Tag Archives: hermeneutics

Messianic prophecy and typology

08 Monday Apr 2024

Posted by in Bible prophecy, Books

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

Leer en español

The following is an excerpt from the new edition of volume 3 of my Interpretive Guide to the Bible (print book; pdf).

Many verses in the Psalms are quoted in the New Testament as prophecies of the Messiah (Christ). In some instances, such as Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, the psalms quoted are direct prophecies of future events. See the comments on these psalms for challenges to the view that they are direct prophecies. However, in many other instances a psalm in which David is describing his personal experiences is quoted in the New Testament as a prophecy of Christ’s experiences. For example, in Acts 2:25-31 Peter quotes Psalm 16:8-11 as a prophecy of the resurrection of Christ, even though that psalm seems to be describing David’s experiences. It should be noted that Peter’s quotation of this psalm was not his own invention, but was likely an interpretation which Jesus taught the disciples directly after His resurrection (Luke 24:44-47), and certainly was something Peter was led by the Holy Spirit to teach. Some Christian interpreters have tried to argue that all the messianic prophecies in the Psalms are to be understood as speaking exclusively of Christ and not of David. Evangelicals who are influenced by higher criticism often argue that these psalms were intended only to speak of David (or an anonymous “psalmist”) in their original context, which seems to make the New Testament references to them as prophecies erroneous. However, there is a better way to make sense of both these psalms and their New Testament quotations.

Definition of typology

The seemingly indirect prophecies of the Messiah in the psalms are best understood through the hermeneutics of prophetic typology. Typology is the study of types. The English word “type” is derived from the Greek word τύπος, which means “pattern.” However, this Greek word is not used in the New Testament as a technical hermeneutical indicator of typological structures the way the English word “type” is used. Further, even this hermeneutical sense of the word “type” is outdated in modern English; the word “prototype” (or “archetype”) would be clearer, but “type” is still the word used in hermeneutical discussions. A good working definition of typology comes from Horne’s nineteenth century work:

A type, in its primary and literal meaning, simply denotes a rough draught, or less accurate model, from which a more perfect image is made; but, in the sacred or theological sense of the term, a type may be defined to be a symbol of something future and distant, or an example prepared and evidently designed by God to prefigure that future thing. What is thus prefigured is called the antitype.

Thomas Hartwell Horne, An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (4th ed.; London: T. Cadell, 1823), 2:649.

The validity and importance of typology

The numerous citations of typological relationships in the NT shows that typology is indeed a valid mode of interpretation, for which we need only discover its governing hermeneutical principles. There are some passages in the NT wherein a typological relationship is explicitly recognized, such as that of Melchizedek and Christ (Heb 5:10; 7:1-17), David and Christ (Acts 2:25-34), and Christ and the Passover lambs (John 1:29, 36; 1 Cor 5:7). At other times, a typological relationship is not explicitly stated, but a parallel is drawn between an OT reality and an NT reality such as the tabernacle and sacrificial system (cf. Col 2:17; Heb 10:1). Typology is particularly important for understanding how the Old Testament foreshadows and anticipates the person and work of the Messiah.

The Old and New Testaments are linked through the fulfillment of OT promises in the NT, which verifies that Christianity is the continuation of the Jews’ religion in a perfected form, not a heretical cult. Typological relationships form part of this linkage. Much of the Old Testament points to and is fulfilled in the New Testament, and the New Testament is dependent on the Old Testament.

One reason why the Bible uses typology is that object lessons are a particularly helpful teaching tool. It is easier for people to understand theological truth when they can see a model of that truth, rather than being taught the principles or prophecies abstractly. Typology also shows how God uses historical events to prepare the world for future events in His plan.

Identification of biblical types

Three characteristics are shared by all legitimate types in the Bible: promise-fulfillment, functional correspondence, and historicity.

