reflection or by cleverly pinpointing analogical features between earlier and later people and events; rather, grounded in God’s providence and ordination, OT types are invested by God to resemble and foreshadow greater things to come. Readers of Scripture must find textual warrant and exegetical evidence for identifying the divinely intended types present in the text since such patterns are embedded therein and are not fancifully derived from a reading strategy or hermeneutic.
The debate on the prospective nature of typology. The debate with respect
advanced presentations, predicting, and pointing forward to the antitypical fulfillment and eschatological realities in Christ.
94On the other hand, post-critical neo-typology advocates do not find types to be predictive or prophetic in any way. Instead, the biblical writers apprehended the typological relationship retrospectively. A type has no forward reference to the future nor is it predictive.
95The retrospective aspect of typology is clearly
emphasized in France’s study:
[The] antitype [is not] the fulfillment of a prediction; it is rather the re-embodiment of a principle which has been previously exemplified in the type. A prediction looks forward to, and demands, an event which is to be its fulfillment; typology, however, consists essentially in looking back and discerning previous examples of a pattern now reaching its culmination. . . . The idea of fulfillment inherent in New Testament typology derives not from a belief that the events so understood were explicitly predicted, but from a conviction that in the coming and work of Jesus the principles of God’s working, already imperfectly embodied in the Old Testament, were more perfectly re-embodied, and thus brought to completion.
96Andrew David Naselli, From Typology to Doxology: Paul’s Use of Isaiah and Job in Romans 11:34-35 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 126-27; Johnson, The Old Testament in the New, 56; Donald A. Hagner,
“When the Time Had Fully Come,” in A Guide to Biblical Prophecy, 92; Legarth, “Typology and Its Theological Basis,” 145-46; LaRondelle, The Israel of God, 47, 52-55; Ninow, Indicators of Typology, 93- 97, 242-46; Lints, The Fabric of Theology, 306; Vos, Biblical Theology, 146; Currid, “Recognition and Use of Typology,” 120-21; Edmund Clowney, Preaching and Biblical Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1979); McCartney and Clayton, Let the Reader Understand, 159-74. While Lampe generally falls within the post-critical neo-typology approach, he does speak of the prophetic view of history and historical events being preordained by God in his last article on the subject of typology, see G. W. H. Lampe, “Hermeneutics and Typology,” London Quarterly and Holborn Review 190 (1965): 17-25.
94This is not to deny that the particular OT people, institutions, events, and actions that are typological lose value and significance in their own redemptive historical setting. Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 100, helpfully emphasizes, “If later events disclose foundational patterns, of which the earlier may now be seen as anticipations, this means that the earlier events are themselves more rather than less laden with significance. The exodus events happened, Paul asserts [in 1 Cor 10], to the fathers in the wilderness in such a way that they can aptly serve as instruction for later generations, as Deuteronomy also proclaims.”
95Baker, Two Testaments, One Bible, 181; France, Jesus and the Old Testament, 41. Von Rad,
“Typological Interpretation,” 189-90, understands typology apart from prospective prophecy: “This renewed recognition of types in the Old Testament is no peddling of secret lore, no digging up of miracles, but is simply correspondent to the belief that the same God who revealed himself in Christ has also left his footprints in the history of the Old Testament Covenant people—that we have to do with one divine discourse, here to the fathers through the prophets, there to us through Christ (Heb. 1:1).” Others who view typology as retrospective include Eichrodt, “Is Typological Exegesis an Appropriate Method?, 229; and Geoffrey Grogan, “The Relationship between Prophecy and Typology,” SBET 4 (1986): 10, 13.
96France, Jesus and the Old Testament, 40. France also speaks of the characteristics of typology as incorporating numerous applications “of Old Testament passages which in themselves
In addition, the OT types could not be prospective or prefigure something future because that would entail an additional meaning that was hidden from the OT authors.
97For still others, typology involves both prospective and retrospective aspects. Greidanus, for example, says the answer “is not an either-or but a both-and: some Old Testament types are predictive and others are not. I suspect that most types are not predictive, but specific persons or events are later seen to have typological significance.”
98The problem with the debate regarding the prospective versus retrospective quality of typology has to do with what is meant by “retrospective.” This is best illustrated by the recent studies of G. K. Beale. In his programmatic essay outlining the
presuppositions of Jesus’ and the NT author’s exegetical method, Beale classifies typology as indirect prophecy, but at the same time suggests that the “New Testament
correspondence would be drawing out retrospectively the fuller prophetic meaning of the Old Testament type which was originally included by the divine author.”
99In more recent
predictive passages, and yet in a way which implied, indeed sometimes explicitly stated, that they were
‘fulfilled’ in His own coming.” France, “‘In All the Scriptures’—a Study of Jesus’ Typology,” 15.
97Baker, Two Testaments, One Bible, 181, 187-89; France, Jesus and the Old Testament, 41- 42; cf. Foulkes, “The Acts of God,” 369-70. Hence, for the post-critical neo-typology position, typology is not a part of exegesis since true meaning and intention of the original text can only be what the human author intended. Typology is more of a theological reflection or application. Woollcombe, “Biblical Origins and Development,” 39-40, speaks of typology as both a method of exegesis and as a “method of writing,”
where the NT authors borrowed terms to describe the antitype based on the prototypal counterpart in the OT. Interestingly enough, while Moo presents typology as possessing a prospective nature, being
prefigurements that are divinely ordained, he claims that “typology is not an exegetical technique, nor even a hermeneutical axiom, but a broad theological construct with hermeneutical implications.” Douglas Moo,
“Paul’s Universalizing Hermeneutic,” SBJT 11 (2007): 82; cf. 81. See also LaRondelle, The Israel of God, 45-46, as he follows Foulkes and argues that typology “is the theological-christological interpretation of the Old Testament history by the New Testament, which goes beyond mere exegesis.”
98Greidanus, Preaching Christ, 253. Others who opt for a middle position include Osborne,
“Type; Typology,” 931; and Hamilton, “The Typology of David’s Rise to Power,” 6, seems to go in this direction by concurring with Osborne “that more needs to be said about how and when these types would have been understood as pointing forward” (emphasis original).
99Beale, “Did Jesus and His Followers Preach?,” 401. Similarly, Darrell L. Bock, Proclamation from Prophecy and Pattern: Lucan Old Testament Christology, JSNTSup 12 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1987), 291- 92n124.