Truth Unites - Response to Jimmy Akin on Typology

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

In this video I respond to Jimmy Akin on the issue of typology in  Matthew 16 and the argument for Peter as the "new Eliakim" from Isaiah  22.    My initial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLzzG-BTcOg  See Jimmy's video here: https://youtu.be/AkDho9cp6IQ 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/

Jimmy Aiken made a response video to me about typology, and I wanted to follow up because I think there's a misunderstanding in his response. He's responding as though I were critiquing non-typological arguments for the papacy from Isaiah 22, rather than what he calls the Isaiah 22 argument. Rather than, I wasn't doing that. I was criticizing typological arguments for the papacy from Isaiah 22, and I think I was very clear in what I said. So I was really surprised at this. In other words, he's responding as though I were critiquing his usage of Isaiah 22 rather than that of other others like Swan Sona and Cameron Bertuzi and others. So there's a real fundamental problem here of misunderstanding. And I just think we need to

hopefully get some clarity about this. I actually agree 100% with Jimmy's methodological stance on typology. He's basically making the same point that I had made. Typology can be used to elucidate doctrine, not to establish doctrine. The problem is Swan and Cameron's argument is a typological argument in the problematic sense that Jimmy and I, based upon principles from St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, would reject. They are trying to use typology to establish doctrine, not merely to elucidate it. For example, it came up several times in my debate with Swan that his entire argument for papal succession is from typology. The way of thinking is Eliakim's office is successive. Peter is the anti-type of Eliakim. Therefore, it's either

entailed or implied to some degree that Peter's office is successive. That's how the argument, you can see that in the final three minutes of his opening speech in our debate, where he also made a similar argument that Rome must be involved. And here's the idea is that, again, it's an argument from typology. It's not an argument from the text of Matthew 16. It's arguing that the bearer of this title is always linked with the capital city as a Lyachim's office was linked with Jerusalem. So Peter's office will be linked with Rome and that's again just at least implied. There were similar appeals to the Davidic kingdom being carried over. So in the Q&A, you can see this. If you go back to the Q&A in our debate when Swan was asking me questions at the 59

Marker. I was saying in response, the same thing that I think is Jimmy's position on typology, that you need a textual warrant to get doctrine from typology. That was my whole thing in the debate. So I think that was very clear throughout the debate that, or you could, I went back and watched Swan's four-hour more recent video on this argument to make sure that nothing has changed radically since our debate, because I do not want to misrepresent anyone. And as far as I can tell, nothing has changed here. This is still the way of thinking. He's trying to get properties like succession, supremacy, infallibility, and even the location of Rome from the typology itself, not necessarily with 100% certainty, but that's the nature of the argumentation. It's from the

typology, not from something that Jesus says in Matthew 16. For example, at three hours and two minutes in that video, the longer four-hour video, he says, quote, the type sets in potency succession, end quote. That's just one of many examples. We can go back, and that is the way the argument is working here, same with the location of Rome coming in. From talking with Cameron Bertuzi, this is his thinking as well, to my understanding. They're both not using just Matthew 16's usage of Isaiah 22, the way Jimmy is doing it. They're arguing from this broader type, anti-type relationship and trying to infer certain things from the type to the anti-type. Okay? In fact, I've encouraged Cameron to just drop off typology altogether and just argue from

the text of Matthew 16, where I think he could make a better argument for the papacy. It'd be something more like Jimmy's exogetical argument for the papacy. And if I understand Cameron's position correctly, I don't think he's persuaded of that. I think he recognizes that if you do that, you fall short of getting to properties like succession, for example. So there is a real misunderstanding here that I just think we need to get clarity about. There are two different arguments at play. There's the typological argument from Isaiah 22.

