Teaching by Typology

In this series of posts, I am using the inmillennial prophetic model¹ to interpret Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. My last three posts² mentioned a point N. T. Wright has made: Paul’s recognition of Jesus as the Messiah forced him to adjust three key elements of his Jewish theology—election, monotheism, and eschatology.³ A rare autobiographical sketch shows he may have done this after his conversion: 

Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. (Gal 1:17–18)

Some writers believe he went to Mt. Sinai⁴—the place where God gave the law to Moses—to rethink his previous zeal for the law considering the new revelation regarding Christ.⁵

In those posts, I questioned how Paul could teach the new believers at Thessalonica about “the church” and “election” in just a few weeks. My answer is that he taught them by drawing from the heritage of those who belonged to the “synagogue of the Jews” there (Acts 17:1). Geerhardus Vos makes a key observation about this heritage: 

New Testament eschatology attaches itself to the Old Testament and to Jewish belief as developed on the basis of ancient revelation. It creates on the whole no new system or new terminology, but incorporates much that was current, yet so as to reveal by selection and distribution of emphasis the essential newness of its spirit.⁶

What Vos says about eschatology (the study of last things) is true about election and monotheism, too. This intimate linkage between the Old and New Testaments allowed Paul to teach weighty doctrines quickly.

But how did Paul attach the New Testament to the Old? I assert that he did so through typology and that this was one of the most important items in his theological toolbox. He used it to show Jewish Christians that Israel after the flesh (1 Cor 10:18) was the Mosaic-age “church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38) and, as such, she was a picture of the messianic-age “church of God, which he [Jesus] hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Israel in the Old Testament was God’s elect nation (e.g., Deut 7:6) and, as such, illustrated God’s elect people during the messianic age (Eph 1:4). Typology allowed Paul to teach about the church and election in his short time in Thessalonica. The Jewish believers there were familiar with the types and could—through the Holy Spirit—understand what they represented. They could then teach the antitypes (or fulfillments) to their Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ after Paul left.

Because of typology’s importance in Paul’s reworked theology, I will: (1) define it; (2) provide a few examples of him using this tool to teach the churches; and (3) show a key principle Paul used when applying it.

Definition of Typology

Wick Broomall⁷ says the following about typology:

A type is a shadow cast on the pages of OT history by a truth whose full embodiment or antitype is found in the NT revelation.… Types have the following characteristics: (1) They are thoroughly rooted in History.… (2) They are prophetic in nature.… (3) They are definitely designed as an integral part of redemptive history.… (4) They are Christocentric.… (5) They are edificatory—having spiritual meaning for God’s people in both dispensations. 

A few simple distinctions will safeguard the student of typology. (1) One must distinguish between the type backed by NT authority and the type based on the speculation of the modern interpreter.… (2) One must distinguish between the type that definitely corroborates a doctrine and the type that has no relevance to a supposed doctrine.… (3) One must distinguish between what is essential in a type and what is peripheral in the same type.… (4) One must distinguish between the type that is completely fulfilled in the antitype and the type, though partly fulfilled, that still retains its typical significance for the future world.⁸

I provide this lengthy quotation not to overwhelm the reader with numbered points but to emphasize that typology is not a tool we can use willy-nilly to prove a pet theological idea. Rather, it is something God has built into the fabric of the Scriptures; we must recognize and respect it.

In typology the student of Scripture finds a divinely orchestrated correspondence or parallel in one or more respects between a person, event, series of circumstances, or institution in the Old Testament (called the type) and a person, event, or thing in the New Testament (called the antitype).… The correspondence is based on the premise that God controls history. There is, therefore, a providential pattern in the type that is repeated in the antitype. The characteristic features of an earlier (Old Testament) individual, experience, or relationship between God and humanity reappear later (New Testament) with a finality and sense of fulfillment not initially apparent. God is the one who molds and shapes the specific details of history so that they occur originally as types and are later recognized by New Testament authors as such. Typology clearly assumes the organic unity of the two testaments in the sense that the Old is a preparatory foreshadowing of which the New is its continuation and consummation.⁹

Examples of Typology

Paul’s reliance on typology in his teaching is easy to show. He reminds the church at Corinth about Israel’s Exodus from Egypt (1 Cor 10:1–5). Then he says, “And those things became types (Gk. typos) of us” (1 Cor 10:6 YLT). He says, “Now all these things happened to them as examples (Gk. typos), and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11).

In Paul’s reworked Jewish theology, the Exodus generation typified his own. Jesus had announced that the temple would soon fall (Matt 24:1–3, 34). This event would bring an end to all the preparatory ages necessary to establish the messianic (kingdom) age. The Exodus of Israel after the flesh (1 Cor 10:18) from Egypt portrayed events in Paul’s generation.¹⁰

This typological way of thinking is a fundamental part of Paul’s reworked theology. For him, God has changed the very definition of a Jew:

He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. (Rom 2:28–29)

Paul knows that circumcision—the mark of covenant membership—has changed. Here are some of his statements about it: “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God” (1 Cor 7:19); “In Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love” (Gal 5:6); “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation” (Gal 6:15 NKJV). In the messianic age, Christians “are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3). 

