On Biblical Typology and the Interpretation of Literature

Robert E. Reiter

College English, Vol. 30, No. 7. (Apr., 1969), pp. 562-571.

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 O n Biblical Typology and
the Interpretation of Literature
A RECURRIXG PHENOMESOX of literary
scholarship is the "discovery" of a con-
cept which, though well known to writ-
ers of the past and extremely (though
often subtlv) influential in their work,
became, with the passage of time, no
longer part of the intellectual milieu of
the present. A classic example of such
a "discovery" is A. 0. Lovejov's work
on "the Great Chain of ~ e i n ~ ;a" con-
cept so important for understanding
Shakespeare and Milton that it is now
part of every teacher's lectures on those
poets (and others), no matter whether
the teacher holds "the Great Chain of
Being" as a personal belief or not. An-
other example of a "discovery" in the
continuing effort to understand older
literature (i.e., pre-Enlightenment) in
something approaching the way its con-
temporary readers understood it, is bibli-
cal typology.
The current scholarlv interest in bib-
lical typology is part of the larger effort
of the past generation or so to compre-
hend sixteenth and seventeenth century
literature under the aspect of 'Christian
humanism" and to assimilate the "back-
ground" of those times. Although a
knowledge of biblical typology is also
crucial for understanding medieval lit-
erature, I shall confine my literary ex-
amples in this essay to seventeenth-cen-
tury authors.
As a tool of literarv interpretation,
a knowledge of biblicai tvpologv is but
Robert E . Reiter teacl~esEnglish at Boston Col-
lege and has n special interest in the critical
problems posed b y the historical relations be-
tween literature and theology.
one of many means toward understand-
ing older literature. Northrop Frve's la-
ment in A~zntomy of Criticism (prince-
ton, 1957, p. 14) that "biblical tvpology
is so dead a language now that most
readers, including scholars, cannot con-
strue the superficial meaning of any
poem which employs it," might not bk
as true now as a decade ago. But if, as
appears likely, scholars and critics are
going to continue their exploration of
biblical t v p o l o g ~in older English lit-
erature, it seems to me prudent for
teachers of that literature to understand
just what biblical tvpology tradition-
aIlv is and what it is not, to see why
p&ts of the Bible were generallv in-
terpreted in the typical sense, to be
rigorous in applying the term and con-
cept, and to grasp the wider implica-
tions of typological exegesis. What fol-
lows is thus largely an essay in definition
and explanation of a theological con-
cept for the use of teachers of literature.
When one academic discipline takes
over the terms and concepts of another
and e m ~ l o v sthem in a wav that is more
L J
than analogous, it is necessarv to be very
careful about definitions. or biblical
typology, therefore, it is to exegetes and
to historians of exe~esis D
that literarv
scholars must turn for their terms anh
concepts. I am aware, naturally, that in
disciplines other than biblical exegesis
"type" and "tvpology" have meanings
auite differentefram those discussed be-
1
low. I am concerned only with typology
in the Bible, not in linguistics, in folk-
lore, or in anything else. Nor am I con-
cerned with the legitimacy of using
typologv in contemporary biblical exe-
 ON BIBLICAL T Y P O L O G Y
gesis. My purposes are explanatory and
historical, not argumentative.
In traditional Christian biblical exege-
sis and scholarship, typology refers to
the historical correspondences in the
Bible between certain Old Testament
persons, events, or things (types) and
the similar New Testament persons,
events, or things (antitypes) which they
prefigure. This terminology is found in
the N e w Testament: Paul (Rom.
5: 14) calls Adam the type ( t u p ~ s )of
Christ, and Peter (I Pet. 2:4) calls Christ
the antitype (antitupos) of the rejected
stone (Ps. 118:22; cf. Matt. 21:42-44,
Acts 4:11, and Rom. 9 : 3 3 ) . The most
common synonym for type in Western
exegesis is "figure" (from figura).
Though the terms can be used inter-
changeably, exegetical usage prefers
"type." The Old Testament rypes are
real, historical persons, events, or things.
