The Epistles to the Hebrews

Appendix  135

Typology, continued

Hermeneutical Significance. It has increasingly been recognized that typology expresses the basic hermeneutic, indeed the attitude or perspective, by which both OT and NT writers understood themselves and their predecessors. Each new community in the ongoing development of salvation history viewed itself analogously in terms of the past. This is true within the OT as well as in the NT use of the OT. The two major sources, of course, were creation and the Exodus. Creation typology is especially seen in Rom. 5 and the Adm-Christ parallel, while Exodus or covenant typology predominates in both testaments. Positively, the Exodus was behind the redemptive imagery in Isa. 51-52 as well as NT salvific concepts (e.g., I Cor. 10:1-6). Negatively, the wilderness wanderings became the model for future admonition (e.g., Ps. 95:7-8; Heb. 4:3-11). The church fathers combined typology and allegory, linking the former with general religious truths expressed in terms of Greek philosophical concepts. This continued until the Reformation (with periodic opposition such as the Antiochene school of the fourth century or the Victorenes of the twelfth); the Reformers espoused a system which viewed the OT literally with a Christological hermeneutic, i.e., as pointing forward messianically to Christ. During the critical period after the seventeenth century, the whole concept of promise-fulfillment was played down and the OT became religious experience rather than history. In recent decades, however, typology properly conceived has become again a valid tool, based upon the biblical perspective regarding the recurring pattern in God’s acts within history, thereby establishing continuity between the stages of redemptive history. Current Debate. The debate today concerns the possible distinction between innate and inferred types. An innate type is explicitly stated as such in the NT; an inferred type is not explicitly but is established by the general tone of NT teaching, e.g., the Epistle to the Hebrews, which uses typology as its basic hermeneutic. Many deny the latter because of the danger of fanciful eisegesis which subjectively twists the text. Both type and antitype should be based upon genuine historical parallels rather than timeless mythological parallels. Typology should not redefine the meaning of the text or suggest superficial rather than genuine correspondence. Both OT and NT passages should be exegeted before parallels are drawn.