his near sacrifice as a burnt offering should not be construed as typological.
153The texts
indicate not only what is typological but also to what degree that extends to the details of
the type in question just as a careful reading uncovers the areas of similarity and contrast
and the nature of the fulfillment between the type and antitype.
by the divine author in later OT authors and NT writers? If so what about the grammatical- historical hermeneutic that locates meaning in the human author’s intention? Or does the later development of typology annul the OT author’s willed meaning, as Leithart
postulates, “Typology is deliberate foreshadowing, and the change in meaning from expectation to conclusion is the change from promise to fulfillment. The original text changes meaning when brought into relation to other texts.”
155A complete analysis of these topics cannot be managed here, but some brief comments are in order. First, the concept of sensus plenior can be helpful depending on how it is defined and whether it is conceived to be part of the literal sense.
156Based on the previous discussion of Scripture having only one sense, the sensus literalis, if the
155Leithart, Deep Exegesis, 64. Enns, “Fuller Meaning, Single Goal,” 167-217, also represents a position where the NT authors perceived new meanings in the OT texts that are not necessarily close to the meanings intended by the original authors.
156The often cited definition of sensus plenior (SP) comes from the Catholic scholar who wrote frequently on the subject. See Raymond E. Brown, The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture (Baltimore: St.
Mary’s University, 1955), 92: “The sensus plenior is that additional, deeper meaning, intended by God but not clearly intended by the human author, which is seen to exist in the words of a biblical text (or group of texts, or even a whole book) when they are studied in the light of further revelation or development in the understanding of revelation.” See also Herman Bavinck, Prolegomena, vol. 1 of Reformed Dogmatics, ed.
John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 396-97, who describes the SP even though the term was not specifically used until the twentieth century. For Brown, the SP takes into account the words of a text but not the things written about in the text. Therefore, typology, or the “typical sense” as he describes it, differs and is distinct from the SP (in the typical sense, the things that take on a deeper meaning are the typological persons, events, and institutions in Scripture). Moo, “The Problem of Sensus Plenior,” 201-2, follows Brown’s definition. For many evangelicals, this distinction is not retained as the SP characterizes the fuller meaning intended by God but in some degree unknown by the human author which would include typology. W. Edward Glenny, “The Divine Meaning of Scripture: Explanations and Limitations,” JETS 38 (1995): 499-500, rightly points this out: “Typology by definition involves an extension of the concept found in the original affirmation (a pattern). This is of course a fuller divine meaning. Moo [and Brown]
differentiates the two by describing the sensus plenior as the deeper meaning of words and typology as the deeper meaning of things. Since words represent things, the distinction is difficult to maintain.” Some Roman Catholic scholars did not ascribe the SP to the literal sense since that sense was viewed strictly as the human author’s intention. For Brown, the SP was not a “second literal sense” but rather a deepening—“an
approfondissement”—of the one and only literal sense of the text. Brown, The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture, 113, 145; Raymond E. Brown, “The Sensus Plenior in the Last Ten Years,” CBQ 25 (1963):
262-85, see 274-75; cf. Leopold Sabourin, The Bible and Christ: The Unity of the Two Testaments (New York: Alba House, 1980), 146-53. On the other hand, other Catholic scholars, such as Jean Daniélou, rejected the SP entirely since they linked the human authorial intent with the literal sense, and then
everything beyond the literal sense was understood to be the spiritual or typical sense. So Raymond Brown,
“The History and Development of the Theory of a Sensus Plenior,” CBQ 15 (1953): 153.
sensus plenior is defined as an additional sense then such would have to be rejected.
However, in evangelical discussions, the sensus plenior is that fuller divine meaning that transcends the understanding of the human author, being another dimension or level of the meaning, but not a completely different meaning or sense.
Some scholars, such as France and Baker, locate the literal meaning strictly to the grammatical-historical study of the human author’s willed intent found in the original context. The grammatical-historical method is required by the doctrine of inspiration, for God has caused his words to be written by human authors in various times, cultural settings, and in diverse situations, and they wrote to be understood by their audiences.
