Typology and Application

The tenth chapter of Hebrews speaks of the most basic understanding of typology, referring to the relationship between the offerings given during the Mosaic Covenant as a “shadow of the good things to come” as opposed to the “true form of these realities.” This distinction between ‘shadow’ and ‘true form’ – or “type” and “anti-type” as it is referred to elsewhere – is the foundation of what is called “typological interpretation” of Scripture, which is the practice of reading some parts of Scripture as shadowy images or “types” of more central realities, revealed more fully in the Gospel. So, for example, the sacrificial lamb of the Passover meal is later revealed in the Gospel to be an image of  Jesus Christ our Passover Lamb, whose flesh is to forever mark us as God’s “Exodus” people, delivered from the powers and principalities unto a life of freedom and peace. Also, just as all of God’s covenant people were to feed upon the lamb, so does Christ nourish us by his own flesh, which he says, if we fail to partake of it, then we cannot be his disciples. Likewise, just as the Passover lamb symbolized the passing of the angel of death over the people of Israel, so does Christ’s blood save us from the judgment unto death and damnation.

There are many other ways that we can reflect just on the parts of the Bible that talk about the Passover sacrifice and draw parallels to Christ as revealed in the Gospels – but the longer we do, the longer we run the risk of someone raising the question: Aren’t we just reading the Bible like literary critics – and not instead, like disciples? Like English professors, looking at neat parallels and patterns in Scripture that have a certain aesthetic appeal, but nothing of moral substance? Shouldn’t we just look at the Bible to learn what God wants us to do?

One very popular model for evangelical bible study is to sit down together and read through a portion of Scripture and ask two questions: What does this passage mean? and What does this passage mean for me? This is sometimes described as “meaning” and “application.” “Meaning” here refers to the cognitive/intellectual practice of decoding the text of Scripture and “Application” means the take away. When one looks for the “application” of a text of Scripture, they take for granted that the “meaning” of the text has to do with something or somebody quite distant from them, and “application” takes for granted that we might be able to find something “current,” something “practical,” something “relatable,” something “relevant,” something “that has to do with me.” “Typological interpretation” doesn’t really focus on the second aspect of Bible Study, and so it can appear to be a “vain” exercise since it never gets around to teaching us how to be disciples, how to “apply” the teaching of Scripture.

I disagree.

First, I disagree because I am not convinced that the framework of “meaning and application” is the best framework for Christians to use when reading the Bible. Second, I disagree because exactly where the framework of “meaning and application” fails is the place where the use of “typological interpretation” seems particularly helpful.

The “meaning-application” model for reading the Bible has at least two perils: 1) it assumes that there is a single mode of reading appropriate to Scripture, usually one that views Scripture primarily as a collection of historical details and descriptions that we should know about, and 2) it assumes that our own individual histories and self-descriptions are events that Scripture does not speak about. “Application” in this context is the practice of trying to find something in our lives that is similar in some way to the historical event recorded in the Bible. So, when we read that Abraham was commanded by God to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, we might realize that God has not actually told us to kill our own firstborn children. So we reason that the thing we should take away from the story (“the application”) is that sometimes God might ask us to do really hard things, things that require sacrifice, and that in those moments, sheer and utter faith is the only way forward.

This passage in particular is one that has been read for millennia and debated as to its meaning. Are we supposed to read this passage as a commendation of Abraham’s behavior? How you answer that will take you in a number of directions. The correct question to ask, I believe, is: What is God showing us in this passage? This opens up the possibility of what a passage could “mean” somewhat since we have no reason to suppose that God is only trying to show us one thing in a passage. The author of Hebrews makes exactly this point when he refers to the sacrifices commanded to the people of Moses. On that author’s reading, there are at least two meanings: the shadowy, literal meaning, and the truer, more real meaning found outside of the text. The truer, more real meaning of the text is found in Christ’s offering of his own self, once and for all, as an eternal sacrifice for sins. This doesn’t invalidate the more historical reading of the texts, but it certainly shows that reading such texts in faith require a multiplicity of meanings.

The “meaning-application” model of Scriptural reading fails us in that it assumes that concerns of Abraham and Isaac are different than our own and that we must creatively construct a new way of talking about Abraham’s offering of Isaac in a way that makes sense to us. The “application” of the text, the “meaning made true for us,” is the text re-imagined for us around our own selves, lives, and concerns. This gets two things wrong: 1) it assumes that our own selves, lives, and concerns exist on their own terms, that “who we are,” “how we live,” and “what we hope for” are obviously already correct and that it is the Scriptures that need to be conformed them – rather than the reverse, that our selves, lives, and concerns might actually need to find their origin in the larger story of Scripture; and 2) it assumes that Christ himself is not the truest meaning and application of all of Scripture. Jesus Christ, Israel’s Messiah, revealed to us in these last days, crucified, dead, and risen, is the central reality of the Christian’s gospel hope. All of Scripture, insofar as we are attempting to read it Christianly, is to be read as a grappling with this central mysterious reality, more real than our selves, His life infinitely exceeding our own lives, His commissions overriding every one of our own concerns.

Typological interpretation is just this meditative practice. It is discipleship because it is a deliberate sitting at Christ’s feet as we navigate through all of Scripture. It is a holy contemplation of the glory of God shown to us in the body of a dead Jew, who was shown to be the Eternal Word of God made flesh through the light of his resurrection. When this is our starting point for reading, the meaning and application become one, because Christ is one, the one who gathers all things unto himself. “Practically” speaking, this means that when we are asking “what shall we do?”, we are equipped to start answering that question in faith only when we begin to start to comprehend the possible answers to that question in the framework of types and patterns set forth in Scripture. Once we see that Abraham and Isaac are types of “Adam” and “Christ,” we can start to see the ways that we have been made “Abraham’s true heirs according to the promise” through Christ, Abraham’s true “seed.” What is the application of that? What does one do in light of that? Paul tells us that, “Therefore, do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” What “yoke”? What “slavery”? Fully answering these questions can’t happen if our go to answer is that we should reject every “yoke in life” or “oppressive experience” we come across. Instead, we have to go back again to the Scriptures and learn what “slavery” meant to the Israelites and what it means that Christ has taken on the yoke of the law on our behalf. (And so now, what does it mean that we are “Israelites” too?)

What can’t be resolved, though, is that we should postpone all this for something more “personally meaningful”, something more “practical”, something more obviously “relevant” to our own lives. The “application” of Scripture cannot be something other than the adoration of Jesus Christ as Israel’s Messiah, Lord of Heaven and Earth, the firstborn of all creation, the icon of the invisible God, the spotless lamb, who Peter told us saved us from the “futile ways inherited from our forefathers.” After Peter makes that point in his first epistle, he quotes a passage from the prophet Isaiah, and reads it typologically as a statement of the Gospel itself:

The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.