Escalation and Fulfillment: The Christotelic and Eschatological
Heb 8- 10) requires that all of the typological features of the previous covenants have been inaugurated or superseded since the new covenant is the goal and terminus of the OT
covenants.
120The mediatorial work of Christ is greater than any of the OT mediators, for through him all of God’s people now have direct knowledge of the Lord and are taught by God (cf. Isa 54:13 and Jer 31:34 with John 6:45 and 1 Thess 4:9, note also 1 John
118For a helpful discussion of the flood-baptism typology, see Schreiner, New Testament Theology, 744-45, and Yoshikawa, “The Prototypical Use,” 449-90. Another example of how the typological pattern does not converge directly in the person of Christ is 1 Cor 10 as Israel’s experiences in the wilderness happened typologically as warnings to the church. Yet even here with the Israel-church typology, the correspondence is drawn in light of the significance of Christ’s new covenant work since the end of the ages (1 Cor 10:11) pivots upon the manifestation of Christ (2 Tim 1:9-10). That the typological pattern is channeled through Christ is seen in the reference to the pre-existent Christ (1 Cor 10:4) and the
correspondences to the Lord’s Supper and baptism (1 Cor 10:2-4), which are again brought about as ordinances of the new covenant in light of the fulfillment of Christ’s soteriological work. See Davidson, Typology in Scripture, 282-83.
119For the notion of “fulfillment” in the NT as one that involves a sense of completion or consummation such that the OT prediction or promise is brought to its designed end, see, s.v. “πληρόω”; C.
F. D. Moule, “Fulfilment-Words in the New Testament: Use and Abuse,” NTS 14 (1967-68): 293-320;
Moo, “The Problem of Sensus Plenior,” 191; Carson, Matthew 1-12, 27-29, 142-44; Baker, Two Testaments, One Bible, 208-9.
120Naturally, the universal structures of the creation and Noahic covenants continue on in this age, but even these covenants point to the new creation freed from sin that will come to fruition based upon the new covenant. See Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant. P. R. Williamson, “Covenant,” in NDBT, 427, summarizes, “In some sense previous divine covenants culminate in the new covenant, for this future covenant encapsulates the key promises made throughout the OT era . . . while at the same time transcending them. Thus the new covenant is the climatic fulfilment of the covenants that God established with the patriarchs, the nation of Israel, and the dynasty of David. The promises of these earlier covenants find their ultimate fulfilment in the new covenant, and in it such promises become ‘eternal’ in the truest sense.” For further development, cf. P. R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God’s Unfolding Purpose, NSBT 23 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007), 182-207.
2:20, 27), experience the outpouring of the eschatological Holy Spirit with the law written on the heart, and they enjoy complete forgiveness of sins.
The eschatological orientation of typological patterns is somewhat more complicated than the observation that all typological patterns in the Bible are directed toward and converge in Christ. Davidson’s research has led him to conclude that there is a three-fold eschatological substructure of biblical typology. The antitypical fulfillment of OT typology involves one or more of the three NT eschatological manifestations of the kingdom: the inaugurated, appropriated, and consummated kingdom.
121Davidson
describes the one eschatological fulfillment of typology with three aspects this way:
(1) “inaugurated,” connected with the first Advent of Christ (as Adam is a type of Christ, Rom 5); (2) “appropriated,” focusing on the time of the Church living in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet,” (as in 1 Cor 10 the Exodus
experiences are ‘types’ typoi of the Christian church); or (3) “consummated,” linked to the Apocalyptic Day of the Lord and the Second Coming of Christ and beyond (as the Noahic Flood is a type of the destruction of the world in 2 Pet 3:6-7).
122Although Davidson does not claim specifically that all typological patterns are directed or channeled through Christ, he does argue that the one eschatological fulfillment in three manifestations is brought to basic realization in Christ’s first advent when the age to come irrupted into this present evil age.
123The ecclesiological appropriation occurs because the church is in union with Christ and shares in the one who is the principal antitype.
Davidson’s categories are helpful, then, as the explicit typological patterns follow along the inaugurated eschatological framework of the NT, permitting the
interpreter to determine which types have become obsolete and which are initially fulfilled and yet have continuing and ongoing fulfillment in this present age as the presence of the future overlaps with the continuity of the creation covenant realities and the post-fall
121Davidson, Typology in Scripture, 398-99; Davidson, “The Nature [and Identity],” 7-8;
Davidson, “The Hermeneutics of Biblical Typology,” 7-19.