T h e Old Testament is taken seriously,
and the types are not just types, but have
their own validity and existence inde-
pendent of their antitype. Indeed, onlv if
the types are valid (i.e., historical), can
the antitypes be valid. The Old Testa-
ment type, however, commonly typifies
Christ only in certain and rather re-
stricted aspects. Thus Job is a type of
Christ in his sufferings, not in everything
that he did or was. (Whether the Old
Testament persons, events, or things
were really "historical" in the modern
sense is irrelevant. One must assume-or
act "as if"-they were historical because
that is a given of typology.)
Biblical typology can be a way of
exegesis or a way of writing. Both de-
rive from a specific view of history
and from a specific attitude toward the
Old Testament. The N e w Testament au-
thors do not look upon history, specif-
ically Israel's history, as something that
happened once long ago with no further
relevance, nor as a series of endlessly re-
curring cycles. History, rather, is mean-
ingful, orderly, and progressive. Events
happened by divine providence, and al-
563
though the full salvific meaning of an
event or person may not be apparent to
contemporaries, this meaning can be
understood bv later men because the
meaning has been given by God. The
theological principle underlving this
view is the Old Testament concept of
God as a living God, one who can and
does and did act decisivelv in time for
the assistance of the peoplk he made his
own. The greatest intervention in history
bv the God of Israel was the Exodus
from Egypt, which, along with the ex-
periences of the forty years in the desert,
formed the most meaningful part of the
historical basis of the Old Testament
religion. Israel remembered the Exodus as
a precise historical event in which God
manifested his power and his protection.
It is this view of history, which gave
meaning to the Exodus and to all of
Israel's history, that the New Testament
writers also accepted.
The call of Abraham, the Exodus,
and the election of David, all of them de-
cisive interventions in history and like-
wise treasured memories in Israel, made
it apparent that God works in historv,
in real time, for his people. The promise
of a Messiah, which took on greater co-
gency and force after the Exile, would
be fulfilled in time with a similarly his-
torical event. Now the early Christians,
especially most N e w Testament authors,
were brought up as Jews and therefore
interpreted their history as pointing to
and awaiting the Messiah. But since these
Christians now believed that the Messiah
had come, the N e w Testament looks
upon Israel's history as God's prefigure-
ment of the one historical event that
gives everything its meaning. History, in
the New Testament view, progresses
from the beginnings toward Christ and
thence toward the Second Coming. The
New Testament, in short, took over Old
Testament history and made it part of
its own redemptive history.
The most obvious evidence that the
New Testament writers accepted Old
564 COLLEGE ENGLISH
Testament history and prophecy as pre-
figuring Christ is to be found in the
wav they handle certain Old Testament
events ;nd prophecies. By announcing
that these prophecies had been fulfilled
in Jesus of Nazareth, and b v their inter-
pretation of certain events '(notably the
Exodus), the N e w Testament writers set
forth that svstem of correspondences be-
tween the Testaments that wre call typol-
0gy.
T o see how the N e w Testament writ-
ers related the N e w to the Old, it might
be helpful here to look briefly at just one
Old Testament event, with its special
meaning, that is interpreted typological-
Iv in the N e w Testament. Since the Exo-
dus was so important, some Old Testa-
ment writers saw in it an analogue, a
foreshadowing, of a still more perfect
liberation which God had in store for
Israel. A clear example of this specialized
kind of Old Testament writing, which
has been called "recapitulative proph-
ecy," is found in Jeremiah (31: 31-34):
; his infancv narrative, Matthew ex-
Behold, the days are coming, says the
Lord, when I will make a new cove-
nant with the house of Israel and the
house of Judah, not like the covenant
which I made with their fathers when
I took them by the hand to bring them
out of the land of Egypt. . . . But this
is the covenant which I will make . . . I
will put my law within them, and I
will write it upon their hearts; and I
will be their God, and they shall be my
people. . . . I will forgive their iniquity,
and I will remember their sin no more.
(RSV)
T h e Epistle to the Hebrews cites these
verses from Jeremiah to announce that
the N e w Covenant of Christ has been
established (Heb. 8: 8-1 3), and interprets
Jeremiah as ~ r o ~ h e s y i nthe
g N e w Cove-
nant of Christ. Thus the author of He-
brews perceives a correspondence be-
tween the Covenant of Sinai and the
N e w Covenant of Jesus Christ. T h e im-
portant point here is not just that the
"prophecy" of Jeremiah has been ful-
filled, but that the Old Covenant of
Sinai was interpreted as a type, a pre-
figuring, a shadowv hint of a greater
Covenant to come. .
