Figural Reading and the Christian Life: The Figural Life of the Church
The major point being made in the previous article—that the literal sense discloses various other senses, and yet the other senses are relatively ambiguous—is somewhat paradoxical. Because of this, speaking in terms of Scripture’s figure is preferred. Scripture has an enigmatic and mysterious character in that the historical economies of God which are spoken of (in the literal sense) figurally reveal some theological truth about the Triune God,¹ calling for our response in faith, hope, and love.² Sharp divisions of the various senses of a text may lead to error and abuse, yet the recognition of its various figural, providential meanings brings the text to life. In Christ, who is the theological subject matter of all Scripture, we participate in the divine realities literally figured in the biblical text.
With this basic hermeneutical framework in mind, we will turn to examine the role of figural interpretation within the life of the church. First, we will consider how God calls people to participate in figural realities covenantally. Next, we’ll turn our attention to the figural nature of the church’s liturgical elements, specifically the Word and sacraments. Finally, we’ll ponder the ways in which God uses the church to equip believers to live according to Scripture’s figures.
Covenantal and Figural Ecclesiology
A notable fact of Scripture’s providential history is that God always acts in covenant. His economic dealings with creation are enacted covenantally (e.g., covenants of works, covenants of grace—common or redemptive—etc.). Without delving into the specific elements of a biblical covenant, it is noteworthy that the divine covenants of Scripture are all ratified or renewed in the presence of God’s Spirit.³ This aspect should be noted when thinking about both the canon and God’s redemptive community. In both cases, the divine presence of God’s Spirit signifies a covenantal relationship. As such, the covenantal canon of Scripture is authoritative for the covenantal community.⁴ For believers in the New Covenant, then, the Scriptures serve as an “architectural model” and “community rule.”⁵ Thus, even the Old Testament carries import in the life and shape of the new covenant community, and not just New Testament passages explicitly pertaining to the church. In this assertion, there is an inherent affirmation of a rule of faith, that God is providentially speaking in his Son by the Spirit to the people of God in all places and all times. He is disclosing something about himself in the covenantal canon which is for the purpose of guiding and shaping the covenantal community. The canon of Scripture—with its figural realities disclosed in both testaments—is then able to serve as a guide to ecclesial polity.⁶
The covenantal nature of the canon and the New Covenant community means that even the Hebrew Scriptures play a role in the life and formation of the church—not just the New Testament. We should be careful not to build our doctrine of the church on the New Testament alone. Although the Old Testament is a disclosure of God’s covenantal dealings specifically with Israel—including any discontinuing stipulations—it is also in fact a figural disclosure of God speaking to his people of all times and places. Paul reminded the Christians in Corinth that the written history of Israel played a continuing role for the church, even if through the figures present in types and shadows. He says, “Now these things happened to them as an example (typikōs), but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end (telē) of the ages has come” (1 Cor 10:11).⁷ Providentially speaking, this means that God uses Scriptural figures or types to bring about the telos of the church, communion with him. As a reminder, this is what Radner means when he says that God’s manner of speaking through biblical history is a “divine mode of the present.” God providentially speaks today in and through figural history.
One of the goals of Scripture is that the figural history it communicates is to be actualized, or, as Irenaeus might say, recapitulated. In the believing community, where Christ is known and the Spirit is active and present, old historical realities take on new meaning. Mark Gignilliat asserts, “Where sacred canon, community of faith, and a confession of faith regarding the continued presence of God among his people come together in combustive force, there, by faith, the canon is operating according to its intended purposes.”⁸ The continued presence of God and his speaking by his Word draws the church into a deeper communion with him, and it ought to spur her on to holy living.