122Davidson, “The Nature [and Identity],” 7-8.
123Davidson, “The Eschatological Hermeneutic,” 40.
structures of the Noahic covenant.
124Given the inaugurated eschatological structure for typological fulfillment, the biblical texts must dictate, on a case by case basis, whether the type is completely annulled or fulfilled in Christ’s first advent, or inform the reader whether there may be additional fulfillment and appropriation in the church and in the eschaton (the new heavens and new earth). For example, the whole sacrificial system of the OT has been rendered completely obsolete and fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ (John 1:29, 36; Rom 8:3; 1 Cor 5:6-8;1 Pet 1:18-19; Heb 9-10; Rev 5:6-10, 13:8). The only possible appropriation is that on the basis of Christ’s atoning sacrifice Christians can now offer acceptable spiritual sacrifices (Heb 13:15; 1 Pet 2:5; cf. Rom 15:16). Every indication from the NT is that Christ’s once and for all perfect sacrifice means that the sacrificial practices of OT Israel under the Mosaic covenant are done away with now and forever.
Some more traditional dispensationalists argue that memorial or even actual ceremonial non-atoning sacrifices will be offered in the future millennium.
125But such a position misses how the sacrificial system as a whole, tied to the old covenant, being typological and prophetic as specified by the biblical text (e.g., Isa 53) and disclosed through the covenants in the storyline, terminates in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross.
126To return to the shadows of the OT cultic practices and posit them in the future is to fail to read the Bible in a redemptive historical manner, missing how such themes are developed
124See n. 3 in this chap. Cf. George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, rev. ed.
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 61-67; Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 591-601; K. E.
Brower, “Eschatology,” in NDBT, 459-64; Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1979), 13-22.
125J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Findlay, OH: Dunham, 1958), 517-31; Jerry M. Hullinger, “The Compatibility of the New Covenant and Future Animal Sacrifice,”
Journal of Dispensational Theology 17 (2013):47-64; Jerry M. Hullinger, “The Function of the Millennial Sacrifices in Ezekiel’s Temple, Part 1,” BibSac 167 (2010): 40-57, Jerry M. Hullinger, “The Function of the Millennial Sacrifices in Ezekiel’s Temple, Part 2,” BibSac 167 (2010): 166-79; John C. Whitcomb, “Christ’s Atonement and Animal Sacrifices in Israel,” GTJ 6 (1985): 201-17; Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Israelology:
The Missing Link in Systematic Theology, rev. ed. (Tustin, CA: Ariel Ministries, 1993), 810-13.
126Rightly, Allis, Prophecy and the Church, 246-48; Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 204- 5. For a biblical theological survey of sacrifice, see R. T. Beckwith, “Sacrifice,” in NDBT, 754-62.
progressively through the covenantal epochs and reach their goal and end in the finished work of Christ.
127A second illustration of how a type is fulfilled in Christ but with further
realization or “spill-over” in the church and the consummation is in order. Tracing out the temple typology through the canon reveals that Christ is the antitypical fulfillment and replacement of the temple (Matt 12:6; Mark 14:58; John 1:14, 51; 2:14-22; 4:20-24; Heb 10:19-22; note also Matt 27:51-53 and Ezek 47:1-12; Joel 3:18; Zech 13:1, 14:8 with John 7:37-39; and Ps 118:19-27 and Dan 2:34-35 with Matt 21:42-44).
128With the eclipse of the temple through Jesus, however, the typological temple pattern is appropriated to the church, since the people of God are united to the true Temple through the Holy Spirit.