For the N e w Testament writers, the
life, death, and resurrection of Christ
have the same determining importance
for historv that the Exodus had for the
Old ~ e s t a m e n writers.
t Bv seeing in the
life and works of Jesus certain corres-
pondences to, and similarities with, Is-
rael's historv, the N e w Testament writ-
ers developed typological writing and
typological exegesis. Typological writing
here refers to the way some N e w Testa-
ment writers apparently deliberately as-
similated events in the life of ~ e s b sto
events of the Old Testament.
T h e clearest example of this kind of
typological writing is in the Gospel of
Matthew, which was probablv written
for an audience of Jewish Christians,
earl\? converts from Judaism.
1
plicitlv stresses-the fulfillment of certain
obviobs prophecies (I1 Sam. 7: 12-16; Isa.
7: 14; and Mic. 5:2). This is not typol-
ogy. But when Matthew tells of the flight
into Egvpt, an incident found only in
his Gospel, and says that it fulfills the
prophecv of Hosea 11: 1, "out of Egypt
I called m v son," he begins to assimilate
the life o f - ~ e s u sto the history of Israel's
deliverance from Egypt in fhe Exodus.
Jesus' first public appearance in Matthew
is his baptism. Having come out of
Egypt, Jesus passes through water and
God is manifcsted. Jesus then undergoes
the fortv-day fast, corresponding to the
forty years .in the desert (Exod. 16:35)
and to the forty days that Moses spent
on the mountain (Exod. 24: 18; 34: 28).
After the fast, Jesus is tempted by Satan,
whom he refutes out of the Old Law
of Sinai. These passages lead up to the
Sermon on rhe ,l4ount, in which Jesus
delivers the N e w Law from a mountain.
T h e correspondence of events is unmis-
takable, if w e grasp the typology at
 ON BIBLICAL TYPOLOGY
work. T h e Sermon on the Mount is the
N e w Law, and the discourse, after the
introductory beatitudes, begins with
"Think not that I have come to abolish
the law and the prophets; I have come
not to abolish them but to fulfill them."
Jesus, the prophet promised to Moses
and of whom Moses was a tvpe (Deut.
18:18), proclaims the N e w ~ a w (Heb.
8:8-13 and Jer. 31:31) after the new
Exodus announced to Hosea and Isaiah.
Moses and the Exodus are the principal
Old Testament figures that Matthew
draws on for his typology. It is through
the implicit references to them that we
can suggest that Matthew saw certain
events in the early life of Jesus as corres-
ponding to Israel's experience in the Exo-
dus and that he understood the Sermon
on the Mount to be the New Testa-
ment counterpart of the giving of the
Law from Sinai. For Matthew, Jesus
thus both continues and brings to per-
fection the history of Israel.
Another Exodus theme that appears
in the N e w Testament is the Paschal
lamb (Exod. 12), which can be con-
flated with the comparison of the Suf-
fering Servant to a sheep in Isaiah 53.
St. Paul emphasizes the correspondence
between the Paschal Lamb and Christ,
"Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacri-
ficed" (I Cor. 5:7). The blood of the
Paschal Lamb spared the Israelites from
the death of the first born in Egypt,
and so roo it is the blood of Christ,
the new Paschal victim, that saves the
believers, who are the new Israel (I Cor.
1 1 : 25; Matt. 26:28; Mark 14: 23-24; Rev.
5). Just as the N e w Testament writers
interpreted the death of Jesus in the
light of the Suffering Servant of Deu-
tero-Isaiah, so too they interpreted the
death of Jesus as the fulfillment of what
they believed to be implicit in the Pas-
chal victim of Exodus 12. It is assuredly
not without typological significance that
Christ, the new Paschal Lamb, estab-
lished a N e w Covenant in his blood and
the new commemorative ritual meal as
565
a glimax and complement t o the Paschal
meal of the Old Law (Matt. 26: 17-28;
Mark 14: 12-25; Luke 22: 7-20; I Cor. 11:
23-25). Christ, therefore, was considered
the reality of which the Paschal Lamb
was the type.
