The Westminster Confession says that each passage has one meaning, not many, and that gets picked up on by lots of people who are suspicious of and do not like typological readings of Scripture. I will defer to wiser and more learned heads than mine as to exactly what that means (it does seem clearly aimed at the Medieval Four Fold Interpretation), but what I can say is something about how a number of the authors of that Confession, and those close to them actually did practice real, Biblical interpretation.

Have these opponents of typology ever read the Puritans? I often wonder. What I can say, is I have actually read the Puritans. Thousands and thousands of pages of them in a very leisurely manner. I spent a good ten years doing little else. Have they never read Manton, Goodwin, Owen, Howe, Flavel and, most accessible of all, Matthew Henry? Among these are the actual authors of the Westminster Confession, and those who were not, were very close to the authors (Owen and Goodwin being “the Atlases of Independency” were at the Assembly, listened to, and more respected than anybody; Manton was there; etc. etc.)  In these authors, typology is everywhere.

Before I knew better, or knew I was supposed to know better, I read and absorbed much of their typological interpretation, and I loved it. It turned my crank. It was interesting, fascinating. It was only later that I found people like B.B. Warfield and Joseph Addison Alexander, the great 19th century Princetonians who followed the Puritans. By the time we get to these men, typology is largely gone. They spent much of their lives trying to answer the “scientific” interpretation and exegesis of the German higher critics. Warfield is matchless in many ways. His defense of biblical authority is priceless. But when I read their pure exegesis, in some ways it lives on the same plane as the Germans.

The Bible is a four dimensional book. All other books from the ancient world are flat by comparison. The fourth dimension is time. Typology is what deals with that fourth dimension; it deals with time. One can trace a symbolic theme through the whole Bible, that is through time.

So, for example: The rainbow first appears after the flood. Then it later shows up repeatedly with God’s “Rainbow People” (the Hebrews, the Jews). The High Priest enters the Holy of Holies (which is filled with Light, because He is Light) wearing his breastplate, which has twelve precious stones symbolizing for the twelve tribes of Israel. When the Light passes through the breastplate, it makes what? It creates rainbows! God does not destroy the world after Israel comes into existence, because when God looks down, He sees Israel down there, and He sees rainbows. That is what happens when the High Priest entered the Most Holy Place on Yom Kippur. But whenever Israel camped in the wilderness they camped around the Tabernacle (which was a kind of Lighthouse), which was in the middle with four tribes on each side. The gems on the High Priest’s breastplate are symbolic of those tribes. What God could always see was His light passing through all of the tribes and thus creating a panoply of rainbows. The same was true in the time of the Temple, with relevant changes in geography.

Then the Church becomes the Rainbow people. The pure white light of God’s wisdom passes through the Church, and it makes rainbows visible to the Principalities and the Powers. The church is a “prism.” That is the “manifold” in Eph. 3:10 (NKJV). The church is a rainbow maker, and hence, God remembers and continues not to destroy the world.

Then, we find the rainbow is around God’s throne (Rev 4:3). That is the church around God’s throne, and again, God holds off his wrath toward the world, and is at peace with His people. Finally, the New Jerusalem has a wall made of precious stone that is all translucent. He is the Light within the City. Hence, His light passes through the walls of the City and makes rainbows that would be visible from above or from outer space. This is the Church present, and the Church in eschatological fulfillment.

That is just an illustration. Types deal with time. This is a very big reality. As C. H. Cochrane says in Christianity and Classical Culture, “A thousand years of classical thought could not deal or cope with time.” That incapacity is the final explanation for the collapse of Rome. (He is wrong: the book of Daniel explains that God was done with the Classical world since the Great King had come—but Cochrane gets the mechanics of it quite right). The Classical world could not cope with time, and St. Augustine could. Hence, the Christians won. The Bible deals with time as God’s creature, and typology is the map of time.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy says that the last 500 years (beginning about 1400 or maybe 1500) was the great epic of dealing with space. It was the time of global exploration, and science has been particularly concerned with space. Systematic Theology is more or less (not completely) a spatial construct. It is not primarily a temporal construct.  It is valuable, but not the only perspective. We have now conquered space. Biblical Theology is a temporal construct, and it deals with time by means of symbols and types.

When one can communicate globally in an instant way (as with any internet web site or talk list), then space has been conquered. It is no longer a great adventure. I can get on an airplane and land anywhere in Africa in a little more than a day. It used to take several months, and I very likely would die before I arrived. That adventure of space has been fulfilled.

Rosenstock-Huessy says that the next 500 years will be about conquering time. The Bible with Jesus Christ at the center is the map. What makes the temporal map readable is typology.

Rev. Richard Bledsoe is a chaplain at Boulder Community Hospital, Boulder, Colorado.