157But the problem with strictly limiting interpretation in this approach, noted by S. Lewis Johnson, is that Scripture is not just a human product, but a divine one as well.
158The identity between God’s words and the words of the biblical authors means that interpreters must understand the human author’s intent to ascertain God’s intent. However, the grammatical-historical approach is not sufficient if it is only left to the immediate literary context; the meaning of a text within the canonical context must be accounted for since the Bible is unified, the Holy Spirit being the author of the whole, and so should be read as one book. With revelation unfolding progressively—the literary corpus of the canon increasing over time—the OT authors would not have known where the whole revelation was going, nor the total scope to which his writing was ordained, and therefore would not
157J. I. Packer, “Infallible Scripture and the Role of Hermeneutics,” in Scripture and Truth, ed.
D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 349-50; cf. Poythress, “Divine Meaning,” 277-79. However, the doctrine of inspiration does not require that the human and divine authorial intent are of a singular, undivided meaning as in Kaiser’s single intent approach. For a critique of this approach, see Jared M. Compton, “Shared Intentions? Reflections on Inspiration and Interpretation in Light of Scripture’s Dual Authorship,” Themelios 33 (2008): 23-33. Compton, “Shared Intentions?, 33, helpfully finds that “inspiration does not require that the divine and human intentions be absolutely coextensive” and further, “while interpretation depends on the existence of overlap between the divine and human authors, its stability does not demand complete overlap.” Hermeneutical stability is provided by means of the
completed canon and the progressive revelation it comprises.
158Johnson, The Old Testament in the New, 56. Johnson interacts specifically with France.
have exhaustively understood the meaning, implications, and possible applications of all that they wrote (see 1 Pet 1:10-12).
159The later parts of Scripture draw out and develop earlier texts that are consistent with the OT authors’ understanding and yet adds clarity to the anticipatory import of their writings.
160The sensus plenior is helpful then in
recognizing the added dimensions of meaning, specifically the divine author’s intent in light of the entire canon.
161This fuller sense also coincides with the “mystery” motif referred to previously—simultaneously there are elements of the gospel grounded and
159Beale, “Did Jesus and His Followers Preach?,” 393; Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 85; Hoskins, Jesus as Fulfillment, 26; Sabourin, The Bible and Christ, 147; McCartney and Clayton, Let the Reader Understand, 164-67. Moo, “The Problem of Sensus Plenior,” 205, writes, “The original human author may often have had an inkling that his words were pregnant with meaning he himself did not yet understand, but he would not have been in a position to see the entire context of his words.” On 1 Pet 1:10-12, Glenny, following Grudem, argues that v. 11 should be understood to mean that the prophets were inquiring as to “who or what time.” Glenny, “Divine Meaning of Scripture,” 486, perceptively adds that “1 Pet 1:12 states that it was made known to the OT prophets that they were not ministering the things concerning Christ’s sufferings and subsequent glory to themselves but to the NT people of God. That would be hard to comprehend if they understood all of it themselves.” Another passage in support of a concept of SP is Dan 12:6-9.
160Beale, “Did Jesus and His Followers Preach?,” 393; Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 86; Hoskins, Jesus as Fulfillment, 26; Compton, “Shared Intentions?,” 31. Moo, “The Problem of Sensus Plenior,” 206, writes, “God knows, as He inspires the human authors to write, what the ultimate meaning of their words will be; but it is not as if he has deliberately created a double entendre or hidden a meaning in the words that can only be uncovered through a special revelation. The ‘added meaning’ that the text takes on is the product of the ultimate canonical shape—though, to be sure, often clearly perceived only on a revelatory basis.”
161Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning, 263-65; Oss, “Canon as Context,” 116-17, 121; Glenny,
“The Divine Meaning,” 497-99; Beale, “Did Jesus and His Followers Preach?,” 400; Moo, “The Problem of Sensus Plenior,” 205-9; Jack R. Riggs, “The ‘Fuller Meaning’ of Scripture: A Hermeneutical Question for Evangelicals,” GTJ 7 (1986): 218-20. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Intention/ Intentional Fallacy,” in DTIB, 329, writes that acknowledging the Scripture as the word of God “calls for recognition of dual authorship where the divine intention appropriates, superintends, or supervenes on the human intention. . . . As with any action, we can adequately identify what has been done in Scripture only by considering its action as a whole. The divine intention most comes to light when God’s communicative acts are described in canonical context.” Where the divine author’s meaning has little or no relationship to the meaning of the human author then the problem with figural and allegorical readings resurfaces. For a discussion and critique of this approach, see Poythress, “Divine Meaning of Scripture,” 243; and Michael D. Williams, Far as the Curse Is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemption (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2005), 80-82.
Williams’ rightly states, “Sensus Plenior interpretation must be a development of what is said via authorial intention. The fuller sense should be just that, a fuller sense of what is already present, not an entirely other sense, as one finds in allegorical interpretation. While it is fair to see an oak within an acorn, it is not fair to see a cow within an acorn. But we must not lose sight of the author and his intention” (emphasis original).
predicted in the OT even though hidden until the advent of Christ. Therefore, God’s fuller meaning, though never less than nor detached from the intended meaning of the human author, as “revealed when the text is exegeted in its canonical context, in relation to all that went before and came after, is simply extension, development, and application of what the writer was consciously expressing.”
162The study of typology then, involves the sensus plenior of OT persons, events, institutions, and offices. The earlier OT authors would not have grasped the complete prefigurative import even though they would have recognized something of the “larger than life” features of the OT type.
163Later revelation adds clarity to the prophetic expectation of the OT type and this is “open to verification, since the texts relevant to each type and antitype are within the canon.”
164162Packer, “Infallible Scripture,” 350. See also Johnson, The Old Testament in the New, 50;
Bock, “Evangelicals and the Use of the Old,” 309, 315-16. Elsewhere, J. I. Packer, “Biblical Authority, Hermeneutics and Inerrancy,” in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, ed. E. R. Geehan (Nutley, NJ: P & R, 1971), 147-48, puts it this way:
“Since God has effected an identity between their words and his, the way for us to get into his mind, if we may thus phrase it, is via theirs. Their thoughts and speech about God constitute God’s own self-testimony.
If, as in one sense is invariably the case, God’s meaning and message through each passage, when set in its total biblical context, exceeds what the human writer had in mind, that further meaning is only an extension and development of his, a drawing out of implications and an establishing of relationships between his words and other, perhaps later, biblical declarations in a way that the writer himself, in the nature of the case, could not do. . . . The point here is that the sensus plenior which texts acquire in their wider biblical context remains an extrapolation on the grammatico-historical plane, not a new projection on to the plane of allegory. And, though God may have more to say to us from each text than its human writer had in mind, God’s meaning is never less than his” (emphasis original).
163Perhaps if Brown had considered SP to include typology and held to a different view of inspiration, then he might not have abandoned it in the end. In his later writings he noticed that the SP as he conceived it was almost never appealed to and used, even by scholars who accepted it. See Raymond E.
Brown,” The Problems of the Sensus Plenior,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 43 (1967): 460-69, esp. 462 and 464. Raymond E. Brown, “Hermeneutics,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968), 618, found that the SP “is seldom verified and so is of little use in justifying or explaining NT, patristic, liturgical, or ecclesiastical exegesis. It is interesting to note that the proponents of the SP tend to confine their discussion of this sense to the theoretical plane, seldom appealing to it in their works of exegesis.” For further discussion, see Matthew W. I. Dunn, “Raymond Brown and the Sensus Plenior Interpretation of the Bible,” Studies in Religion 36 (2007): 531-51.
164Hoskins, Jesus as Fulfillment, 26.