In addition to considering some as-
pects of certain Old Testament events
and things as types of Christ, some per-
sons of the Old Testament, likewise in
certain and limited aspects, were under-
stood to be types of Christ. It is the
persons, of course, who figure most
prominently in biblical allusions in poet-
ry of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. These persons were connected
with Jesus in the following ways: Adam,
in that, like Christ, he was head of the
race (Rom. 5: 14; I Cor. 15:45,47); Abel,
in that he was a just man (Matt. 23: 35)
who offered an acceptable sacrifice
(Gen. 4:4, 5, 10; Heb. 11:4; Heb. 12:24);
Noah, in that he preached repentance,
mediated a covenant between God and
man (Gen. 9:8-17; Heb. 11:7), and built
an ark (Gen. 6: 14), which itself was a
type of baptism (I Pet. 3:20-2 1); Mel-
chizedek, in that he was a high priest
who offered sacrifice of bread and wine,
King of Salem (peace), and without gen-
eration (Gen. 14: 18; Heb. 6: 20-7: 17);
Moses, in that he proclaimed a covenant
(Exod. 35: 1-2; Matt. 5-7 and 26:26-28),
gave the people bread (manna) to eat
(Exod. 16:4; John 6) and water to drink
(Exod. 17:6; John 7:37-38), and estab-
lished a sacrifice (Exod. 24:6-8; Matt.
26:28; Heb. 9: 11-28); David, in that he
was born in Bethlehem (I Sam. 16: 1;
Matt. 2:1), was a king ( I Sam. 16:13;
I1 Sam. 5: 12; Matt. 27: l l ) , and was per-
secuted (Pss. 3, 22, 109; Matt. 27:27-33);
and Jonah, in that he was buried three
days (Jon. 2: 1; Matt. 12:39-40). Of these
tvpes, Jesus applied only Jonah to him-
sklf. In the Pauline corpus, Adam, Mel-
chizedek, and Moses are the most impor-
tant personal types of Christ.
The matrix of the scriptural devel-
opment of typology is thus found in the
566 COLLEGE ENGLZSH
New Testament itself. Various passages
in the Old Testament announced a new
Exodus and a new Covenant. These writ-
ings were never interpreted to mean that
the events of the Exodus or of the
Covenant would occur again just as they
had before, as if the prophet were sug-
gesting a cyclical movement. Rather, in
the course of progressing revelation (see
Heb. 1:l-2 and I Pet. 1:20), it was re-
vealed to certain men that God would
act once more on Israel's behalf in a
way similar to that in which he had
acted years before. Likewise, the lives
and actions of certain Old Testament
men were seen to have borne a special
meaning in relation to the life and actions
of Christ. T h e New Testament authors,
particularlv Matthew, John, and Paul,
apparently diligentlv searched the Scrip-
tures for passages relevant to the life of
the Messiah, found there the recapitula-
tive prophecies and the men and events
of Israel's historv, and incorporated them
into their understanding of Jesus. It is
thus in the hTew Testament itself, rather
than in Philo Judaeus or in rabbinic
exegesis, that we find the roots of the
typologv that was so deeply to influence
theolog$ and literature.
~ y ~ d l nowo ~ vmust be distinguished
from the fulfillment of prophecy and
from allegory, which are very different
things. ~ r o ~ h e cis vanother term subject
to confusion, though the root meaning of
"one who speaks for God to men" is
fundamental to all senses of the word.
I have alreadv discussed "recapitulative
prophecy." he meaning of prophecv
I am concerned with now is the common
one of looking into the future and in
some way making predictions about it.
