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By James Jeffery

Author: Vern S. Poythress

Publisher: Crossway

Year: 2024

What do we do with the Old Testament?

Back in 2018, celebrity pastor Andy Stanley made headlines for a controversial statement he made about the Old Testament. In Irresistible: Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World (2018),Stanley called for Christians to ‘consider unhitching your teachings of what it means to follow Jesus from all things old covenant’ because it is a stumbling block to evangelism (Michael Kruger’s review of Stanley’s book is worth reading).

While biblically literate Christians will reject Stanley’s view of the Old Testament in principle, in practice, many Christians treat the Old Testament as if it were not relevant to Christians today. Whether it is due to the foreign social norms, ethical challenges regarding God’s judgments using Israel, or difficulty understanding passages, the common approach is to avoid wrestling with the Old Testament and its application to Christians today. Poythress recognised this challenge, and addressed it head-on with the publication of Biblical Typology: How the Old Testament Points to Christ, His Church, and the Consummation.

Whenever Vern S. Poythress publishes a work, I am eager to get my hands on it, because I know it will be filled with gold. Biblical Typologywas no exception!In this work, Poythress explains the relation of the Old and New Covenants, particularly concerning how the Old foreshadows the coming of the Messiah through ‘types.’

In many respects, Biblical Typologyis a book which explains (in more accessible terms!) what The Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 7.5 says regarding the relation of the Old and New Covenants:

“7.5 This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all fore-signifying Christ to come, which were for that time sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation, and is called the Old Testament.”

It sets forth a model for Christocentric preaching which seeks to mine Scripture (particularly the Old Testament) for all it is worth. This is what makes Biblical Typology such practical and precious resource.

Typology: A Key to Interpretation

Poythress suggests that the key to unlocking this relationship is a proper understanding of Biblical typology. This is because typology holds that all parts of Scripture are either pointing forward toward, or back to, the gospel of Jesus Christ as the central message of the Bible.

A ‘type’ is, according to Poythress, ‘a symbol specially designed by God to point forward to a fulfilment’ (p. 1). He writes that ‘A type…is a forward-pointing symbol’ (p. 108). Commonly, mediators function as types – such as animal sacrifices, which are ‘an expression of the divine-human relation…serv[ing] to establish, maintain, and mediate the relation of God to the people on whose behalf the sacrifice is offered’ (p. 97).

Types exist because God progressively reveals himself in the course of redemptive history. That is to say, ‘the meaning of a type is fully known by God from the beginning,’ though he progressively reveals more over time (p. 92). Eventually, the substance of types is revealed to be some aspect of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Poythress utilises a modified form of Clowney’s Triangle to illustrate his point (see diagram below from p. 44).

This triangle is enhanced and adapted by Poythress in chapter 17 (“Enhancements of Clowney’s Triangle”). He demonstrates the rich ways in which the triangle can be used to excavate rich truths and application from Scripture, particularly of benefit to those teaching and preaching in the pulpit.

Biblical typology prevents readers of the Bible from either overemphasising the discontinuity, or underestimating the discontinuity, between the Old and New Testaments. Types (shadows, images, foretastes) all point forward to their fulfilment and consummation in the Lord Jesus Christ. In the words of the apostle Paul, ‘…all the promises of God find their Yes in him’ (2 Corinthians 1:20). Indeed, when speaking with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, we read of Christ:

“…beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:25-27)”.

By consequence, to be consumed with a Biblical ‘type’ and miss Christ is to misinterpret the type. After all, every type was intended by God to be a shadow of the coming Messiah. One could make the argument that many heresies arise from an unbiblical understanding of typology. Poythress argues that countless theological conundrums can be resolved simply by properly understanding Biblical typology.

Examples of types throughout Scripture include the Levitical priesthood, the sacrificial system, the tabernacle, the global flood, the Davidic throne, and the temple. All anticipate Jesus Christ who is magnified as the subject and substance of the promises of God.

The Four Different Categories

This said, Poythress distinguishes between what he believes are the four categories for how the Old Testament relates to the New (1) analogies, 2) symbols, 3) types, and 4) prophecies). These categories overlap, so they must not be understood as separate categories. Nevertheless, they do have distinctive features. For instance, the bronze serpent on a staff in Numbers 21:4-9 is a symbol of a serpent. However, insofar as the snake on the staff heals those who look to it, it is a type of Christ that is to come (John 6:40). Prophecies, on the other hand, foretell events that are to come.

While all prophecies focus upon what Christ is doing in the world, not all are directly about his person and work. Thus, it would be improper to talk about prophecies as ‘types,’ particularly Christological types. Nevertheless, Poythress helpfully writes:

“It might seem frustrating not to have near, precise, perfectly controllable categories. But in one way it is actually an advantage. Being aware of limitations may encourage us to pay maximal attention to everything in the Bible, rather than simply subjecting each case to a general formula (“this is an analogy; this is a symbol; this is a type”)” (p. 125).

I found chapter 16 particularly insightful regarding the difference between legitimate and illegitimate allergisation. Poythress identifies the story of Hagar and Ishmael (quoted in Galatians 4:21-31) as an allegory, in the sense that it serves as a type of the Jews who at the time of the New Testament rejected Christ. They, like Ishmael, are children born not of the Spirit, but of the law, and therefore are under the same curse of the law.

Regarding allegory, Poythress writes:

“While allegorization is an illegitimate kind of interpretation, however, allegory itself can be a rich source of biblical truth. An allegory is a fictional narrative with a second level of meaning. Features within the narrative – characters, events, speeches, or props-symbolically signify something else, in another realm of meaning” (p. 130).

While there is much more to be said and appreciated about Biblical Typology (including Poythress’ discussion of analogies of the Trinity), what precedes are the principal gems I took away from reading it.

The Bottom Line

A proper Biblical typology is the key to understanding way the Bible fits together. Countless interpretive problems can be avoided by embracing the framework God has provided in His Word: Biblical typology. Proper understanding of the text must precede the faithful preaching of God’s Word, which is why it is so critical for Christians to have a sound understanding of the relation of the Old Testament to believers today.

This book was not always an easy read. I found Chapter 12 (“Three Complementary Perspectives on Meaning”) to be quite esoteric, and I struggled to grasp Poythress’ ideas. This said, it is a book worth buying, not just for pastors, but also laypeople. For those who are new Christians, or are just getting into reading theology, I would recommend Vaughan Roberts’ God’s Big Picture, and then O. Palmer Robertson’s Christ of the Covenants before tackling Biblical Typology.

This said, Biblical Typology is a book all Christians should eventually read. After all, as R.C. Sproul once said, “Everyone is a theologian.” Therefore, we should all seek to be responsible readers of the Bible, in order that we would encounter the Lord of glory to whom all Scripture points.