Richard Ounsworth begins his Joshua Typology in the New Testament with an excellent discussion of what he calls “ontological” typology, which he handily summarizes in four points. Typology involves “correspondences between real historical events, personalities, institutions, etc. described in scripture,” a correspondence that is discerned (not created) by the reader of Scripture, where the correspondences are “hinted at with sufficient clarity for the spiritual reader to uncover them.”
This is not a matter of hermeneutical cleverness, though, since the correspondences recorded in Scripture are providentially arranged: “by God’s power salvation-history and its narration in scripture are moulded in order to offer images of his eternal plan of salvation.” In fact, these correspondences are “formative” insofar as “the stamping of the character of divine providence into human history creates the mould by which further correspondences are formed.” Events press themselves on future events, but heaven also impresses itself on earth (53).
All this, built up from the work of Danielou (From Shadows to Reality), Davidson (Typology in Scripture), and Auerbach’s notion of “figuration” (Mimesis), is, as I say, excellent. As is Ounsworth’s development of this paradigm in his study of Joshua typology, especially in the book of Hebrews. From an examination of the use of Psalm 95 and the conquest narratives in Hebrews 3-4, he concludes that Hebrews points to the fact that Joshua completes Moses’ work by leading the people into the land and that the writer is especially interested in emphasizing the correspondence between the name Joshua and the name of Jesus: “The completion of the Exodus typifies Jesus’s completion of his journey to the right hand of the throne of God, and the Joshua typology implies that Jesus may be able also to bring us with him” into that eternal Sabbath rest and enthronement (96).
Given the interlocking themes of chapters 3/4 and chapter 11, he argues that the absence of Joshua in the heroic Hebrews 11 is deliberately designed to “confound . . . expectations, and to make the audience realize the profound significance of the fact that the ‘apostle and high priest of our confession’ (3.1) is called Joshua.” Joshua is omitted to highlight the fact that faith involves discerning the promise to come rather than confusing it with the present fulfillment. The gap in the text serves a typological function.
Ounsworth also discerns the overlap of the typology of entry into land with priestly typology of Jesus’ entry beyond the veil into the heavenly sanctuary: “Hebrews presents Christ’s entry into the heavenly sanctuary as the fulfillment of the type presented by the entry of the Aaronic High Priest into the Holy of Holies,” but this also corresponds to the crossing of the Jordan into the rest of the land (165). The Jordan is the watery veil, the heavenly sanctuary the throne-land.
His argument would have been strengthened here if he had added another typological layer: Between Joshua and Joshua there is a third Joshua, associated both with an entry into the land and an entry beyond the veil: Joshua the high priest of the restoration. Jesus not only fulfills the conquest, not only is the greater Aaron entering a better sanctuary, but He is the priest of restoration, the priest who brings an end to exile from the presence of God.
That is one small flaw in this monograph. Another is Ounsworth’s failure to specify the historical setting for Hebrews. He engages the suggestion made by PM Eisenbaum that the letter was written in the aftermath of the destruction of the temple (178), arguing that even if this was the occasion for the letter it was not the occasion for the fulfillment of the type. For various reasons, though, it seems evident that Hebrews is written in the lead-up to the destruction of the temple, during a time when still-intact Judaism holds its attractions for persecuted early Christians. Why would anyone be tempted by Jewish priesthood, sacrifice, and sanctuary after 70 AD? That setting also lends some additional concreteness to the Joshua typology: The readers are actually about to make a transition from one condition, one world, to another. As Revelation puts it, the readers who persevere and overcome will join Jesus on His throne.
That discussion of dating comes in the context of Ounsworth’s effort to parry charges that typology is “supersessionist.” He offers this balanced and, in the current climate, courageous answer: “An authentic Christian figural reading of the OT is . . . bound to claim that it understands the scriptures of Israel in a qualitatively superior way to those who do not enjoy the privileged insight gained by knowledge of Christ. In this sense, it must necessarily be supersessionist, if that is what supersessionism is, and it is disingenuous to claim otherwise” (183). At the same time, it is not supersessionist in the sense of discarding the reality and importance of Hebrew cult or Israel’s history. How could it be? “It affirms the importance and legitimacy of both, precisely because they are modelled on Christ and because they offer the only divinely-sanctioned illustrations of the meaning of Christ. . . . Figural readings of the scriptures of Israel are for Christians not the manifestation of supersessionism, but the only alternative to it” (183).
Does typology destroy the law? Me genoito! It establishes the law.