Truth Unites - Can Typology Establish Doctrine?

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

In this video I point out that the concern that typology should not be used to establish doctrine is a historic instinct in the Christian church, not just a contemporary Protestant view.    Link to original interview with Jimmy Akin: https://youtu.be/Mi6YIqv0iSM Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

One of the things that's currently at play in online discourse between Protestants and Roman Catholic Christians is typology. What is typology? How do we use typology? Can we use typology to establish doctrine? And I had given some concerns and criticisms of a particular typological argument in my last video commenting on Cameron Bertuzi's conversion to Roman Catholicism and this argument for the papacy from Isaiah 22 and a lyachim that was convincing for Cameron. and I won't rehash all my concerns in this video. I went through three in particular in the last video. But I just wanted to highlight briefly to show that this is not a uniquely Protestant position to be concerned about this usage of typology.

Because that's one of the strange things you pick up on is some people are kind of absorbing the discussion as though Protestants are suspicious about typology, whereas other Christians like and Catholic Christians are more positive about typology or something like that. That's not the issue here. A lot of the leading scholars on typology are Protestants like Greg Beal. I personally love typology. The concern is with this usage of typology. And I just wanted to show briefly this is not unique to Protestants. This is more of the historic way of thinking in the church. Someone linked to this video of Jimmy Aiken addressing this question. And I thought he gives a very careful and wise position on this in talking about how typology should be used in relation to the Marian dogmas.

And I think you'll hear him reference Thomas Aquinas. Another person we could bring into the discussion is St. Augustine. But I think his comments are more in line with the historic Christian way of thinking about these things. That you shouldn't use typology to establish doctrine. You can use it to elucidate doctrine, but not to establish doctrine. So I'm not showing this clip just to say, you know, because Jimmy said this, he has to be right. but I just wanted to help people understand and maybe sympathize a little bit with this, that this is not just Protestants trying to resist something here.

This is more of the historic way of thinking about typology. So this will just be a short video. I'll just show his clip and hope this can help people think about this really important question. Well, I sympathize with folks who struggle with these. I did before I was Catholic because of all the different teachings of the Catholic Church, coming from a Protestant background that focused on Sola Scriptura, I recognize that these two Marian dogmas in particular have less of a foundation in scripture than virtually any of the rest of the church's teachings.

These rely primarily on tradition. It sounds like quite the admission, given how, Catholic apologists often tend to say, look, it's unambiguous. Look at this verse. How could you not see that she was immaculately conceived? Yeah, well, I am aware of apologists who are, you know, doing their best, and they're trying to show as much scriptural basis for this to help out Protestants as they can, and that's great. I think, you know, we should point out where there is traction, and there is some for these. I think we should, we need to resist. the danger of exaggerating the amount of scriptural attraction.

One of the things that Thomas Aquinas pointed out is that, and this is right at the beginning of the Summa Theologia, so it's perfect for Pints with Aquinas. But Aquinas points out that in approaching Scripture, we only want to use the literal sense of the text for theological proofs. We can find other things in the same. the spiritual sense of the text that goes beyond the literal, but we don't use that for proof in matters of doctrine. Would that refer to typology as well? Yes, because typology is found within the spiritual sense of the text, not the literal sense.