A Fragment on Two Types

Allegory, largely typological, pervades both the Old and the New Testaments. The events in the Old Testament are ‘types’ or ‘figures’ of events in the New Testament. In The Song of Solomon, for instance, Solomon is a ‘type’ of Christ and the Queen of Sheba represents the Church: later explained by Matthew (12:42). The Paschal Lamb was a ‘type’ of Christ.

Scriptural allegory was mostly based on a vision of the universe. There were two worlds: the spiritual and the physical. These corresponded because they had been made by God. The visible world was a revelation of the invisible, but the revelation could only be brought about by divine action. Thus, interpretation of this kind of allegory was theological. 

J. A. Cuddon, s.v. allegory, in Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin Group, 1998), 22.

The above quote has some flaws, but the source is not a biased ‘Christian’ but a rather an important writer and scholar. Considering the worldview of the writers of both the Old and New Testament, he concludes that typology is a necessary hermeneutical device for understanding the authors. 

Let’s see if we can prove portions of his definition from Scripture. 

Romans 5:14, “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”

Adam was a type of Jesus Christ. The Greek word is tupos and from it we gain our English word type. All English translations that I have available to me as well as lexicons agree that it should be translated using topological language: type (ESV, NASB, NET, RSV), pattern (NIV), figure (KJV, NKJ), prefigured (NJB). 

Thus to understand Paul we must to move into literary vocabulary to talk about typology: if Adam was the type and then the Son of God was the antitype. The antitype, archetype, or prototype is the figure from which the type is drawn.

The clearest illustration of New Testament typology is found in Hebrews 8:5, speaking of the earthly tabernacle and Mosaic worship: “They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’” 

The idea is simply that earthly types are “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” In the same way we find the source of a shadow by starting at the edge and traveling towards the thing casting the shadow, so Christians are supposed to start at the edges of good things and trace them to their source in heaven. The shadow, the type, is always sustained by a thing casting the shadow or the archetype. 

In the Bible the antitype, the archetype, or the prototype of godly things reside in heaven. The ideal or archetype of marriage is found in Christ’s relationship to the Church: thus Paul writes, quoting from Genesis 2: “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church,’” in Ephesians 5:31-32. God the Father is the model of godly Fathers. The example of godly sons responding to godly fathers is found in the Son of God Jesus Christ our Lord, and so forth.

Yet the Bible presents a second type from a source outside heaven: We read about them in 2 Peter 2:4, “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. . .” 

Jesus Christ established their leader as the model or type for unbelievers in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Two ultimate destines cast their shadow upon this world. Two eternal dwelling places glow with fire and the occupants, architecture, and ways of life cast their shadow into the temporary world of appearances. And both provide spiritual sustenance to their devotees:

The prophet Isaiah speaks this way, reading from the King James Version, at Isaiah 28:15, “Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. . .” 

And we find the same in Moses’ writing in Deuteronomy 32:31-22, “For their rock is not as our Rock; our enemies are by themselves. For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison; their clusters are bitter; their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps.”

Perhaps, it would be helpful to remember at this point that Sodom and Gomorrah has been destroyed more 400 years before Moses wrote these words. Sodom and Gomorrah function as patterns of life that draw their inspiration from hell. Sodom and Gomorrah’s pattern provides comfort to those who will dwell there. 

We can then safely conclude that typology is not merely a hermeneutical strategy like literalism or the four-fold allegorical method of the medieval period, but is imbedded in the text and the worldview of the authors. Typology is the way writers and historical characters in the Bible think.