It must be recognized that the main interpretive obstacle for the church’s experience of figural realities in Scripture is the exceeding dissociation between the covenantal orders of Israel and the church. This is not to say that the Old Covenant is not a type and shadow of the New, but it is to say that the figural realities of the Old Covenant have a continuing significance in the New Covenant.⁹ We may affirm, then, that the church is a “new Israel,” although this claim is nowhere explicitly made in Scripture.¹⁰ The figural history of God’s people in the Old Testament is just as informative for the church as the New Testament, even in its shadowy form. Indeed, Dennis Johnson argues, “What happened to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Jonah and the prophets happened as it did because God had designed it to be a limited but true reflection (Hebrews calls it a ‘shadow’) of the future experience and redemptive work of Jesus Christ.”¹¹ In providence, the past, present, and future are one in the decree of God, which means that types, shadows, and even some future eschatological realities in Scripture are figurally experienced in the present. Thus, the church is to take up the Scriptures as a whole to be read, prayed, and preached, as well as to serve as a guide for communal, liturgical worship.
Liturgical Figure
Just as Collett claimed, the providential ordering of time means that time is necessarily ordered liturgically. If this is true of all time, it is certainly most true in the explicitly liturgical time of worship on the Lord’s Day. Of course, believers participate in Scripture’s figural realities in everyday life, but Alastair Roberts points out that “Christian liturgy is the place in which we encounter the musicality of the divine drama in an especially elevated form.”¹² The liturgical ordering of worship service prepares Christians for the rest of the week, setting the pace and tune of the Christian life.¹³ The church’s liturgy is a new, present setting in which Scripture’s figural history is recapitulated. In this sense, we can see figural, biblical patterns taking place in the context of worship.¹⁴
For the purposes of this article, only three liturgical elements will be considered: the written Word (publicly read and proclaimed) and the Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The other elements of liturgical worship, such as song or prayer, serve an important purpose—functionally and figurally—but the means of grace in preaching and the ordinances are arguably the most foundational elements of worship and are what demarcate believers as distinct from the world. Hence their “ordinary” nature as means of grace.
The Word¹⁵
In his first letter to Timothy, Paul wrote, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). Leaders of the church are to publicly proclaim the Word of God for the glory of God and the good of his people, for, as Paul would later write, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). It may seem odd to think that all Scripture is useful for those things, especially in light of the fact that Paul primarily had the Hebrew Scriptures in mind. However difficult it is to believe, even the genealogies, priestly laws, and imprecatory psalms have a purpose for Christians, not least in their communion with God.¹⁶ The written Word, finding its origin in Christ, is “capable of speaking a word to its own day as well as to a generation to come.”¹⁷ Not only does the Word have a continuing purpose for the church’s communion but it also serves an important missionary purpose as witness to the world of God’s incarnational presence.¹⁸ Seitz argues that this witness is “both in blessing and in judgement.”¹⁹ Christ himself implied as much in the parable of the sower (Mt 13:1–23; Mk 4:1– 20; Lk 8:4–15).
The public reading of Scripture may first of all be understood as just that—reading of the Word. This is doubtless an essential part of Christian worship. It can take many forms in the liturgical order, such as a call to worship, lectionary reading, or a law-gospel reading in a “guiltgrace-gratitude” format.²⁰ Some argue that simply reading of the Word is in itself a form of preaching.²¹ The Spirit works in the hearts of hearers to make the Word effectual. At the same time, the teaching and preaching of the Word is necessary beside it being plainly read, though not apart from it. To be sure, we may fail to understand our reading of Scripture unless someone guides us (Acts 8:30–31). Anyone can—and should—read the Word, but the preaching of the Word must be taken up in the church. Furthermore, when the preacher speaks, so also does God. Accordingly, the Second Helvetic Confession assesses preaching in the following way: “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.”²²
While God’s Word may be grasped figurally in the minds of readers and hearers, there is a need for preachers to take up the task of figural preaching. The imperative of figural preaching is made clear in that it focuses on what a text is doing, not just what it means.²³ Hear Radner on the matter:
Figural reading is not, in any case, a method of interpretation; it is an uncovering, and ‘being confronted,’ and then taken in. And the issue is not that the Bible is not the object of our varied gazes; rather, it is the subject. The Divine Word, the Bible, acts on us, not us on the Bible.²⁴
In this manner of speaking, preaching figurally may sound like allegory. But, as we have seen, this does not necessarily mean an escape from the literal, plain sense of the Word. Rather, the plain sense of Scripture is transformed and takes on new meaning in the nonliteral senses, and should be preached as such.²⁵ Only in this manner does the preaching of the Old Testament take on meaning in New Covenant realities.²⁶ Figurally preaching Christ—the means of our communion with God—and our participation in him from Old Testament texts means that listening believers partake in the redemption figured by him.²⁷
The Sacraments
If the proclamation of the Word of God verbally portrays figural realities in which the church participates, then the sacraments portray figural realities physically. The breaking of bread and pouring of wine in the Lord’s Supper and the washing of baptismal waters are symbolic acts by which one aligns his or her life with biblical realities, most notably a life in Christ. In providential terms, the sacraments are acts of the church partaking in the same symbolic acts as saints of ages past, reenacting Scriptural figures, and “constantly returning and restoring [them] to the time of Christ.”²⁸ Moreover, the signs of baptism and communion are symbols of God’s continual provision for his covenant people until the end of the age.²⁹ Below, the two sacramental ordinances will be explored as they relate to participation in figural history, drawing the people of God into a closer communion with him and not as mere memorial acts.