Paul says this circumcision of the heart now defines the Israel of God (Gal 6:16). In his letter to the Romans, he goes to great lengths to show how “all [this new] Israel shall be saved” (Rom 11:25) in the new age. Now that the Messiah (Jesus Christ) has come, God saves Israel after the flesh (1 Cor 10:18) the same way he saves Gentiles—by faith (cf. Rom 3:30; Acts 15:11). 

Fleshly Jewishness and the circumcision that defined it in the Mosaic age were types of spiritual Jewishness and circumcision in the messianic age. God imposed fleshly ordinances on his Old Testament people to serve as types of spiritual realities during the New Testament era (cf. Heb 9:8–10). Now, “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 14:17). Because of these truths, Paul says, “henceforth know we no man after the flesh” (2 Cor 5:16); he now views all men in terms of fulfilled typology.

Sequence of Typology

Paul’s typology requires a particular sequence of fulfillment: the natural (or fleshly) things of the Mosaic age preceded the spiritual things of the messianic age: “that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual” (1 Cor 15:46). The Apostle says this while discussing Adam as a type of Christ (1 Cor 15:45; cp. Rom 5:14), but then expands this principle: “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Cor 15:50). Israel after the flesh lived in God’s kingdom during the Mosaic age, but now Israel after the Spirit enjoys kingdom blessings.

Paul uses this sequence of natural fist-spiritual second in his letter to the Galatians:

Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. (Gal 4:21–31)

In Paul’s generation, Jesus was about to judge Israel after the flesh and destroy her temple. This would end the Mosaic age and mark the full transition to the messianic age (Matt 24:1–3, 34). Even as Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, the priests were “continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship” and the high priest was entering the Most Holy Place once a year. The writer of Hebrews says: “The Holy Spirit is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time (i.e., the Mosaic age)” (Heb 9:6–9 NASB). When that “outer tabernacle” fell in AD 70, the typical nation—Israel after the flesh—was cast out of God’s covenant presence, for she “shall not be heir with” the Israel “born after the Spirit.”

This sequence—natural first, then spiritual—is inviolable. 

Conclusion

Typology is a central element in Paul’s reworked theology of election. Mosaic-age Israel was a picture of messianic-age Israel; she had been the “church of God” and his “elect” nation. Now, Paul addresses the Thessalonians (and others) as “the church … which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 1:1) and says that he knows their “election of God” (1 Thess 1:4). His typology allowed him to speak this way after such a brief visit with them.

As we work our way through 1 Thessalonians, we will see Paul using typology in another area of his reworked Jewish theology; he will use what Brant Pitre calls “typological eschatology”¹¹ to explain prophetic events about to happen in his generation. He will use typology to continue linking the Old and New Testaments, showing neither is complete without the other.

But typology travels down a one-way street. Notice the flow of the following statements:

It was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens (i.e., the temple) should be purified with [animal sacrifices], but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another—He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. (Heb 9:23–26 NKJV)

Once the “things themselves” replace the “copies of the things,” we should not anticipate a return to the copies. Israel after the flesh was a powerful type: God meant for her past redemption, law service, animal sacrifices, wilderness journey, possession of the land, etc. to illustrate spiritual truths that exist in the messianic-age kingdom. But we should not desire to return to them.

The temptation to “draw back” to the Mosaic-age types was strong in the ancient church (cf. Heb 10:38–39) and is still present as some Christians look forward to a new temple and renewed animal sacrifices. Any theology that advocates such a return to the “copies” after the “things themselves” have arrived is headed in the wrong direction. We should leave Mt. Sinai, as Paul did after his last visit there, for we

have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. (Heb 12:22–24 NKJV)

Let us learn from the types, but never desire to return to them! Amen.

1. See Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020).
2. Introduction to 1 Thessalonians, The Church in Thessalonica, and Election and the Thessalonians.
3. N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 46.
4. The image in this post is The Summit of Mount Sinai by Mohammed Moussa. This file (here) is This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
5. N. T. Wright, “Paul, Arabia, and Elijah (Galatians 1:17),” JBL 115/4 (1996).
6. Geerhardus Vos, “Eschatology of the New Testament,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, vol. 2, ed. James Orr (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1956), 980.
7. See also Rogers, Inmillennialism, 266.
8. Wick Broomall, “Type, Typology,” in Baker’s Dictionary of Theology, eds. Everett F. Harrison, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Carl F. H. Henry (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975), 533–34.
9. Sam Storms, Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative (Fearn, Scotland: Mentor, 2013), 36–37.
10. For an extended discussion of this typology see Rogers, Inmillennialism, 265–80.
11. Brant James Pitre, Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 42.