What’s the Difference Between Types and Analogies?
00:00:00.000 | This is Scott Anderson, CEO for Desiring God.
00:00:02.780 | You and other friends of Desiring God make possible the work of this ministry, including this podcast.
00:00:09.400 | Thanks for your part in helping us freely share the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
00:00:24.120 | A long-time financial donor to the ministry and a faithful listener to this podcast writes in to ask a follow-up question
00:00:30.200 | that's drawn from your article that you wrote on typology back on May 12th on the website.
00:00:36.360 | "Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for your lesson on types. Please explain the differences between typology and analogy."
00:00:45.000 | I think the question has enough practical relevance for those of us who preach and teach so that
00:00:52.160 | when we get to the end, everybody should care about this, because even if we don't
00:00:57.680 | use the concept of type as often as others say in our preaching or teaching,
00:01:05.560 | everybody, I think, should be using biblical analogies all the time.
00:01:10.080 | So let me do a little education here on this typology thing. I wrote an article
00:01:14.520 | called "Typology—How God Targets Your Desires," which is at Desiring God, and I defined
00:01:22.040 | a biblical type as having three traits.
00:01:24.040 | And maybe before I mention those three traits and then how analogies are like them and not like them,
00:01:31.160 | I should just clarify for the average listener who probably doesn't know at all what a type is
00:01:38.280 | and why it even matters.
00:01:40.840 | Let me just explain. When Paul said in Romans 5:14, "Death reigned from Adam to Moses,
00:01:49.720 | even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam."
00:01:54.000 | Who is a type of the one who is to come? So Paul is saying
00:01:59.360 | Adam was a type—and that's his word, not ours—a type of
00:02:04.880 | Christ who is to come. So we're not just spinning our wheels in interesting literary chatter here.
00:02:10.760 | We're trying to understand a biblical idea,
00:02:14.400 | not just our idea that we've put on the text, like we created the idea of types. Types comes out of the Bible.
00:02:21.560 | That's why it matters enough to spend time thinking about it. So the three traits that I argued
00:02:28.920 | define what a type is, is that, number one, the person or the object or the event that we're calling a type
00:02:39.160 | resembles what is coming. So there's a resemblance. And the thing that's coming,
00:02:44.000 | like Christ is coming and Adam was the type, is the thing that's coming is sometimes called an
00:02:49.560 | anti-type. So, for example, in 1 Corinthians 10.6, Paul uses the word
00:02:55.160 | "type"—or it's translated "example" in some versions, but it's the same word as "type" in Romans 5—
00:03:02.320 | he uses the word "type" to refer, among other things, to passing through the Red Sea
00:03:08.600 | as a type of baptism. In other words, there's a resemblance.
00:03:13.280 | You're moving from bondage to freedom, you're passing through water,
00:03:17.560 | you're following a leader, and when Paul sees that, he sees a
00:03:21.160 | resemblance, a picture, a foreshadowing of
00:03:24.920 | the
00:03:27.360 | baptism. And so
00:03:29.000 | resemblance is the first. And at this point, type and analogy are the same. If a person says, "Well, isn't that just an analogy?"