Baptism as an ordinance is a public, covenantal act of committing one’s life to God and his church, and symbolic of being rescued by God from sin, death, and destruction. Most obvious from the New Testament is that baptism is figural of God sparing Noah from the floodwaters of destruction (1 Pet 3:18–22) and of the passage of the Red Sea (1 Cor 10:1–2). In both accounts, God saved his covenant people from the waters of death and cleansed the earth from wickedness. Baptism becomes the new meaning of those historical figures.³⁰ For instance, in the passage of the Red Sea, the entire account is figurally realized in the believer’s life at baptism. In the words of Gregory of Nyssa:
Moreover, the history teaches us by this what kind of people they should be who come through the water, bringing nothing of the opposing army along as they emerge from the water… Those who pass through the mystical water in baptism must put to death in the water the whole phalanx of evil—such as covetousness, unbridled desire, rapacious thinking, the passion of conceit and arrogance, wild impulse, wrath, anger, malice, envy, and all such things. Since the passions naturally pursue our nature, we must put to death in the water both the base movements of the mind and the acts which issue from them… [A]fter we have drowned the whole Egyptian person (that is every form of evil) in the saving baptism we emerge alone, dragging along nothing foreign in our subsequent life. This is what we hear through the history, which says that in the same water the enemy and the friend are distinguished by death and life, the enemy being destroyed and the friend given life.³¹
In this figural understanding of baptism as a recapitulation of the Exodus, God is working in the church the same way he has worked in history. Consequently, baptism is a type of recreation in which the covenant people of God are set aside, delivered, and redeemed.³² This new meaning transforms the literal sense of those Hebrew passages, informing the church of their participation in baptism. While the New Testament doesn’t explicitly make all of these connections, it would be negligent to assume that Israel’s experience does not inform baptism. Figural participation in Israel’s history is true not just when the New Testament says or implies so, but also when it figures the life of Old Covenant saints and ultimately the life of Christ. Andrew Louth says as much: “And it is, of course, our baptism and the life of faith, hope, and love to which it commits us that provide our entrance into the life of Jesus.”³³
It is not just baptism which is figured in the passage of the Red Sea. The Lord’s Supper is also figured.³⁴ Other scriptural events figure the Lord’s Supper as well, such as the Passover, the giving of manna, the altar sacrifices, and more. These events can be understood as part of a network of figural relationships connected to the Lord’s Supper. In what follows, however, will be an explanation of the tree of life in Eden as figural of the Lord’s Supper. This view is extensively argued by Kline, but was also widely held among the fathers.³⁵ To what extent, then, is the tree of life a figure of the Lord’s Supper? To begin with, the biblical data of the creation account provides evidence that the tree is sacramental, as in it is a “seal of man’s participation in the glory of immortality,” proven both by the creational context and by the tree’s identification (the tree of life).³⁶ Furthermore, the tree of life reappears in Revelation (2:7; 22:2) as central to the state of eschatological glory in the consummation.³⁷ Tied to all of this is the fact that Christ is the embodiment of life (Jn 14:6; Col 3:4; 1 Cor 15:22) and those in union with him have everlasting life (Rom 5:21; Jn 11:25–26). Once more, Kline is illuminating:
And the prologue of John’s Gospel tells us that this redemptive identity and function of the Son of God stands in continuity with what was already true of him as the Logos in the beginning. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). The tree of life was, in a figure, the Logos, the life of man… The Son’s power to speak the vivifying word of eternal life to men (John 5:24) is a redemptive (resurrection) counterpart to the glory of “the Logos of life” who was with the Father in the beginning (1 John 1:1, 2) in his capacity as the life of man, and that was the reality symbolically represented by the tree of life. Placing the tree of life before man in the garden sanctuary, the Creator-Logos invited man, coming in the worthiness of a keeper of the covenant, to partake of the sacramental fruit: “Take, eat; this is my life, offered to you.³⁸
If Kline, Augustine, and other interpreters are correct here, there is great bearing on our doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. In essence, it means that the Supper is a figural ceremony in which we symbolically partake in the tree of life—which figures Christ—present in creation in consummation. All history is pointing to its telos, from beginning to end, and this is signified in the Lord’s Supper when we participate in the fruit of the tree of life, the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor 10:14–18). The Lord’s Supper, or commonly called “communion,” is symbolic of Christ at his death on the tree.³⁹ This tree of death became the tree of life, and Christ who hung upon that tree is the now freely-offered fruit by which we receive eternal life and communion with God, as is the goal of creation.⁴⁰
Figural Living
The claims above regarding the sacraments are but a small picture of the figural scope of the church’s liturgy. Much more can be said about baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the other liturgical elements of the church. But what has been presented should suffice to display that the life of the Christian is shaped by figural realities which find their place, properly speaking, in the church.⁴¹ Any consideration of the implications on the individual life must begin with ecclesiology. From there, we can proceed to elaborate on the way individual Christians live in light of the liturgical, figural ordering of Scripture and history.
When believers participate as a church in the figural ordering of worship through its liturgy, especially in the Word and sacraments, they begin to see how their own lives are figured in Scripture. As they read Scripture in private devotion, they experience the blessings of figural reading, helping them to live a life unto God.⁴² In providence, the events of the past come to the fore of the present. Thus, a figural lens helps Christians “understand his or her own world and its history as part of the much larger world depicted by the Bible, which subsumed it all within its grand narrative stretching from creation to consummation.”⁴³ As with the Word and sacraments, the key to private reading which shapes life is Jesus Christ and the guidance of his Spirit.⁴⁴ He is the key to interpretation. He is the key to history. He is the key—the cornerstone—to the Christian life. Christ is a sort of “master type” who is postfigured in the life of believers at all times and in all places.⁴⁵ In him alone do we participate in figural realities. In him alone do we participate in the glory of communion with God. These assertions are not meant to be abstract ramblings about Christ, the church, and worship, but are given, as Augustine has argued, for the Christian’s edification and the nurturing of virtue.⁴⁶
Conclusion: Faithful Interpreters
In concluding this article, it would be beneficial to reflect on the nature of the interpreter, and not just on the act of interpretation. Many would argue that a lack of concern for the right orientation of the interpreter is a major factor in the loss of figural, providential exegesis. After all, the manner in which we approach Scripture is a key component in getting to a potential meaning of a text. That being the case, this final section will be a brief investigation into the proper role of the reader or interpreter and a look at the intrinsic, coalescent bond between holy living and Holy Scripture.