An illustration of the difference between
fulfillment of prophecv and true tvpol-
ogy can be drawn from a consideiation
of hlicah 5:2: "But you, 0 Bethlehem
Ephrathah, who are little to be among
the clans of Judah, from you shall come
forth for me one who is to be ruler in
Israel, whose origin is from of old, from
ancient days." These words were under-
stood to mean that the Messiah was to
be born in Bethlehem, and in his in-
fancy narrative Matthew refers to this
verse (Aqatt. 2:4-7). T h e birth of Jesus
in Bethlehem is considered to be the
fulfillment of Micah's words. Now, in an
exegesis concerned with typology, the
fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem
has a special significance because it was
also the birthplace of King David (I
Sam. 16: 1 ) . The angel's words to the
shepherds call attention to this corre-
spondence by referring to Bethlehem as
"the city of- avid" (Luke 2: 11). David
and ~ e s u stherefore,
, are linked by the his-
torical place of their birth. It is through
real occurrences in time and place that
David and Jesus are typologically con-
nected. This is only one aspect of the
correspondences between the two; upon
others taken together there is built up
the notion of David the King as a type
of Christ the King. (In Milton's ~ a r a -
dise Regained the type of Christ most
frequently mentioned is King David.
Milton makes both Satan and Jesus to
be verv much aware of the connection.)
The &egesis of prophecy, then, looks
for a fact that will constitute its ful-
fillment; typologv, on the other hand,
discovers fhat a fact of the past and a
fact of the present so resemble each
other that a comtemplation of the cor-
respondence deepens one's understand-
ing of both facts.
llodern exegetes, as well as historians
of exegesis, of dogma, and of literature
insist that tvpology not be confused with
allegory. ~ l l e ~ o rasy here used means
an interpretation given t o passages of
Scripture over and above their literal
meaning and apparently quite indepen-
dent of the intention of the original
author. Allegorical interpretation in this
sense, therefore, is not to be identified
with allegory in the works or explication
of a poet such as Edmund Spenser, for
he consciously intended the allegory.
Tvpologv, it has been noted, is rooted
 O N BIBLICAL T Y P O L O G Y
in history, depends on history, and is
consequently faithful to it. Allegory, on
the other hand, uses history only as a
starting point for an interpretation suited
to the exegete's temper, even though
orthodox exegetical theory always main-
tained the primacy of the literal level.
In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul
presents an interpretation of the story
of Abraham and his two wives and two
sons which he calls an allegorv (Gal.
4:24). Sarah and Hagar are quite arbi-
trarilv said to represent the two dis-
pensations. Although two historical per-
sons are made to represent two historical
covenants, the historicitv of both mem-
bers of the allegory is n o t the basis of
the relationship. The method was used
on the same incidents by Philo Judaeus,
who went even furthe; in disregarding
historv bv making Sarah represent virtue
and kagar, education. Abraham, who
represents the mind, has virtue for his
wife and culture for his concubine! For
Philo and for many Fathers of the
Church, particularly those associated
with Alexandria, the persons, places, or
events in a passage to be interpreted be-
came chiefly the jumping-off place for
an interpretation which tends to ignore
or dispense with the historicity or lit-
eral level of the passage.
Paul's allegorical interpretation of
Sarah and Hagar should be contrasted
with his typological interpretation
(Rom. 5: 12-2 1) of Adam's role. T h e con-
trast clarifies the difference between the
two methods of exegesis. T h e correspon-
dence that Paul sets up in Romans be-
tween Adam and Christ is so grounded
in the historical facts about each that the
elimination of any of these facts de-
molishes the relation between the two
persons. Adam is a type of Christ, ac-
cording t o Paul, in his oneness. Upon
him, as head of the race at the time of
temptation, depended the future of man-
kind; so too upon Christ, the new h a d
of the race (Eph. 1: 10 and Col. 1: 15-20)
at the time of temptation, the future of
man depended. The one man (Adam)
making such an action is the type of the
other (Jesus). But Adam's disobedience
and sin are not types of Christ's obedi-
ence and justice; this is rnanifestlv im-
possible; for the amitype is always great-
er than the tvpe. From the typology of
Adam and ~ h r i s texplained 'in Romans
5 Milton derived the whole concept of
using the temptations in the desert for
Paradise Regained.