First, the promise-fulfillment criterion means that the antitype must in some way fulfill the type. This implies that:

  1. There must be a prophetic promise which links type and antitype. This promise must be left unfulfilled or partially unfulfilled by the type. The historical role of the type must be incomplete and look toward a future fulfillment. A genuine OT typological structure must contain specific promises which point to a fulfillment in a specific antitype, and not just general promises which could have many potential fulfillments. Excessive typology tends to overlook this criterion. Many interpreters identify types on the basis of similarities and patterns, without the presence of an associated prophecy.
  2. Typological indicators should be present in the original OT context. The only way the NT can legitimately claim fulfillment of an OT type is if the typological structure is recognizable from exegesis of the OT text using the literal hermeneutic. The NT simply recognizes what was intended in the OT text all along. If a type can only be recognized on the basis of NT revelation, then in what sense is it a prefigurement? Views of typology which define a type on the basis of a list of correspondences which can only be recognized retrospectively miss an “awareness of the fundamental direction in which revelation points.” (Philip E. Powers, “Prefigurement and the Hermeneutics of Prophetic Typology” [PhD dissertation, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1995], 175.)
  3. A type must precede its antitype in history. Since a type is a prophetic anticipation of an antitype, it must precede the antitype in history.
  4. A type must be prepared and designed by God to represent its antitype. Since a type is a prophetic object lesson, God must shape history in such a way that the type takes on essential characteristics of the antitype.

Second, the functional correspondence criterion means that the type must have the same historical function as the antitype. Specifically, the type must have the function, role, or office which is noted in the prophetic promise that connects the type with the antitype. As an example, a messianic type must occupy a messianic office or function, though the Messiah occupies this role in a greater and fuller way than the type. Thus, David and Melchizedek both occupied a messianic office/function. Functional correspondence is a necessary part of typology because a type must lack completion in itself and look forward to a goal to be fulfilled in an antitype, which is by definition greater and fuller than the type. When the antitype arrives, the need for the role played by the type is done away, and the antitype replaces the function of the type. An example of the way this works is that when Christ died, the whole sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law was fulfilled and ceased to operate in a legitimate manner. Excessive typology tends to focus on corresponding external elements between a proposed type and antitype while ignoring the need for identity in office/function and the inherent deficiency of the type. The retrospective recognition view of typology also encounters problems with the functional correspondence criterion, since the antitype seems to provide the model for recognizing the type. However, by the very definition of typology, “it is the type that points toward the antitype, not the antitype which points back toward the type” (Powers, “Prefigurement and the Hermeneutics of Prophetic Typology,” 181), and therefore the type must have some function or office that is incomplete and awaits completion in an antitype.

Third, the historicity criterion means that both the type and the antitype must be real historical entities, not mere literary inventions. Historicity is a problem in modern critical scholarship, which tends to view supposed literary motifs almost as typological indicators. See further, W. Edward Glenny, “The ‘People of God’ in Romans 9:25-26” Bibliotheca Sacra 152 (Jan.–Mar. 1995): 56.

Categories of typology

Biblical types can be divided into three major categories: legal types, prophetical types, and historical types.

  1. Legal types are rituals or symbols in the Mosaic legal system that prefigured a future entity or event, usually the person and work of the Messiah. An example of a legal type is the lambs sacrificed on Passover, which foreshadowed Christ’s death on Passover as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36; 1 Cor 5:7). The fulfillment of the types of the Law in the person and work of the Messiah is central to the theology of the NT, and forms a bridge between the Old Testament and the New. It is evident that the sacrifices in the Law were functionally incomplete, since they had to be repeated every year. Hebrews 10:1-18 connects this functional deficiency with messianic prophecies to argue that Christ’s death is the antitype of the Mosaic sacrificial system.
  2. A prophetical type is an action or object lesson deliberately portrayed by a prophet to symbolize a future event. An example of this is Isaiah walking naked and barefoot to portray the captivity of Egypt (Isa 20:1-6). While all typology is prophetic, this category of typology refers to direct and deliberate portrayals of future events by a prophet. It can be debated whether prophetic object lessons designed to portray future events should be classified as types or symbols.
  3. Historical types are what most people think of when they think of typology. Horne defines historical types as “characters, actions, and fortunes of some eminent persons recorded in the Old Testament, so ordered by Divine Providence as to be exact prefigurations of the characters, actions, and fortunes of future persons who should arise under the Gospel dispensation” (Thomas Hartwell Horne, An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures [4th ed.; London: T. Cadell, 1823], 2:651). An example of a historical type is David’s experiences in Psalm 22 that are cited in the Gospels as fulfilled in Christ’s experiences (Mark 15:34; John 19:23-24).