Scripture’s Figure and the Reader
An error which figural reading seeks to avoid is that of eisegesis—to read something into a text. Rather, the goal is exegesis—to read the text and draw out its potential meanings. Believers should not seek to read themselves into a text, but should instead seek how they figurally participate in it. There is a subjective nature to interpretation in that readers seek to see how the providential world of Scripture informs their particular lives and callings. The previous discussion of God’s essence and decree may be helpful. God, in himself, and his decree are simple, immutable, and eternal. These are objective truths. However, we receive and apprehend God’s being and his decree differently—subjectively. In the same way, Scripture is objectively revealed by God, but there really is no such thing as objective interpretation, at least in the sense that there can only be one meaning of Scripture which applies to all people at all times. A completely objective way of interpreting Scripture ignores its covenantal, providential unfolding. It ignores how God deals with his people across time and different contexts. Allegations that figural reading’s subjective nature leads to a denial of meaning altogether comes from a place which denies the providential character of revelation.⁴⁷
An additional point to be made is that interpretation is absolutely tied to union with Christ. Communion with God, the telos of mankind, only happens through union with Christ, our only mediator (1 Tim 2:5; Eph 1:7–10). Thus, if the Scriptures are a revelation of God speaking in Christ, only those who know God by their union with Christ can come to a right interpretation of his Word. Because of this, exegesis becomes a form of participating in the divine life of God in Christ by the Spirit. Scriptural history is shaped after Jesus Christ, so those who are unified to him—as the body is to the head—are partakers in that history, to varying extents. All texts of Scripture, then, apply in some way to every Christian for their blessing and edification. The main point here is that only out of one’s union with Christ does growth in sanctification and holiness flow. And the holy life of a Christian is the seedbed for good interpretation.⁴⁸
What Figural Interpretation Demands
An assumption all Christians must have when interpreting Scripture is that the act of interpretation is an inherently moral task.⁴⁹ A sinful life breeds sinful interpretations, and sinful interpretations breed a sinful life. If we are to interpret Scripture in a truthful and holy manner, sin must be forsaken, and doctrinally so.⁵⁰ As a guide which focuses the reader’s interpretation on the coherent message of Scripture maintained by providence, the rule of faith is necessary to usher the reader toward communion with God in Christ. Union with Christ produces sanctification and virtue, and out of those comes readings of Scripture which bring readers into an even closer communion. It is a simultaneous relationship. Reading Scripture must be seen as a spiritual discipline rather than a methodology, and it must be approached by one who lives a spiritually disciplined life.⁵¹ In other words, Scripture requires a certain kind of person in order to be rightly interpreted, despite the occasional exception.
By seeking a spiritually disciplined interpretation, we can allow Scripture to do the work in us. After all, if Scripture is providential, then God is ensuring that his purposes will come to pass. So, we ought to turn to him in prayer and reliance on his Spirit in faith that his purposes shall indeed come to pass. This is part of what it means to have a faith seeking understanding. Out of a life of faith and faithful living (virtue) comes a right understanding of God’s Word— and vice versa.⁵²
It is believed that a figural reading of Scripture, leading to Christ by the Spirit and guided by the rule of faith, is the only mode of reading which leads to and is produced by faith. That is not to say that figural reading is an easy task. Far from it! There is an ascetic logic—a spiritually disciplined logic—to the Scriptures.⁵³ In other words, until we are bound to Christ at death, our holiness is never complete. We’re never quite “there.” A figural reading of Scripture recognizes this. It recognizes that we are in need of redemption and transformation. It recognizes that Scripture transforms us into who God desires us to be in Christ by his Spirit. It recognizes that, in providence, our faith will become sight, and that the love by which and for which we were designed will have no end. Until the Lord should come again, may the figural reading of Scripture give us a greater faith, hope, and love.
Notes:
Ward, “Symbolic Interpretation Is Most Useful,” 540–4l.
See Louth, Discerning the Mystery. 116. Cf. David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” Theology Today 37.1 (1980): 27–38, here 30–31. Also see Collett, who shows that the Quadriga’s three nonliteral senses correspond to the three theological virtues, Figural Reading, 32–33.
For instance, Meredith G. Kline argues that in light of the already-present elements of a covenant in the Garden, the presence of the Spirit of God in Genesis 1:2 is yet a further evidence that the creation account is a covenantal account, in Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 32.
See Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority, 2nd ed. (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1997), 75.
Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, 85. Kline later elaborates, “Inasmuch, then, as canonical Scripture is God’s house-building word, the community rule for his covenant people, the Reformation insistence is confirmed that the Scriptures form the church, and not vice versa,” 89.
See Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, 108–10.
Unless otherwise noted in this article, all Scripture references are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001).
Mark Gignilliat, Reading Scripture Canonically: Theological Instincts for Old Testament Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019), 49.