For Paul's exegesis in Romans 5, as
always in typology, history is the kev-
stone; in allegory, historv (a
event, or thing) is the pdint of depar-
ture for the exegete's fancies. This in-
sistence upon history is possibly the
richest, most val~able'as~ect of typolog-
ical exegesis. Bv using a typological
exegesis, the ~ e Testament
w writers and
the Fathers of the Church preserved
Old Testament history and rendered the
world an enormous service, for an al-
legorized Old Testament would soon
have been forgotten as worthless, but
an Old Testament whose historv was
preserved and taken seriously rkmains
with Christians today.
In the vears after the close of the
canon of ;he New Testament, tvpologi-
cal exegesis was widely applied by those
theologians and exegetes whom we call
the Fathers of the Church. In a sense,
tvpological exegesis is a compromise be-
tween the extremes of allegorization and
literalism in Christian exegesis of the Old
Testament. T h e great theological prob-
lem of the second century was the Old
Testament, and out of -the exegetical
battles of that period typology emerged
as the solution to the problem. That is
why some parts of the Bible have long
been taken in a typical sense. Without
getting bogged down in the heresies and
developing orthodoxies of the early
Church, I shall briefly sketch the prob-
lem and show how typologv answered it.
The earliest apostolic preachings were
delivered to Jews and included a sum-
marv of Israel's religious history as lead-
568 COLLEGE ENGLISH
ing up to Jesus (Acts 2: 14-24; 3: 12-16;
7:2-53; 13:16-41). But Gentiles could
not understand that part of the preaching,
nor did it seem important, though it was
obviously part of the Gospel message.
Israel's religious history could not mean
to a Greek slave in Rome what it meant
to Saul of Tarsus. T o preserve this
feature of the apostolic preaching, there-
fore, while at the same time caring for
the Gentiles who had never heard of
kloses or the Exodus, some way had to
be found to keep the Old Testament but
not the full rigor of the Law.
Various solutions were offered. T h e
most radical was that of Marcion, a
heretic of the earlv part of the second
century, who interpreted the Old Testa-
ment iiterallv and found it completely
opposed to the Gospel. H e accepted no
allegorical or typological interpretation
of the Old Testament. Marcion held an
extreme anti-Judaism which rejected the
Old Testament and set up instead a
truncated New Testament canon. includ-
ing only Luke and ten Pauline epistles,
from all of which he excised, according
to his light, the "Judaizing" passages.
Marcion's rejection of the Old Testament,
in effect, denied the teaching that Jesus
was the Jewish Messiah and thus the cul-
mination of Israel's religious historv.
\\'hereas Marcion rejected the Old
Testament as fruitless for Christians, the
Gnostics accepted it, but wholehearted-
Iv allegorized it. There is no one Gnostic
&stem and Gnostics disagreed among
themselves. T h e v generally claimed the
existence of a secret tradkion of teach-
ings handed down to them from the
Apostles-a tradition, however, which
was at variance with and superior to
the open tradition of the Church. N o
Gnostic sect ever accepted the Old Tes-
tament and the Mosaic Law as the work
of the same good God who in the New
Testament is the Father of Jesus. T h e
Old Testament was therefore allegorized
on the basis of an exceedingly intricate
collection of ideas and fancies.
Opposed from its very beginnings to
any wholesale rejection of the Old Testa-
ment, to any attempt at separating the
God of Abraham from the God of Jesus,
and to any secret tradition of teachings
onlv for an elite, the Church avoided
interpreting the Old Testament in either
a slavishlv literal or a wildly allegorical
fashion by employing typology, which
bv treating the men and events of the
o l d Testament as tvpes of Christ and
his Church, preserved both the historical
realitv of the Old Testament and the
perfection of the New. Typology
was the Church's answer to both ex-
tremes, to Alarcion and to the Gnostics.
In the study of literature of the six-
teenth and seGenteenth centuries, partic-
ularlv religious verse, the literary critic
empiow typology at second remove from
the k h d of tvpology discussed above.
That exegetes of both the Reformed and
Roman Churches of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries employed typology
in their writings is unquestioned. All one
has to do is to begin reading some of the
Scripture commentaries or sermons of
the period. John Donne, for instance,
preached at Lincoln's Inn a sermon on
Psalm 38:4 ("For mine iniquities are gone
over mine head: as an heavv burden they
are too heavv for me") and interpreted
the text thus; "First then, all these things
are literally spoken of Dnuid; By appli-
cation, of us; and by figure, of Christ.