127Benjamin L. Merkle, “Old Testament Restoration Prophecies Regarding the Nation of Israel:
Literal or Symbolic?” SBJT 14 (2010): 23, rightly observes the problem with dispensationalists who read Ezek 40-48 literalistically in arguing for the reinstitution of animal sacrifices in the millennium: “[A]ffirming that the restored people of Israel will rebuild the temple, reinstate the priesthood, and restore animal sacrifices, minimizes the complete and perfect work of Christ. His death and resurrection is the focal point of God’s great work in redemptive history. To go back to the shadows and images of the Old Testament is to neglect the centrality of Christ’s finished work on the cross.” Merkle, “Old Testament Restoration Prophecies,” 25n26, also points out that God has already given his people a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice—
the Lord’s Supper. Why this new covenant meal, which is the continuing rite of the new covenant, would be replaced by animal sacrifices in the millennium is an argument with no warrant from the NT. The Lord’s Supper will cease upon Christ’s return (1 Cor 11:26), but it gives way to the messianic banquet, the
marriage supper of the Lamb (Luke 22:15-18; Rev 19:7-9) and not to the OT cultic practices of sacrificing animals. Furthermore, to argue for the reinstitution of the animal sacrifices in the future millennium but not the reinstitution of the Mosaic covenant is to rip the sacrifices out of their covenantal setting and context.
Yet the consummation of the kingdom at Christ’s return is still tied to the new covenant age (God’s final covenant is the new covenant; 2 Cor 3:11), and so again this dispensational perspective fails since the new covenant sacrifice of Christ has been offered making the old covenant, and its sacrifices, obsolete (Heb 8:6- 13). For further on the ineffectiveness of OT sacrifices, see Heb 7:11-12; and 9-10.
128See G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, NSBT 17 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004); G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 617-22; G. K. Beale,
“Garden Temple,” Kerux 18 (2003): 3-50; G. K. Beale, “Eden, the Temple, and the Church’s Mission in the New Creation,” JETS 48 (2005): 5-31; G. K. Beale and Mitchell Kim, God Dwells among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014). Cf. Hoskins, Jesus as Fulfillment;
R. J. McKelvey, “Temple,” in NDBT, 806-11; David E. Holwerda, Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two?
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 59-83; T. Desmond Alexander and Simon Gathercole, eds., Heaven on Earth: The Temple in Biblical Theology (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2004); Edmund Clowney, “The Final Temple,” WTJ 35 (1972): 156-89; Rob Dalrymple, Understanding Eschatology: Why It Matters (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 56-99; P. W. L. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City: New Testament Perspectives on Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); I. Howard Marshall, “Church and the Temple in the New Testament,” TynBul 40 (1989): 203-22.
Temple imagery is applied to believers both corporately (1 Cor 3:16-17; 2 Cor 6:16; Eph 2:19-22; 1 Pet 2:4-10) and individually (1 Cor 6:19). The pattern takes further shape and additional realization in the new heavens and new earth with God’s presence fully realized as Jesus, the perfect temple, dwells with his people for eternity (Rev 21:22). In this way, typological patterns are always either completely fulfilled with the coming of the Christ, the primary and pervading antitype, or they are initially inaugurated by Christ with further fulfillment through the church, living in the “already” and “not yet” tension of the kingdom in the new covenant era. Finally, some typological patterns may have further realization as the temple example showed, with the second coming of Christ and the consummation of God’s kingdom. Even when the type has ongoing or continuing fulfillment, it is important to observe that there is always a transformation from the type to the antitype, hence the escalation embedded within typological relationships, because of the shifts that have occurred in light of Jesus Christ.
In summary, the heightening and escalation of the typological patterns have their focal point around the person and work of Jesus Christ as he secures a new order that realizes all that the OT types prefigured and foreshadowed. The NT antitype is greater than the OT type not just because of the better spiritual realities tied to the antitype, but also because of the greater glory that is realized now since all that the types pointed forward to have been fulfilled in the unprecedented and climatic acts of God through Jesus Christ. Hoskins rightly concludes,
[T]he antitype abundantly fills the role of the type in way that makes the type unnecessary and effectively obsolete. . . . In short, as the goal or fulfillment of the Old Testament type, the New Testament antitype fulfills and surpasses the patterns and predictions associated with the Old Testament type and in doing so takes the place of the type.
129129Hoskins, Jesus as Fulfillment, 23. Elsewhere Hoskins states that it “is important to note that Jesus does not devalue the importance of the Old Testament precursors for achieving God’s purposes in their own time. Rather, he is claiming to bring the fullness or fulfillment that was not present in the types.”
Hoskins, That Scripture Might Be Fulfilled, 29.