It ought to be mentioned that this article is written from an explicitly confessional Baptist perspective. Some would argue that Baptists overemphasize the discontinuity by not including infant children of believers in the New Covenant community. Yet, upholding distinct covenantal discontinuity is not inherently opposed to maintaining the figural continuity of the covenants. For instance, in contrast to the paedobaptist covenant theology expressed in the Westminster Confession, which understands the covenant of grace as continuous between the two testaments, the covenant theology of the London Baptist Confession distinguishes the testamental divide as primarily that of shadow and substance (or revealed and concluded, respectively). See Pascal Denault, The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison between Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist and Paedobaptist Federalism, 2nd ed. (Birmingham: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2017), 80–101.
See John David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 19, 228n1. Cf. Radner, Time and the Word, 11.
Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2007), 118.
Alastair J. Roberts, “A Musical Case for Typological Realism.” (Online essay published for the Theopolis Institute.,2016), 28, https://alastairadversaria.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/a-musical-case-fortypological-realism.pdf. Emphasis mine.
See D. G. Hart and John R. Meuther, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 100. “[W]orshipers leave in a posture fitting the shape of the rest of their week. They depart from worship with gratitude on their lips, expressing willingness to serve God in the vocations he has given to them. At the same time, God has the last word in worship when the minister pronounces the benediction and once again, believers hear the good news of God’s favor upon them in Christ.”
E.g., exodus, exile, etc. Regarding the exodus pattern, see Alastair J. Roberts and Andrew Wilson, Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption through Scripture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), 155–59. Regarding the exile pattern, see Radner, Time and the Word, 17–39.
What this section will propose—the necessity of figural preaching—is disputed by some of the standard evangelical texts on preaching and homiletics. However, it should be noted that the instinct of preachers to proclaim Scripture in a Christ-centered manner that addresses their particular congregations is in line with much of figural preaching, even if only in practice and not theory.
Psalm 1 is helpful to consider on this point as well, as the blessed man’s vitality comes from LORD’s torah (‘instruction’).
Collett, Figural Reading, 147.
“Christian speech, and more importantly, scriptural speech itself cannot be voiced, from a Christian point of view, outside a missionary context, outside the incarnational context of bringing to speech the descriptive witness of God’s presence, which is even there pressing towards communion in holiness.” Radner, Time and the Word, 200.
Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 157.
E.g., Hart and Meuther, With Reverence and Awe, 89–102.
This view was held by Richard Hooker. Radner, Time and the Word, 222–24.
Heinrich Bullinger, The Second Helvetic Confession, (Monergism, 2020), Chapter 2, Paragraph 3, https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/bullinger/SecondHelveticConfessionHeinrichBullinger.pdf. Bullinger elaborates, “Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.”
See Radner, Time and the Word, 274.
Radner, Time and the Word, 275. Emphasis original.
See Chase, 40 Questions about Typology and Allegory, 298. Also see Carter, who argues that all theology and exegesis should serve this task, Interpreting Scripture, 222.
See Johnson, Him We Proclaim, 243–45. “Thus our interpretation of Scripture and our proclamation of its message not only should examine each text in its immediate historical and literary contexts but also relate it to the comprehensive redemptive purpose of God and therefore to the structure of the rest of Scripture,” 245.
E.g., freedom from Babylonian captivity. “Jesus, then, the Son from heaven, ‘descends into corruption,’ into the place of ‘captivity’ that is Ezekiel’s, the other human prophets’, and ours. But because we are made one with him, Jesus can say to us ‘Come out!’—out of Babylon, out of captivity, out of the ‘storms of life,’ out of the fallen world, out of sin—and rise into forgiveness, sinlessness, immortality, glory.” Radner, Time and the Word, 26.
Roberts, “Musical Case for Typological Realism,” 25. “The regular practice of the Eucharist is like the rhythm of the Church’s heartbeat, constantly returning and restoring us to the time of Christ (similar things could be said about baptism, wherein we are baptized into the past events of Christ’s death and burial and sealed with the promise of future resurrection, incorporating our bodies into the temporal achievement of Christ).”
See Johnson, Him We Proclaim, 204.
