A fantastic question came up in our How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth class on Sunday. It takes a little setup first…
We were discussing the book of Esther and reviewing the hermeneutical principles involved in reading Old Testament narratives. If I had to reduce the lesson down to a few main points, they would be these:
- Always read a narrative with the entirety of God’s redemptive history in mind.
- Narratives are not allegories, nor should they be read for hidden, symbolic meanings.
- Narratives don’t teach — they tell us what happened. However, they often do serve to illustrate what is directly taught elsewhere in Scripture.
With that background, here’s the (paraphrased) question that I found so interesting:
Can we say that Esther is symbolic of Christ since she appeared before the throne to intercede for her people?
There are many instances of people, things, and events in the Old Testament that are pointed to in the New Testament in various kinds of relationships. The formal name for this hermeneutical concept is called typology.
Augustine gives us this pithy summary of the concept: “In the Old Testament the New Testament lies hidden; in the New Testament the Old Testament stands revealed.”
For those who prefer a more technical definition, this comes from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE):
TYPE; TYPOLOGY. A hermeneutical concept in which a biblical place (Jerusalem, Zion), person (Adam, Melchizedek), event (flood, brazen serpent), institution (feasts, covenant), office (prophet, priest, king), or object (tabernacle, altar, incense) becomes a pattern by which later persons or places are interpreted due to the unity of events within salvation-history.
Note that last phrase: “…interpreted due to the unity of events within salvation-history.” This should remind you of the first point I highlighted above.
The ISBE continues, tracing various historical points about typology:
In general the Reformers accorded normative significance only to types that had direct biblical support, although others might be used with caution for devotional or homiletical purposes.
This relates to something that appears in our text, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, on p. 202 (speaking of prophecy here, but the principle is the same):
If Paul had never written [1 Corinthians 10], would we have made the identification of cloud and sea with baptism (v. 2) or the rock with Christ (v. 4)? In other words, would we, on our own, be able with any degree of certainty to determine the sensus plenior or secondary meaning? The answer is no. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write about this analogical connection between the Israelites in the desert and life in Christ without following the usual rules…
So if the Bible tells you that something is a symbol or “type,” then you can treat it that way. In other words, if the Spirit says there’s a connection, then there’s a connection. If there is no inspired biblical authority for a particular interpretation, then you ought to be very careful with the way you treat that interpretation.
As for me — speaking personally — without clear biblical authorization, I wouldn’t go claiming that this-or-that is a type of Christ (or of anything else). I would rather run the very modest risk of “missing out” on a comparatively obscure biblical point — especially in a narrative that doesn’t establish any doctrines to be obeyed — than run the very grave risk of making the Bible say something it doesn’t. That would be a very bad habit to get into.
Returning to the Esther question — does she stand as a type of Christ? — we have to say that we are without Biblical support for this view, since no New Testament author gives us that interpretation.
It’s kind of a letdown, really, because relationships like that are so satisfying when they hold up. But remember, our objective is to get at the meaning of the Scripture, as intended by the authors, so that we can obey it, not finding satisfying literary features.
Let me finish with five hermeneutical rules set forth in the ISBE that should guide our methodology:
1. Make certain that the relationship between type and antitype [the thing symbolized by the type] centers upon historical correspondence rather than general spiritual concepts.
2. Study areas of both correspondence and difference between the two so as to determine the exact areas of parallel (e.g., the way in which the brazen serpent foreshadowed Jesus’ death in Jn. 3:14f.).
3. Avoid establishing doctrine on the basis of typology, which is normally used in Scripture to illustrate rather than to establish dogma.
4. Do not seek types where the context does not allow them; subjective use leads to allegorizing and is dangerous.
5. Allow the richness of the type to speak anew both of the essential unity of Scripture and of the faithfulness of God to His people in every generation.
Hugh,
Very good discussion, following a superb teaching on Sunday I might add. This is not directly related to the Esther question but I might take issue with the statement ‘narratives don’t teach’. Like you I think we must be very careful with typology, pretty much limiting it to instances where we’re told other places in scriptpure that the typology is valid. However, as someone else pointed out Sunday, the Bible tells us that ALL scripture is useful for teaching, etc. (II Timothy 3:16), which would include Old Testament narratives.
I think the issue may not be that they don’t teach but how they teach. Narratives teach differently than epistles do. Often narratives teach by example rather than by direct command or decree. Again we have to be careful in that not everything modeled in Biblical narratives is worthy of emmulation. We must filter it through scripture as a whole.
However, I would say we can, for example, learn from the account of David’s sin with Bathsheba that God will forgive even very serious sins in the lives of His people if they repent and humble themselves before Him. We can also learn that even though He forgives, that does not mean He always removes the temporal consequences of our actions(the child of their union died).
Of course we can take this (pulling doctrinal concepts out of narratives) too far if we don’t keep the whole scope of scripture in view but I also think we can take the idea that its only telling us what happened too far as well leaving huge chunks of scripture as nothing more than a good read with nothing to say to us today.
Thanks Larry.
You raise a good point in that the statement “narratives don’t teach” may be a little too black-and-white for the exact reasons you described. I’m glad we have this forum to work out some of the nuances.
Let me use your example of David and Bathsheba to lay some groundwork there. I don’t think we can take this narrative to mean that “God will forgive even very serious sins” (emphasis mine). However, because the text tells us that such a thing actually happened, we can say that God may forgive even very serious sins.
You see the difference? The story doesn’t serve to say that this is the way God always works — it just tells us that he might, because he did in that one case.
But if you’re looking to whether God forgives very serious sins, I think you can find that discussed propositionally elsewhere in Scripture. It’s a case of this story illustrating what is propositionally taught elsewhere.
I agree. I guess we do have to say that if the account of David and Bathsheba were the only reference we had on the forgivness of sin we couldn’t necessarily use it to teach emphatically on the topic or to apply the teaching to us. It is only in the context of the rest of the scriptures that we can draw such conclusions and learn from the passage. So, in other words, you’re right.
🙂