2. Origin of the idea. — The typological idea, as it meets us in the NT, is not a peculiar or isolated phenomenon, but a natural outgrowth from the more general conception of the OT revelation as pro]ihetic, and of Jesus and the gospel as fulfilling the hope and promise made to the fathers. The forward look of their own Scriptures was apparent to the .lews themselves ; to tiie apostles it had become evident that what prophets and jjsalmists looked for was now in their very midst. Jesus had announced the arriv.al of the Kingdom of God and had declared Himself to be the ex])ected Christ. On His lirst public appear- ance He had read a pass.age from Isaiah (61") which throbs with the good tidings of the Lord's acceptable year, and had said to the listeners, ' To-day hath this scriptuie been fullilled in your ears' (Lk 4-'). From that time onward He had ])ointed out repeatedly that what was written in the or Scriptures was now being accomplished, that what prophets and righteous men of old had desired to see and hear was now being seen and
represent, persons, events, and institutions of the
Christ i;ui dis]ieMsatiiin.
heard by those around Him (Mk 7', Mt 13"). That the Scriptures bore witness of Christ the disciples understood even durin;,' His earthly life, but their underslanditij; of this fact was wonder- fully enlarged by His death and resurrection, which cast a Hood of li.i,'ht upon aspects of prophecy that had previously been obscured (cf. Ac 8-''**). St. Peter's speeches in Acts (cf. 2'^"'^) and his First Epistle show liow stronj; a sense he had that the Spirit of Christ was in the Prophets (I P 1"). To St. Paul wilb his l.-irger outlook upon history and revelation the whole of Scripture was prophetic — the Law as well as the Prophets (Ro 3-') ; and so the Law became ' our tutor to bring us unto Christ' (Gal 3-'). With their view of the OT writings as prophetic of Christ and Christianity at point after point, it was natural that the NT authors should apply to the revelation in the history of Israel the principles they had already applied to its record, and should find Christ and the Christian salvation prefigured in the persons, events, and institutions of OT history, as they had already found them foretold in the OT Scriptures. Such an extension of the principle of prophecy from utterances to types was the natural outcome of a belief in a progressive revelation passing from a lower to a higher stage. H the older dispensa- tion as a whole contained within it the prondse of the Christ who was to come, it was only to be e.xpected that there should be correspondences in detail between the two economies. Prophecy and type, indeed, run into each other, the difference being one of form rather than of nature, so that at times they are hardly distinguishable (cf. Is 28'^ 1 P 2*). And, if the authority of Jesus Himself had been required for tlie adoption of a definitely typological interpretation of OT history, the apostles and other NT writers might recall His use of Jonah's experience to typify His own (Mt 12'"'), of the wisdom of Solomon to suggest the wisdom of One greater than Solomon (v.*-), of the flood that came in the days of Noah to prefigure the coming of the Son of Man (2#'*-), and of the serpent uplifted by Moses in the wilderness to stand as a prophetic symbol of the truth that the Son of Man must be lifted up (Jn 3'^).
3. Applications of the idea by apostolic Christi- anity.— (1) The primitive circle. — Springing natur- ally out of the conception of the OT as prophetic of the Christian dispensation, and being justified by the language of Christ Himself, the idea of type and antitype appears in the teaching of those who belonged to the original apostolic circle. Sometimes it is hardly distinguishable from the use of historical examples for purposes of illustra- tion (1 P 3«, Ja 2='- -= 5"-"), but at other times it stands out with unmistakable clearness. In St. Peter's speeches in Acts Moses as a prophet becomes a type of Jesus Christ (3--), the covenant with Abraham of the blessings of the Christian salvation (v.^'"-), the rejected stone which was made the head of the corner (Ps 118-'^) of Jesus in His humiliation and exalted power (Ac 4"). In 1 Peter the Apostle takes the unblemished lamb of the Passover (Ex 12'') to typify Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 P 1'"), and sees in Noah's ark a prefiguration of baptism as a means of salvation (3-'). In 1-, again, the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ upon the elect is evidently an anti- type of the action of Moses in sprinkling blood first on the altar and then on the people for the inauguration of the covenant (Ex 24*"*). _ (2) The Pauline Epistles. — This typical concep- tion of the history and institutions of Isiael was taken up by St. Paul, and received from him much wider and more frequent application. Sometimes it is the persons or characters of the OT that he treats as types. ,tn Ro 5'\ 1 Co 15=2 Adam, the
natural head of the race, is taken as a type of Christ, the spiritual head. In (Jal 3' faitliful Abraham is a type of all who believe the gospel. In 2 Co 3'"' Mo.ses with the glory on his fjice repi'e- sents the more glorious ministration of the Spirit. In Gal 4'--"'-, where allegory is blended with type through a deeper meaning being read into the OT narrative than it naturally bears, Sarah and Hagar, Lsaac and Ishmael are used as types of Judaism in bondage to the Law and Christianity set free from its yoke. At other times types are found in the transactions or events of the OT narratives, as when the union of Christ with the Church is held to be preHgured by the union of Adam with Eve (Eph 5^^ ; cf. Gn 2^''), Christian baptism by the passage of the Red Sea ( 1 Co 10'- '), the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper by the manna and water of the wilderness (vv.^- ■■), and Christ Himself by the rock from which the water Howed (v.^). Most frequently, however, it is in the religious institu- tions of the OT that St. Paul discovers types of the new economy. The paschal lamb and Christ (1 Co5'; cf. Ro 3=^ Eph 5-), the Temple and the Christian Church (1 Co 3'", 2 Co 6'"), the ministry of the altar and the ministry of the gospel (1 Co 9"), circumcision and baptism (Col 2"- '-'), the sacri- ficial communion of Judaism and communion at the Lord's Table in the body and blood of Christ (1 Co lO'*' '*) — these are particular instances he gives of the fact that the institutions of the old dispensation were anticipative and symbolic of the new. In the later Epistles he states the case more broadly. In Col 2" the general principle is laid down that the legal institutions of Judaism are only 'a shadow of the things to come,' viz. the institutions of the Messianic Age, while the body, i.e. the substantial reality, is of Christ. The antinomy between Law and Gospel which meets us in the earlier Epistles is now resolved, for he sees that the Law as a Divine ordinance was temporary, indeed, in its obligatory character, but possessed of an abiding signiKcance as typical of the future blessings of the Kingdom of grace. Circumcision finds its meaning in ' a circumcision not made with hands' (v."; cf. Eph 2", Ph 3'), the expiatory sacrifices of tabernacle and temple in the self- surrender of Christ to God on our behalf (Eph 5-), the free-will offerings in those gifts of Christian liberality which are a sacrifice acceptable to God (Ph 4"*), the whole Levitical service [Xarpela ; cf. Ex 12-' LXX) in a service wrought by the Spirit of God (Ph 3^) of which the self-sacrificing ministry {XeiTovpyla ; cf. Nu 8'-*) of St. Paul to his converts (2") or theirs to him (v.™) may be taken as an example.