Do you ever read the Bible and wonder if there’s anything in it for you? Theologians carry on debates over the relationship of divine sovereignty to man’s free will, exegetes argue about whether ??? should be translated “and” or “even” in Galatians 6:16, and everyone seems to argue about whether women can be called to the office of pastor. At times it may seem that the Bible has been turned into a battlefield for competing academic and political interests. How then does it speak to your soul?
In an effort to avoid sterile theologizing and a Christian faith that started and stopped with the intellect, the pendulum of biblical interpretation swung toward the opposite extreme.
In the years after the start of the Reformation in Germany a movement called pietism arose. Its adherents rejected the intellectualism and strong emphasis on right doctrine which grew out of the teaching of men like Martin Luther and John Calvin. “Pietism,” according to Bernard Ramm, “was the effort to recover the Bible as spiritual food and nourishment to be read for personal edification. It was a distinct reaction against dogmatic and fanciful exegesis.”1 In an effort to avoid sterile theologizing and a Christian faith that started and stopped with the intellect, the pendulum of biblical interpretation swung toward the opposite extreme. For many in the pietist tradition, the primary purpose of God’s word is not to teach us right doctrine and guide us to hold to true statements about God but to lead us to have a genuine religious experience. If so, then we come to Scripture not so concerned with objective meaning that we discover by literal interpretation but with the Bible’s power to give us a life-changing spiritual experience.
Dangers of the Pietist Method
This is not entirely misguided, as Ramm noted: “The devotional and practical emphasis in Bible teaching is absolutely necessary.”2 Preachers must do more than just explain what a text means, we must apply the truth to our own hearts and those of our hearers. Still, there can be an overemphasis on religious experience that undermines or even dismisses entirely the actual meaning of the Bible. Ramm pointed out two weaknesses in the pietistic method of Bible interpretation. Firstly, it lends itself to spiritualizing and allegory. “In the effort to find a spiritual truth or application of a passage of Scripture the literal and therefore primary meaning of the passage is obscured. If it is not a case of bald allegorizing it may be excessive typology. Given enough allegorical and typological rope one may prove a variety of contradictory propositions from the Old Testament.”3 In the effort to derive some kind of personal benefit from the Scriptures, pietism encourages us to seek a deeper, spiritual meaning that may not be evident in the text by means of literal interpretation.
The second weakness of this devotional approach to Scripture is that we may ignore exegetical and doctrinal studies altogether. Someone may think that theology serves no practical purpose in our lives as Christians. “Who cares what the Bible says about the end times? That won’t help me at work on Monday!” is the attitude expressed by many today. But Ramm called strong doctrine and solid exegesis the “sinews” and “bones” which are “necessary for spiritual health.”4 Of course we cannot live without organs and flesh and the systems of circulation and respiration, but neither can we live without bones and sinews on which these other living tissues rely for structure and stability. So it is with the literal interpretation of God’s word leading to sound exegesis and good doctrine.
We ought to reject pietism or at least be cautious about adopting it without discernment. As long as we maintain a commitment to the literal method of Bible interpretation, exegesis, and sound doctrine, we may receive much benefit by reading God’s word devotionally. But I want to focus on Ramm’s caution about spiritualizing the text, because this is a key issue in the subject of interpreting the Bible. He warned that the pietistic impulse to find devotional value in every passage of Scripture often leads to allegory or what he called “excessive typology.” But it bears asking what Ramm thought was excessive when it comes to typology.
Examining Typology
First, we must define typology. According to Milton Terry, a type is “a person, institution, office, action, or event, by means of which some truth of the Gospel was divinely foreshadowed under the Old Testament dispensations.”5 It is a kind of symbolism that relies on imagery instead of words. Terry explained that a type “is no ordinary fact or incident of history, but one of exalted dignity and worth – one divinely ordained by the omniscient Ruler to be a foreshadowing of the good things which he purposed in the fullness of time to bring to pass through the mediation of Jesus Christ.”6 Typology, then, is the method of interpreting the Bible by comparing types in the Old Testament with their antitypes in the New.
Is this a legitimate practice? Well, it is certainly an ancient one. Aside from the fact that the New Testament clearly identifies certain types,7 Ramm noted that typology was practiced by theologians in the early church. “Origen believed that the Old is the preparation for the New.”8 This implies that the New Testament is in some way concealed within the Old, and it is the duty of the interpreter to draw this out. That is exactly what typology means to do: to identify figures or events in the Old Testament which correspond to greater realities in the New.
Typology is possible because the two testaments share a common author, the Holy Spirit, and are therefore in harmony with each other. The Bible is revealed progressively; later authors add to the body of divine truth and make analogies, types, symbols, and even allegories possible. But the fact that these elements exist within the pages of Scripture does not give us carte blanche to claim that any and every person, event, or office in the OT is a type. Doing so risks ignoring the plain meaning of the passage in favor of a symbolism that is completely subjective. But how much typology actually exists? And are there any rules or guidelines which can help us identify genuine types and refuse bogus ones? This is a subject Ramm tackled at some length and which we will consider next.
1Ramm, Bernard, Protestant Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1970), 61
2Ibid., 62. Emphasis original.
3Ibid.
4Ibid., 63
5Terry, Milton, Biblical Hermeneutics: a treatise on the interpretation of the Old and New testaments (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1890), 246
6Ibid.
7For example, Paul says that Adam “was a type of Him who was to come” in Romans 5:14, referring to Jesus Christ.
8Ramm, 33. Emphasis original.