Transcript

ANNOUNCER: In the art and science of Bible interpretation, how can we know what is typology and what is allegory? What possible mistakes can be made with these literary devices? Hello and welcome. This is Grace in Focus. Glad you’re with us today. As we answer this question, Grace in Focus is the radio broadcast and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is FaithAlone.org. There you can learn about our free online seminary with an MDiv degree and our subscription-free magazine also called Grace in Focus. And right now we’d like you to receive our invitation to come to our national annual conference. It’ll be in May, the 18th through the 21st at Camp Copass in Denton, Texas. It is family-friendly and it is a great time of learning and fellowship. Get signed up, come and join us, find all the details at faithalone.org/events. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: Bob, I’ve got a question from Barbara. The question is on typology. She’s asking what’s your view of typology? Where do you draw the line between typology and allegory? And first we should probably define. 

BOB: Typology is from the word types and we get this in lots of literature, not just in the Bible, where some character is foreshadowing another character later to come in the novel or later to come in the book. And in the Bible, we do find this a fair amount. So a type is something that if it’s in the Bible, it literally occurred. It’s actually occurred, but it has a secondary significance because it tells us something about a coming event or a coming person that going to be in later Scripture, either later in the Old Testament or in the New Testament. 

I remember when I was in the doctoral program, a book came out called TYPOS, which is a Greek word, we would pronounce that not TYPOS, but tupos and it meant types. It wasn’t referring to typos found in the Bible or somewhere else. And there’s a whole book on just how to decide what’s a type and what’s not a type. 

Well, the questioner wants to know, Barbara says, Roy Zuck in Basic Bible Interpretation defines it very narrowly, whereas Ken and I seem to define it more broadly. I think my answer, Barbara, would be that it’s clear that something is a type when later Scripture directly indicates it’s a type. For example, Sam, do you have John 3:14-15 there? That’s where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and he eludes to an event in Numbers 21, saving the people of Israel from a plague that was running through the camp. If I remember right, it was something like 7,000 died, but God provided deliverance and can you read John 3:14-15? 

SAM: Yeah, it says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. That whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” 

BOB: As Moses lifted up this bronze serpent in the wilderness and whoever looked on it, lived, so Jesus was to be lifted up, a reference to the cross. Although certainly Nicodemus and the disciples didn’t understand it at this point, but this side of the cross, we can get that. So that whoever looks to Jesus, that is whoever believes in Jesus, is saved from a eternal condemnation. So the uplifted serpent was a type of the cross, and we have other examples where the Scriptures tell us it’s a type. For example, do you have Matthew 12, verse 40, about Jonah? 

SAM: He says, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” BOB: Yeah, Jonah clearly was a type of Jesus’ resurrection. Well, death, burial, and resurrection, and we know that because Jesus says so. Another example would be the lambs in the Old Testament were types of Christ. For example, do you have 1 Corinthians 5:7 there, which talks about Christ in the Passover? 

SAM: He says, “Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be made a new lump, since you truly are unleavened for indeed Christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us.”

BOB: So Christ is our Passover. He’s our Passover lamb. Remember John the Baptist in John 1:29 said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?” Well, the Old Testament lambs sacrificed would be a covering for the sin of the world, but they would not take them away. In order to take away the sins, we needed death of Messiah, the perfect God man, who never could sin, never did sin. And so Jesus is the lamb of God. He’s our Passover lamb. And so that’s clearly also a type, but there are other things which people suggest are types which are not so clear. 

For example, Joseph, a lot of people think Joseph was a type of Christ. Why would they think that? What do they point to in the life of Joseph? 

SAM: Well, he was betrayed by his brothers or his people and then he goes to a high point of status and then he rescues his people. 

BOB: Right. So a lot of people see in Joseph a type of Christ. 

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BOB: Another example would be Elijah and Enoch. There were two men in the Old Testament that did not see death, but they were taken up to be with the Lord in the third heaven. And in the case of Elijah, we’re specifically told that he went up in a whirlwind and there was also a flaming chariot there. Are those types of the Rapture? Well, we don’t have any verse that says they’re types of the Rapture, but I think it’s reasonable.