Erroneous approaches to typology

The most common error made in recognizing types is the idea that parallels alone indicate the existence of types, with the result that interpreters find far too many types. Powers comments:

The greatest confusion in the area of biblical typology comes as a result of the broad application of the term to a variety of literary and historical situations simply because a recurring pattern is recognized. Thus any repetition of word, symbol, event, person, genre, or theological theme is prone to be explained by typology and all those characteristics associated with typological structure are then applied to elicit a new or fuller meaning of the original text. The problem becomes acute when those typological characteristics are attached to literary structures or historical situations creating meanings which are no longer supported by the textual evidence, and so are not a part of the author’s intended meaning. For some, typology has no bearing on the meaning of the text, but is simply a recognition of a pattern by subsequent interpreters. For others, typology is a method of exegesis; and for others still, it is not a method of exegesis, but part of the author’s intended meaning.

Powers, “Prefigurement and the Hermeneutics of Prophetic Typology,” 293-94.

The main problem with identifying types solely on the basis of similarities between two entities is that it adds to the Bible a claimed meaning that is not stated in the biblical text (i.e., the criteria of promise-fulfillment and functional correspondence are not met). Such identifications of types are subjective decisions made by the interpreter, which cannot be validated objectively. Traditionally, one of the main motives for excessive typology (“hyper-typing”) has been the Christo-centric hermeneutic—the theological proposition that every portion of the Old Testament is designed to point to Christ. Because many portions of the Old Testament are not directly about Jesus Christ, interpreters have to posit typologies and allegories in these portions in order to find a prophetic link to Christ. However, the Bible nowhere affirms the Christo-centric hermeneutic, and this supposedly spiritually-minded method of interpretation is exegetically and theologically erroneous. There is a sense in which all of history before the cross was preparing the world for the incarnation of Christ, and all of history afterward is leading to Christ’s second advent, but most of the particulars in history do not directly foreshadow the person and work of the Messiah.

As a reaction to hyper-typing and extreme allegorism, Bishop Herbert Marsh, writing in the early nineteenth century, proposed the following rule: only types that are specifically recognized in the New Testament may be considered valid. This rule has been followed by many evangelical interpreters since Marsh’s time. However, this approach is problematic because it is too minimalistic. The recognition in the New Testament of types in various Old Testament passages points to the existence of typology in whole classes of passages, and not just ones specifically cited by the New Testament writers. In many instances, it seems that the NT writers are not recognizing types through direct revelation from God, but through the application of hermeneutical principles. Recognition of these principles should allow other interpreters to identify other types. For example, Colossians 2:17 and Hebrews 9:11 and 10:1 indicate that many aspects of the Mosaic Law point to the person and work of the Messiah, but do not individually list each type and antitype. Another example is the clear typological connection between Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the eschatological antichrist in Daniel 8 and 11, which is at best only alluded to in the New Testament. A further problem with both the maximalist and the minimalist approaches to typology is that they only recognize typology retrospectively, which reverses the direction of prophecy and revelation.

A third erroneous view of typology is the view of unbelieving or liberal Bible scholars, who reject the possibility of genuine prophecy because it would imply the supernatural activity of God. For these critics, therefore, all prophetic typology is invalid as authentic prophecy, and what is called “typology” is nothing more than allegory or analogy. Parallels between characters in the OT and characters in the NT are seen as merely accidental, and not as intentional prophetic foreshadowings. If the critics always stated their position as a stark denial of the supernatural, of course it would not attract evangelical adherents. However, critical Bible scholars often use language that sounds very similar to the language used by evangelical scholars, hypothesizing “typological” relationships based on an analysis of recurring words or motifs in order to find “the real meaning” of the text below its surface meaning. What they seldom say is that they do not believe the Bible is historically reliable, or prophetic of future events, or inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. Too many evangelical scholars are analyzing the biblical text using critical methods of intertextual connections (source criticism) and motifs (literary criticism), among other methods that undermine literal interpretation and faith.