Historically, David; morally, we, Typi-
cally, Christ is the subject of this text"
(Sermons, ed. Potter and Simpson, 11,
97).
The religious poets of the period-
Donne, Milton, Herbert-would allude
to an Old Testament person or event and
expect the reader to grasp the typologi-
cal significance of the person or event
in the traditional typological interpreta-
tion. T h e classic example of this is per-
haps George Herbert's "The Sacrifice."
A lack of knowledge of the typological
sense of Scripture led William Empson
to say some very silly things about the
 O N BIBLICAL T Y P O L O G Y
poem, as Rosemond Tuve pointed out in
detail in her Reading of George Herbert.
Only when a literary critic under-
stands. the traditional tvpological inter-
pretation of Scripture can he grasp the
full implications of, say, the opening
lines of Paradise Regained:
I who ere while the happy Garden sung,
By one mans disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
Bv one mans firm obedience fully tri'd
Through all temptation, and the Tempt-
er foil'd
In all his wiles, defeated and repuls't,
And Eden rais'd in the wast Wilderness.
With these lines must be compared the
opening of Paradise Lost:
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the
Fruit
Of the Forbidden Tree, whose mortal
tast
Brought Death into the World, and all
our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat.
Though neither is mentioned bv name,
Adam and Christ are obviously ;he prin-
cipal figures in the poems. A t the be-
ginning of Paradise Regained Milton
directly recalls to the reader his previous
poem, states that this new poem is about
"Recover'd Paradise," and says that the
lost happy garden is to be recovered "by
one mans firm obedience fully tri'd/
Through all temptation." T h e disobedi-
ence of Adam is set over against the
obedience of Christ. W h a t one lost the
other recovers. T h e comparison of Adam
and Christ in terms of "one," and the
contrast of their actions (disobedience
and obedience) and of the results of these
actions (loss of Eden and recovered
Paradise) include the points of compari-
son and contrast that Paul employed in
Romans 5 to show that Adam was a type
of Christ.
These opening lines state the theme
569
of Paradise Regained, ("Recovered Para-
dise to all mankind,/By one mans firm
obedience"), the persons ("one man"
and "the Tempter"), the action ("all
temptation, and the Tempter foil'd"),
and the consequences ("the Tempter
. . . defeated . . . and Eden rais'd in the
wast wilderness."). It is obvious simply
from the words used in the first seven
lines of Paradise Regained that the read-
er is to recall the fifth chapter of Romans
and Paul's exposition there of the rela-
tionship between Adam and Christ.
Therefore it can be said that hlilton
builds the opening lines of Paradise Re-
gained upon the theology of Romans.
Adam's t\7pological relation to Christ
and the similarly typological relation of
the two series of temptations allowed
Milton to take the incidents of Christ's
temptations as the subject of his poem
about recovered paradise. If we were
mentally to remove the Adamic typology
from Paradise Regained, all that would
be left would be a longish narrative about
once incident in Christ's life, not a poem
about paradise regained. T o make his
poem bear the weight of the salvific
content that he needed, Milton deliber-
ately constructed his opening lines on
Romans 5, thus recalling to the alert
reader the theme (life and grace) and the
typology of that passage. The reason
that Milton is able to attach so much
meaning to Christ's defeat of Satan in
the wilderness is the tvpological relation-
ship between Adam and Christ. Only
because of the typologv can the poem
truly be called Paradise .~egained.
It is not that the critic interprets
Paradise R e g a i ~ e d or any other poem
typologically, but that he knows the
traditional typological meaning of the
biblical persons or allusions in the poem.
Sound scholarly methodology certainly
demands demonstration that the poet in
question was familiar with typological
interpretation (it is hard to find one of
the older poets who was not) and that
the particular biblical person or allusion
5 70 COLLEGE ENGLlSH
was interpreted typologically in com-
mentaries and other exegetical works
that the poet had read o r could reason-
ablv be assumed to have read. F o r the
~ n g l i s hreligious poets and preachers of
the seventeenth century these demonstra-
tions are easily done. Nevertheless, the
literarv critic should be certain that
when .he says "type" or "typology" he
means it in the strict sense e m ~ l o v e db v
exegetes and is not using it as a'vaiiant df
allegory, for, as I have been at pains t o
demonstrate, allegory and tvpology are
verv different.