Even Jesus in Acts chapter one, remember the disciples are talking to Him and then he ascends into heaven as they’re watching. It seems to me that could be a type or a first fruits of the Rapture because Jesus is going up. That’s definitely a possibility. 

Another one, one of my seminary professors, Dr. Allen Ross, he thought that the book of Joshua was a type of the Christian life from Ephesians chapter five verses 10 through about verse 18, “Put on the full armor of God.” And you’ve got all this. Well, he said, that’s what you see in the conquest and that basically the conquest, even though it was written to Israel, God can use that for the Church to get insights into how to live the Christian life. Well, does that mean that the conquest was a type of the Christian life? I don’t know, but I think that’s a possibility. 

But what Barbara’s concern is, if you go too far, you end up allegorizing Scripture. An allegorizing scripture is basically taking the events of scripture and making them into something very fanciful. 

For example, take the book of Esther. You remember in Esther, you’ve got Mordecai. Mordecai is betrayed by this man named Haman. And Haman has ten sons and Haman intends to kill Mordecai and all the Jewish people and wipe them all out. And instead, Mordecai is exalted when the king finds out that he had actually helped stop a conspiracy against the king. So Haman gets belittled and ultimately the tide is turned and Haman dies on the gallows and Haman’s sons die on the gallows and Mordecai is exalted. Well, they’re all kinds of fanciful explanations of that. Some people, they will say that Haman represents the devil and they will say that Mordecai represents Jesus. And they have all kinds of things who represents the Church and this sort of thing. In my view, that is a bridge way too far. There’s no hint of that whatsoever. 

Other people, like for example, the Song of Solomon is all about marital love. Well, some people think the Song of Solomon is about the Church and they find all kinds of interesting ways. But that’s allegorizing the Song of Solomon or that’s allegorizing the book of Esther. 

And so what I would say is, we need to be open to the fact that there are more types than the Scriptures explicitly says. It basically comes down to, do we think that the Scriptures implicitly suggest that something might be a type. Like for example, Joshua with the conquest, with the book of Joshua, is that a type of the Christian life or Elijah and Enoch as types of the Rapture or Joseph in Egypt? Is that a type of Christ? Those kinds of things I would certainly be open to and I would say Plymouth Brethren people—I was in Plymouth Brethren church for almost 20 years, much of that with Zane Hodges. And they were much quicker to see types in Scripture. 

For example, take Luke 15. You’ve got the three parables. You start off with the lost sheep, right? Then you go to the lost coin and then you go to the lost son or the prodigal son. Well, the lost sheep, who saves the lost sheep, who goes out and brings him back? SAM: The shepherd 

BOB: The shepherd. And who saves, more or less, the prodigal son. It’s the father that’s seeking him. The father doesn’t go all the way to the far country, but he does go out looking for him evidently each day and praying for his return. And when he does return, he runs and falls on his neck. So you’ve got the father and you’ve got the shepherd. Wasn’t Jesus the good shepherd and isn’t God the Father the father? So some people say the woman, at least Plymouth Brethren, some of them say that the woman in the lost coin represents the Church because the Church is the bride of Christ. So a woman would be an appropriate figure for the Church and the Church is associated with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the one who baptizes us into the body of Christ. Well, that takes a little gymnastics to get there. I get it. But once you’ve got the fact that you’ve got a shepherd and the father, it’s not too big of a jump to say the middle one is about the Holy Spirit. 

All I’m suggesting is, we ought to be open to the fact that there are a lot more types than we realize, but I think Barbara is right. We need to be very careful, we don’t go too far in allegorize. 

SAM: Yeah, and it seems to me that there’s not too much danger, but there is a little bit of risk in making the Bible say something it doesn’t. So I think you got to approach it with humility and discernment before you make a big, sweeping, generalization or a leap if it’s going to lead to an actual change in the way you understand Scripture. 

BOB: Absolutely. And one other thing I want to repeat, a proper view of typology is it always is based on something that actually happened. It’s never something that didn’t happen and we’re just somehow making this up. It’s something that actually happened, but it has a deeper significance. 

Thank you, Barbara, for your question. And Sam, let’s all keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode, we answer the question: why is the saving message absent in the Synoptic Gospels? Please come back and join us. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.