Too many evangelical scholars are also influenced by the claim of critical scholarship that the typological interpretation of Old Testament passages in the New Testament is an application of first century Jewish hermeneutical methods that were essentially allegorical. While an analysis of such Jewish hermeneutical methods as Pesher and omnisignificance would require a separate treatise, it may briefly be stated that the NT handles the OT differently than it is handled in the literature of rabbinic Judaism and the Qumran cult. The NT understanding of Scripture was shaped by the person and work of Jesus Christ, as the NT writers saw how Christ fulfilled prophecy and typology. Importantly, Jesus’ disciples learned how to interpret Scripture the way Jesus interpreted it, which was often different from the prevailing understanding of the Bible in contemporary Judaism. Wherever Jesus commented on a specific OT text, the apostles would follow His interpretation—and where He made general statements about Scripture, they applied the principles He gave to specific passages. Even the apostle Paul, who was thoroughly steeped in Judaism, says that immediately after his conversion he went away to Arabia to be taught directly by the Holy Spirit (Gal 1:16-17), and he says he counts his background in Judaism as loss for Christ (Phil 3:4-8). The NT views the Jewish interpretation of the OT as flawed because it fails to recognize the fulfillment of messianic promises in the person and work of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 3:14-16). One important difference between rabbinic exegesis and NT exegesis is that the NT use of typology takes into account the whole context of an OT passage. The linking of texts on linguistic similarities, apart from the historical setting and literal meaning of the texts, is not a characteristic of NT exegesis. In summary, the NT sees itself as a continuation of OT revelation, and sees a movement in revelatory history which culminated in the coming of the Messiah. The NT’s recognition of typology in the OT is therefore rooted in the meaning of the OT text and a belief in its fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is far different from contemporary first century methods of Jewish exegesis.

Messianic typology in the Psalms

Several verses in psalms of David are cited in the New Testament as typological prophecies of Christ, most notably portions of Psalm 16 and Psalm 22. David functioned as a type of Christ because of the Davidic Covenant, in which God promised to David that his dynasty and throne would continue forever, implying that the Messiah would be one of his descendants and would rule from his throne. Peter states the typological connection directly in Acts 2:30-31. There are some personal experiences of David in the psalms that he described in metaphorical language that Christ experienced literally, such as having his hands and his feet pierced by his enemies (Ps 22:16). David’s son Solomon also appears to function as a type of Christ in Psalm 45, since he was a son of David who ruled Israel from David’s throne. It is noteworthy that the New Testament never cites a psalm ascribed to another author as typological of Christ. This shows that the New Testament writers have paid attention to the historical context of the material they are citing as typological, and are not merely citing convenient parallels. In fact, David had some experiences that were typological of the Messiah’s experiences, and he was led by the Holy Spirit to describe these experiences in language that was metaphorically true of himself but literally true of the Messiah.

Enjoy this content? Buy me a coffee, or support this blog via a PayPal donation.

Asking the wrong questions

19 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by in Bible scholarship

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

What did this text mean to the original recipients? What was the intended meaning of the human author? These questions are commonly presented in contemporary biblical scholarship as the main questions an interpreter should ask when approaching a biblical text. Scholars say that the Bible must be interpreted in its historical and cultural setting, and that means asking these two hermeneutical/interpretive questions. However, these two questions are often merely smokescreens designed to conceal/justify an antichristian theological agenda that has nothing to do with interpreting the Bible in its historical and cultural setting. This theological agenda is the a priori denial of all predictive prophecy on the basis of the belief that (1) the Bible is a purely human product, not revelation from God because (2) there is no (overt) divine activity in the world because (3) “God” is either impersonal, or removed from the world, or does not have any real existence at all.