1t might seem from the foregoing ex-
planation of biblical typologv, and par-
ticularlv the emphasis o n the historicitv
of o l d Testament persons (especially
a t i vofe anv
Adam), that I am deliberatelv espousing
a fundamentalist view of thk Bible and
a particular philosophy of histom and
that those views must be accepted b y
one using typology to interpret liter-
ature. O f course, this is not so. Modern
biblical studies have made it impossible
for us t o read the Bible, especially Gene-
sis, in the same w a v that St. Paul, or the
Appendix
Rather than load the foregoing essay with
a mass of documentation, I offer here a
list of books which discuss in greater
detail various aspects of biblical typology
and the interpretation of literature and
which I used in writing this essay. I have
starred those items which I find most use-
ful to teachers and students of literature.
I. Classic works of typological exegesis.
(All these are available in various edi-
tions and translations.)
Augustine. T h e City of God.
, E7zrhiridion on Faith, Hope,
and Charity.
. T h e First Catechetical Instruc-
tion. (De Catechizandibus Rudibus.)
-- . *On Christian Doctrine.
. Reply
. . to Faustus the Mani-
chaean.
Calvin, John. Commentasies on the Epistle
of Paul the Apostle to the Romans.
Church Fathers, o r Milton's contempo-
raries did. O n the one hand, one has t o
be aware of modern biblical scholarship-
much of which, curiously enough, em-
ploys typology as a w a y of understand-
ing what the N e w Testament writers
were doing-and on the other, t o realize
that the Higher Criticism and its suc-
cessors have nothing to d o with the w a y
John Donne read Exodus. Nevertheless,
as teachers and scholars. Adam or Noah
can be just as much a type of Christ to
us in the interpretation of literature as
he was to Paul, to Augustine, or to Mil-
ton, no matter h o w much w e might per-
sonally dissent from the whole theory.
~ e n c using
e tvpology t o understand old-
e r literature i s not the ~ r e r oa ~
one intellectual or reli'gious grouping of
teachers o r scholars, any more than it
would be necessary t o adhere to ancient
Greek cults to explain an allusion to Zeus
o r Athena. ~ i b l & a ltvpology, in short,
when used in its meaning is a
necess,arv tool1 f o r understanding the
works of poets who themselves reid the
Bible typologicallv.
- -
-- , Institutes of ihe Christian Re-
ligion.
*Irenaeus. Against Heresies.
Luther, Martin. Conzmentary 072 the Epis-
tle to the Rovzans.
11. Modern works on typological exegesis.
Bultmann, Rudolf. History and Eschatol-
ogy. Edinburgh, 1957.
Cullmann, Oscar. Christ and T i m e . Trans.
F. V. Filson. Philadelphia, 1950.
*Danielou, Jean. From Shadows to Reality.
Trans. Wulstan Hibbard. London, 1960.
"Grant, Robert M. T h e Letter and the
Spirit. London, 1957.
Kelly, J. N.D. Early Christian Doctrines.
New York, 1958.
"Lampe, G. W . H., and K. J. Woollcombe.
Essays on Typology. Studies in Biblical
Theology, No. 22, Naperville, Ill., 1957.
Milburn, R. L. P. Early Christian Interpre-
tatio~zsof History. London, 1954.
 O N BIBLICAL T Y P O L O G Y 571

111. Selected literary interpretations using "Gardner, Helen. T h e Business of Criticisnz.

typology.
"Auerbach, Erich. "Figura," in Scenes fronz
the Drama of European Literature.
Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York, 1959.
Frye, Northrop. "The Typology of Para-
dise Regained," IMP, LIII (1956), 227-
238.
Oxford, 1959.
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Milton's Brief
Epic. Providence, R. I., 1966.
"Manning, Stephen. W i s d o m and Number.
Lincoln, Nebr., 1962.
"Tuve, Rosemond. A Reading of George
Herbert. Chicago, 1952.