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| Rambling on Typology | | Date Created: Oct 06, 2004, 10:49 PM |
Of course, I do think that he church's traditional dogma, formulated as it often is in more philosophical languge, should indeed function a check on wild speculative forays into typology. Even so, I'm not sure that anyone would ever be tempted to formulate a new doctrine of the two natures of Christ based on some symbolic or typological connection one might discover in the OT narrative. Most of what one does in typological interpretation and preaching is to fill out the churche's confession. If I discover, for example, that Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses and Israel as a new Egypt (Matt. 2:1-23), such a reading hardly contradicts anything that traditional doctrinal formulatioins have affirmed or denied.
Which is not to say that typology is useless. That would be giving abstract doctrinal formulations way too much significance. It would seem that stories are more or at least equally important as didactic statements. Narrative engages people in ways that systematic theology cannot. Surely there's a reason why we have four long narrative perspectives on the life of Jesus at the start of the church's new book. |
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