There is no doubt that understanding the historical, cultural, and linguistic setting of the biblical world is important for interpreting the Bible accurately. When the Bible speaks of “trumpets,” for example, we need to do archaeological research to understand what those instruments were like and how they were used, rather than thinking of them in terms of the trumpets that are used in modern orchestras. We also need to study the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages in which the Bible was originally written in order to understand the grammar and idioms of those languages. But when scholars ask the question “What did this text mean to the original recipients?” what they mean is, “How was this text relevant to the original recipients?” They further claim that the primary, objective meaning of the text is limited to its relevance to the original recipients, even if it has a secondary, subjective meaning or application that is relevant to others.

There are four key, usually unstated, assumptions made by scholars who equate the meaning of a text with its relevance to its original recipients. Each of these assumptions is demonstrably false.

  1. The Bible was written solely or primarily to the writer’s contemporaries, and not to future generations. Response: The assumption that everything in the Bible had to be written specifically for and understood by the original recipients contradicts such verses as Daniel 8:27, Daniel 12:8-9, and 1 Peter 1:10-12. These verses state directly that some prophecies could not be understood by the original recipients, and were not directed primarily to them. First Corinthians 10:11 states that even some or all historical passages in the Bible were written primarily to later generations of believers, rather than to the original readers/hearers. Usually when a writer records events and messages of his own time, it is not for the benefit of his contemporaries who lived through the events and heard the messages, and therefore knew all about them. It is for the benefit of future generations, who would not otherwise have knowledge of these things. While this is true in general, it is especially true of the Bible, as the special revelation of God to man. The Bible was written as a testimony to all believers of all times and places until the second coming of Christ.
  2. The original recipients of Scripture did not understand any of the Bible as direct prophecies of events in the distant future. Response: Both Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity interpreted much of biblical prophecy eschatologically. For example, the the earliest known Christian interpretations of Revelation follow the futurist approach (e.g., Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus). By contrast, the first systematically preterist interpretation of Revelation is found in the writings of the Jesuit Alcasar circa 1614, making preterism the last of the four major interpretive approaches to Revelation to be developed. The assumption that the original recipients of Scripture followed the preterist approach to prophecy is disproved by history.
  3. People only find a discussion of contemporary events relevant, not future events. Response: It is assumed that prophecies of the distant future have no practical significance and would have held no interest to the original recipients of Scripture—prophecy is essentially worthless. In fact, however, people have always great interest in future events, and they have always seen eschatological prophecy as relevant to them. The New Testament presents the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the saints, and the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on the earth as the central hope of the Christian faith. Eschatological prophecy had great significance to the original readers/hearers of Scripture, and it still does for us today.
  4. The primary meaning of the text is the intended meaning of the human author, who had no awareness of future events and did not intend to write about future events. Response: (a) The idea that the Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture is excluded (by unbelievers) or made of secondary importance (by evangelicals, who say that the Holy Spirit gave a secondary meaning to the human author’s intended meaning). However, the New Testament asserts that the Holy Spirit was the primary author of Scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:19-21 (cf. 2 Sam 23:2; Acts 1:16; 28:25; Heb 3:7). (b) While many contemporary scholars assume that the human author was focused completely on his own time and place, and did not know and was not interested in events in the distant future, we know from our own experience that future events hold great interest and relevance to people in the present. (c) The intended meaning of the human author is a matter of speculation or psychology. If we want to understand what the text means, then we need to focus on the meaning of the words in the text, interpreting them according to the literal hermeneutic. (d) There are indications in the New Testament, especially in 2 Peter 3:15-16, that the writings of the New Testament were misinterpreted by false teachers and claimed to support false doctrine while the writers were still alive. This is because the writings were recognized in the churches to carry an authority which transcended that of a human author and whatever he said he had in mind as he wrote.

When we read the Bible, we need to seek the literal (i.e., non-allegorical) meaning of the text, rather than speculating about the mind of the human author or making assumptions that exclude the possibility of predictive prophecy. Doing so results in a dispensational, premillennial, pretribulational understanding of the Bible. The denial of eschatological prophecy is based on an allegorical reading of the text that views the literal meaning as a sort of code for the “real meaning.” Every scholar who denies predictive prophecy and/or the classic dispensational reading of eschatological prophecy also strongly opposes the literal hermeneutic. The mainstream view today is nothing more than a theological construct that is imposed on the Scriptures, and as such it has no validity.