00:03:35.320 | You can say, "Yes, at this point it is, but that's not all there is to a type." So, number two,
00:03:40.680 | to be a type in the Bible, the resemblance has to be designed by God
00:03:47.840 | to make a point. It's not just an interesting correspondence. It's a design by God
00:03:55.120 | to link one part of redemptive history and the flow of history to a later part of
00:04:03.000 | redemptive history. And he makes this clear—Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 10 when he says,
00:04:09.080 | "These things took place as
00:04:12.480 | types of us,"
00:04:15.120 | meaning
00:04:16.960 | God did that. God
00:04:18.960 | ordained that those events would have this
00:04:22.840 | resemblance to baptism. They're not just thought up by the reader;
00:04:28.120 | they are discerned by the reader as being intended by God. And now at this point you might say, "Well, can
00:04:35.760 | analogies also be willed by God?" Because he wills everything. His providence is over everything, so anytime there's a resemblance,
00:04:43.240 | that would be an analogy. You could call that an analogy and not just a type. And I'm going to say at this point,
00:04:49.440 | yes, you could. You could talk about God-willed
00:04:54.320 | analogies. Okay, but the third characteristic of a type, I think,
00:05:01.080 | distinguishes it from the ordinary understanding of
00:05:05.560 | analogy. And the third trait of a type is that it's prophetic; it predicts. God designed it not just to
00:05:13.500 | correspond to something in the future, but to point or to predict something in the future. And
00:05:21.240 | ordinarily, we don't think of analogies that way. Analogies are simply observed
00:05:25.640 | similarities, but types predict. They give insight into the plan that God has for
00:05:33.800 | the future. So that's the main
00:05:36.760 | difference. An analogy
00:05:39.560 | resembles—you could even think that analogies are designed by God to
00:05:47.200 | resemble—but analogies, at least in the ordinary way we think, do not
00:05:51.440 | predict. Now, the reason I said
00:05:56.240 | maybe this would be practically useful for
00:05:59.920 | teachers and preachers, anybody who
00:06:02.800 | handles the Bible with somebody else in view, or even your own self,
00:06:07.800 | but especially if you've got others in mind, is that I don't think we're free
00:06:14.360 | to call something in the Bible a type
00:06:17.600 | just because it resembles something else in the Bible.
00:06:22.560 | I think we should be careful, and let the New Testament give us cautious guidance
00:06:28.300 | what we put in the category of God-willed, predictive
00:06:33.360 | types. But I think that in our teaching and preaching,
00:06:39.280 | we're free to draw analogies everywhere. Anytime we see an illuminating
00:06:45.320 | similarity, we can draw it out. Spurgeon did this like crazy.
00:06:50.520 | He was really good at it. I might say, "Let your words fly against the devil like stones from David's sling."
00:06:59.280 | Well, that's an analogy. I'm just making that up. When I say, "Your words flying against the devil,"
00:07:05.920 | I'm not saying, "Ah, the stones in the sling were a type of
00:07:10.760 | your words being written in Facebook." I'm not saying that.
00:07:15.520 | I'm just saying that I can see a connection, and I can use the connection to add a punch or a force
00:07:22.480 | to it without making any big biblical theological claim about
00:07:26.480 | the stones in the sling being a biblical type. Or I might say, "May the idols of secularism
00:07:34.560 | come crashing down like Dagon in the Philistine temple."
00:07:38.680 | I mean, that's a way of talking that is analogical. I'm seeing connections,
00:07:45.240 | I'm drawing them out, or I could say, "Like a great avalanche on Mount Everest," for that matter.
00:07:50.640 | It doesn't even have to come from the Bible.
00:07:52.480 | It's just the way we talk, and when analogies are found in the Bible to some point we want to make, I think it can add
00:07:59.160 | a remarkable,
00:08:00.960 | provocative, memorable twist to our point, which is what Spurgeon did so effectively.
00:08:07.520 | So, in our preaching and teaching,
00:08:10.400 | let's be careful to draw out the biblically clear types
00:08:16.720 | that weave redemptive history together, and let's be lavish and free to use as many
00:08:24.760 | provocative analogies as we can.
00:08:28.280 | Wonderful. Thank you, Pastor John. And you can get that article that we mentioned earlier,
00:08:31.720 | "Typology, How God Targets Your Desires," at our website at DesiringGod.org.
00:08:37.320 | And for everything you need to know about this podcast, and to send Pastor John your question, a question like this one,
00:08:43.080 | which was carefully crafted, it was concise, and it was specific,
00:08:45.960 | go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
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00:09:05.640 | I just mentioned.
00:09:06.880 | Well, our theology is living and active. It is meant to change us and humble us, and Pastor John will explain how tomorrow.
00:09:14.040 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:09:18.240 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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