The presence of typology leads the biblical theologian to go so far as to say Christ is not only the centre but the telos of redemptive history: all previous revelation points to him and finds fulfilment in him. Every type, in other words, has its antitype.

On March 24, 2020, Matthew Barrett’s new book, Canon, Covenant and Christology, will officially release. In anticipation, we are highlighting an extract from Canon, Covenant and Christology. Here, Matthew Barrett explores how a high Christology and an evangelical view of Scripture go hand in hand, as he introduces his new book.

The scriptural story in which the covenantal word is revealed in a diachronic fashion takes on a Christological focus, either through predictive prophecy or, more often than not, through types and patterns (whether they be persons, events, objects or institutions).

The presence of typology leads the biblical theologian to go so far as to say Christ is not only the centre but the telos of redemptive history: all previous revelation points to him and finds fulfilment in him. Every type, in other words, has its antitype.

To elaborate, this simple, but profound, characteristic of divine revelation, and Scripture in particular, makes biblical theology all the more complex and rewarding. If there is divine authorial intent throughout the canon that increases in its visibility with each new canonical revelation from God and is manifested through each new epoch of his divinely orchestrated story, then both predictive prophecy and typology are legitimate revelatory media. Inspiration and its close cousin divine authorial intent turn hermeneutics into a rich discipline. For if God can reveal his redemptive intentions across history so that one revelation builds upon what was revealed beforehand, then it is possible for God to plant typological seeds in initial revelations that will then blossom in later revelation, only to reach full bloom in the definitive revelation of God: the Word Christ Jesus. Christ is not merely another revelation from God but is divine revelation personified and embodied – he is the archetype.

Again, covenant is often the medium. Through his covenant(s) God promises to redeem Adam’s race, but will do so through Eve’s own offspring, sending a Messiah, a Christ, who will be God’s definitive covenant word to his people, providing the redemption he first promised to Adam and Abraham. In the meantime, God embeds his drama with countless types that serve to foreshadow Christ, the antitype, who is to come. For the Israelite, these types are designed to cultivate faith that God’s word is true: he is a God who comes through on his covenant word, a word that is not only spoken by the prophets but put into writing as a permanent covenant witness to God’s faithfulness and mercy. The Scriptures, then, are the treaty, the book and the constitution of the covenant, written with God’s own finger, sufficient for God’s own people.

It is here, however, that the evangelical encounters a strange hermeneutical dilemma, one that has led some biblical scholars to question whether an evangelical view of Scripture, and with it biblical theology itself, is the right path to take. When one engages with Scripture, and the New Testament in particular, where is one to look to understand the nature of this Scripture that God has given to his people? Naturally, one turns to the apostle Paul. After all, few define what Scripture is with such precision and clarity so that the church understands how God has communicated and what authority they are to live by as followers of Christ. As Paul says to Timothy, and by extension to the Christian church, ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work’ (2 Tim. 3:16–17). On the basis of Paul’s words, it is lucid what Scripture is and what it is designed to accomplish. From Paul’s epistles one is able to put forward inspiration itself with confidence, as well as Scripture’s corollary attributes.

The problem is, when one encounters Jesus and the Gospels, one is hard pressed to find such an explicit approach as Paul’s to Timothy. The evangelical turns to the person at the core of the Christian faith, Jesus Christ, whose authority as the incarnate God-man is rivalled by none, and searches for a comparable proof text to 2 Timothy 3:16–17 (or, if one were to consider Peter, 2 Peter 1:21). In doing so, one walks away disappointed and perplexed that Jesus could be so silent on the nature of Scripture. Here is the Son of God himself, the Messiah, the Christ, the one who establishes the new covenant, on whom all the Scriptures of Israel depend, and no statement equivalent to Paul’s (or Peter’s) can be found on his lips, at least one that is as theologically specific as Scripture’s own ontology.

In the history of modern academia, this disparity has led some (at times, many) biblical scholars to believe there is a divide between the Jewish mindset of Jesus and the later, ecclesiastical, mindset of Paul and other New Testament writers. In its most extreme form, Paul becomes the creator of Christianity and its doctrinal commitments, but that (Hellenistic?) paradigm is foreign to Jesus of Nazareth. While inspiration, then, may be foundational to the church, it is anachronistic to push such a doctrinal agenda back on Jesus and first-century Judaism.

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