Asking how the original recipients of Scripture would have understood the text or what the human author meant can be helpful when studying certain passages, if the right assumptions are made when asking these questions and they are not presented as the sole goal of interpretation. But more often than not, these questions are merely designed to render palatable the old antichristian theological agenda of unbelieving Bible scholars. This agenda contains an a priori refusal to recognize any genuine predictive prophecy in the Bible, based on the basic premise of higher criticism—that the Bible is a human product—and the common theological assumption which underlies it—that there is no (overt) divine activity in the world.

While there was a time when higher criticism was recognized as anti-evangelical, in the past fifty years there has been a big push by evangelical scholars seeking respectability among their unbelieving peers to “evangelicalize” higher criticism—the terms and methods used by critical scholars are slightly modified and redefined by evangelical scholars, who then use them. Many evangelical scholars have adopted the critical approach to prophetic passages throughout the Bible, while still trying to put an evangelical “spin” on them. This includes not just eschatological prophecies, but also OT messianic prophecies. The “spin” is that while the intended meaning of the human author was always directed solely with the affairs of his own day, and this is the primary meaning of the texts as understood by the original recipients, in some cases the Holy Spirit, at a much later point, gave these texts a messianic application/meaning to Christians. The validity of this later application, however, can always be called into question. Some leading evangelical scholars claim that there are no direct messianic prophecies in the OT (or perhaps no more than one or two). Jewish messianism is said to have developed in the Second Temple Period through a hermeneutically dubious reading of the OT. If this is true, then it would seem that Jesus came to fulfill a misinterpretation of prophecy, and Christianity has no validity. Without prophecy, the revelatory nature of Scripture itself could be called into question as well, since the Bible presents predictive prophecy as proof of the Bible’s divine origin (Deut 18:21-22; Isa 40–48).

Making concessions to higher criticism begins a causal chain whose logical conclusion is always the outright rejection of the Bible as revelation from God. This is perhaps seen most clearly in the progressive dispensationalist denial that Psalm 110—the most-quoted psalm in the NT—is a direct messianic prophecy. This denial requires a denial of the Davidic authorship of Psalm 110, even though every Hebrew (and non-Hebrew) manuscript attributes Psalm 110 to David, and Davidic authorship is the linchpin of Jesus’ use of this text to prove that the Messiah is divine (Matt 22:41-46; Mark 12:35-37; Luke 20:41-44; cf. Acts 2:34-35). A denial of Davidic authorship of Psalm 110 is a denial of the inerrancy of the Bible.

Another striking example of the lengths to which scholars must go to deny the existence of predictive prophecy is their translation in the New Testament of βασιλεία—a common Greek word that always refers to both a territory and a people ruled by a king—as “reign” rather than “kingdom.” This term actually has to be redefined on the basis of theology, without lexical evidence, in order to deny the truth that the NT predicts a future earthly kingdom of God on the earth, ruled by King Jesus. The translation of βασιλεία as “reign” in many modern English Bible versions is extremely poor scholarship, which is an expression of extremely poor theology.

Many evangelical scholars have been deceived by the antichristian agenda of unbelieving scholars who deny the existence of most or all direct predictive prophecy in the Bible. But the root of the problem is spiritual, not intellectual. When scholars acknowledge that simply taking the words of the Bible at face value will result in understanding many passages as direct predictive prophecies, the denial of these prophecies is a spiritual problem. The error of their views is manifested by the way in which they must advocate for them, writing whole books of full of confusing arguments—such as the already/not yet, both/and, postmodern hermeneutic of progressive dispensationalism—solely to avoid understanding the Bible to mean what it actually says. Simply asking what the text means—instead of what it hypothetically meant to specific people—will result in understanding much of the Bible as prophetic, and will strengthen one’s faith by giving assurance that just as many prophecies have already been fulfilled precisely, the rest also will be fulfilled precisely in due time.

Enjoy this content? Buy me a coffee, or support this blog via a PayPal donation.