See Dawson, Christian Figural Reading, 86. As a reminder, these interpretive jumps are not an escape from the literal sense. Referring to the passage of the Red Sea, Dawson says, “A figurative account of their relation depends on the correlation of the meaning of Exodus with baptism, in which baptism becomes the meaning of the Exodus, a meaning that is logically dependent on the Exodus itself… When such a meaning is regarded as the same as the representation, it is “literal” (i.e., when the meaning of the Exodus is just the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt). When the meaning is regarded in contrast to the representation, it is “nonliteral” (i.e., when one says that Baptism is the nonliteral meaning of vanquished sins). The upshot of this distinction is that the very possibility of figurative language is constituted by the difference inhering in the binary opposition between literality and nonliterality; a figural relation, on the other hand, avoids entering into that opposition altogether.” Emphasis original.
Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, ed. Richard J. Payne, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York; Mahwah: Paulist, 1978), 83–84. Cf. the baptismal sermon by Cyril of Jerusalem, in O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 79–82.
Baptism, along with the Exodus and Noah’s ark, may also be seen as a judicial declaration of righteousness before God and by God. See Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 216–17.
Louth, Discerning the Mystery, 125.
Roberts, Echoes of Exodus, 155–56.
E.g., Augustine of Hippo, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, 2 vols., trans. John Hammond Taylor, Ancient Christian Writers 42 (Mahwah: Paulist, 1982), 2:38–39.
Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 93. Cf. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, 2:38. “Man, then, had food in the other trees, but in the tree of life there was a sacrament.”
Questions may arise regarding the presence of the tree of the knowledge of good evil. Kline is helpful: “We are probably to assume then that man had previously been apprised of the symbolic import of the tree of life and accordingly realized that, though not it but the tree of knowledge was more specifically the forbidden tree in this special testing, nevertheless his partaking of the tree of life was reserved for an appropriate future time and purpose.” Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 94.
Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 95–96. Emphasis mine.
See Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms: 99–120, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Maria Boulding, Works of St. Augustine 19 (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2003), 40: “We too are fed from the Lord’s cross… when we eat his body.” It is worth pointing out that the Protestant plea that Christ is spiritually present in the Supper, as opposed to transubstantiated, is tied to hermeneutics. If a Roman Catholic, for example, claims that the Protestant view minimizes the actual presence of Christ in the sacrament, then spiritual (figural) readings of Scripture are no better.
“He is brought up to the tree and nailed to it—yet by the tree of life he restores us.” Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 88.
See Collett, Figural Reading, 162.
See final paragraph on Chase, 40 Questions about Typology and Allegory, 299.
Dawson, Christian Figural Reading, 143.
See Gignilliat, Reading Scripture Canonically, 56.
O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 82–84.
Steinmetz, “Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” 30.
“Benjamin Jowett’s infamous objection—if a text can mean more than one thing, it can mean anything— makes sense only in a world where biblical meaning is completely defined by its relationship to original historical context, but not in a world where authorial intention and historical context are part of a larger providential drama by which Scripture’s theological sense is rendered.” Collett, Figural Reading, 108.
“Vision must be sanctified if one is to see rather than be blinded by the mystery of God.” O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 139.
This was held widely by premodern interpreters. For instance, Origen, who was a stalwart exegete— regardless of one’s opinion—believed that interpretation is moral. For him, preparation to read Scripture operates in the moral sphere. Peter W. Martens. Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 164. Also see Radner, Time and the Word, 44–46.
Fowl argues that “truth is the first casualty of sin.” Theological Interpretation, 67. Martens argues similarly. “Those who came to the text with what were considered to be disfigured moral and doctrinal sensibilities were poorly disposed to uncover Scripture’s salutary message.” Peter W. Martens, “Ideal Interpreters,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, ed. Paul M. Blowers and Peter W. Martens. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2019), 149–65, here 159. Cf. O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 128.
See Martens on John Cassian. “Ideal Interpreters,” 155. Also see Radner, Time and the Word, 47.
See Athansius’ conclusion to On the Incarnation. Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation, trans. Penelope Lawson (England: Pantianos Classics, 1944), 87–88. “But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word.”
See O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 135–38.