though none of the evangelists have expressly noticed it, between Israel’s period of trial and temptation for forty years in the wilderness, and Christ’s withdrawal into the wilderness to be tempted forty days of the devil. The Evangelist John sets the singular and apparently accidental preservation of Christ’s limbs on the cross, beside the prescription regarding the paschal lamb, not to let a bone of him be broken, and sees in the one a divinely appointed compliance with the other (John 19:36). And in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:12), the crucifixion of Jesus beyond the gates of Jerusalem is represented, not indeed as done to establish a necessary, but still as exhibiting an actual, correspondence with the treatment of those sin-offerings which were burned without the camp. There can be no doubt that in each of these instances of formal agreement between the Old and the New, the transactions look as if they were on the same level, and appear equally outward in the one as in the other. Shall we say then, that on this account they do not really stand to each other in the relation of type and antitype? or that there was some peculiarity in the later transactions, which still, amid the apparent sameness, raised them to a sufficient elevation above the earlier? This last supposition we conceive to be the correct one.
First of all, it was not unnatural, when there was so little faith in the Church, and when such great things were in the course of being accomplished, that certain outward and palpable correspondences, such as we have noticed, should have been exhibited. It was a kind and gracious accommodation on the part of God to the ignorance and weakness of the times. The people were almost universally looking in the wrong direction for the things connected with the person and kingdom of Messiah; and He mercifully controlled in various respects the course and progress of events, so as, in a manner, to force on their notice the marvellous similarity of His working now to what He had done in the days of old. He did what was fitted to impress visibly upon the darker features of the evangelical history His own image and superscription, and to mark them out to men’s view as wrought according to the law of a foreseen and pre-established harmony. Yet we should not expect such obvious and palpable marks of agreement to be commonly stamped by the hand of God upon the new things of His kingdom, as compared with the old; we should rather regard them as a sort of extraordinary and peculiar helps granted to a weak and unenlightened faith at the beginnings of the kingdom. And even when so granted, we should not expect them to constitute the whole of the matter, but should suppose something farther to be veiled under them than immediately meets the eye—a deeper agreement, of which the one outwardly appearing was little more than the sign and herald. This supposition gathers strength when we reflect that the outward agreement, however manifest and striking in some respects, is still never so uniform and complete as to convey the impression that the entire stress lay there, or that it was designed to be anything more than a stepping-stone for the mind to rise higher. Thus, while the child Jesus was for a time located in Egypt, and again brought out of it by the special providence of God, like Israel in its youth; yet what a difference between the two cases—in the length of time spent in the transactions, and the whole circumstances connected with their accomplishment! Jesus and Israel alike underwent a period of temptation in a wilderness before entering on their high calling; but again, how widely different in the actual region selected for the scene of trial, and the time during which it was continued! Christ’s crucifixion beyond the gates of Jerusalem, and the preservation of His limbs from external violence, exhibited a striking resemblance to peculiarities in the sacrifices of the passover and sin-offering—enough to mark the overruling agency of God; but in other outward things there were scarcely less marked discrepancies—nothing, for example, in the sacrifices referred to, corresponding with the pierced side of Jesus, or His suspension on the cross; and nothing again in Jesus formally answering to the sacrificial rites of the imposition of hands, the sprinkling of blood, or the burning of the carcase. These, and other defects that might be named in the external correspondence between the New and the Old, plainly enough indicate that the outward agreement was, after all, not the main thing, nor the thing that properly constituted the typical connection between them. Else, where such agreement failed, the connection must have failed too; and in many respects Christ should not have been the “body” of the ancient shadows in more, perhaps, than those in which He actually was. Who would not shrink from such a conclusion?But we can find no consistent reason for avoiding it, except on the ground that the occasional outward coincidences between our Lord’s personal history and things in God’s earlier dispensations, were the signs of a typical relationship rather than that relationship itself,—a likeness merely on the surface, that gave notice of a deeper and more essential agreement. This peculiarity in some of the typical applications of Scripture, has its parallel in the applications also sometimes made of the prophecies. We merely point for examples to the employment by St John, John 19:37, of Zechariah 12:10, “They shall look on Me whom they have pierced,” or by St Matthew in Matthew 2:23, Matthew 8:17.