That's Swan and Cameron. There's the exegetical, non-typological argument from Isaiah 22. That's Jimmy and as far as I can tell, pretty much, most Roman Catholics. Yet Jimmy's critique mushes these two arguments together as just the Isaiah 22 argument. it's like if you know suppose someone says to you William Wallace was married and you say how do you know that what's your argument for that there's no historical evidence for that and they say uh brave heart it was in brave don't you remember the scene in brave heart you know and you say but that's not a sound basis for arguing for historical knowledge you can't argue from a movie and then someone

else comes in and says and they've written a scholarly book on this subject and they say So you're saying scholarly books can't demonstrate that William Wallace was married? And you're like, what? How was it missed that I was talking about movies? Arguments for movies are not the same as arguments from books. Similarly, typological arguments and non-typological arguments are not the same. So this is why I think it's a mistake when Jimmy raises the concern that my video is misleading in suggesting that, you know, it could give the subtext that he's against the Isaiah 22 argument.

It does not suggest that. A response to one argument is not the response to the other kind of argument. From the fact that Jimmy is against a typological argument in Isaiah 22, it does not follow that he's against other ways to engage Isaiah 22. And this confusion of these two distinct arguments, this mushing together of typological and non-typological arguments from Isaiah 22, plagues his various criticisms of me throughout his video. For example, when I raise the concern about the arbitrariness of typology,

run amok, he says this. It's very arbitrary. Except it's not arbitrary. In answer to the who decides question, the answer is simple. It's Jesus. I can't speak for others, but I'm mounting an exegetical argument, and the text of Matthew 16 controls that. The reason the office of the chief steward is carried over and not other offices like secretaries David may have had, is that Jesus says the office of Chief Steward is carried over. If this passage involves a typological relationship at all, it's Jesus who's controlling the type. And whether it involves typology or not, it's Jesus who decides what carries over. Not according to Swan and Cameron. That is not their argument.

And it was their argument that I was responding to in the various videos that Jimmy was engaging. They do not limit the relevance of Isaiah 22 to Jesus' application. You can go to his to Swan's four-hour video. He'll have several slides where he's listing what is carried over from the type to the anti-type and what isn't carried over from the type to the anti-type. And it's not what Jesus teaches that makes the difference between those two lists. When there's plenty of things, he's trying to argue carry over, either by implication or by deduction, that have nothing to do with the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 16. I mentioned succession, for example, and the location of Rome. So that's why I'm concerned about this argument. That's why I'm calling it typology run amok. That's the whole

concern here is we need a textual warrant in agreement with the principles of Jimmy's video. Here's another example of how this mushing together of these two different arguments into one, the Isaiah 22 argument plays out. When I point out that Eliakim's office looks nothing like the papacy, Jimmy responds like this. Dude, the argument you're mounting is like that of the person who says, well, the contingency argument may prove that a god of some kind exists, but it doesn't prove the Christian God. It doesn't prove that God is omniscient or that he's omnipot or that he's all good. It doesn't prove that he appeared to Abraham or that he became incarnate as Jesus or that he's a Trinity. This God of the philosophers is nothing like the Christian God. And your argument doesn't

prove the Christian God. To which the answer is, of course the contingency argument doesn't. The contingency argument is just one step in proving that the Christian God exists. But the better analogy would be when someone does argue that the contingency argument proves the Trinity, the Christian God. That would be the parallel situation because those wielding the typological argument are trying to get infallibility, succession, supremacy, and the location of Rome out of the typology. And that's what I'm responding to. I'm responding to the argument as it has been articulated. So if someone is trying to use typology to get the notion of infallibility into the anti-type, it's totally appropriate to note that the type was not infallible.

I'm simply responding to the argument as it has been stated. Here's another misunderstanding I wanted to point out. I would urge Gavin and others not to assume that Catholic apologists are committed to some freewheeling, uncontrolled typological argument from Isaiah 22 because they're not. But I'm not assuming that Catholic apologists are beholden to this kind of freewheeling use of typology. That was actually my whole point in showing a clip from Jimmy to show that this Typological argument is not represented by all Catholic apologists or even, I would say, by most don't seem to use this argument. And then Jimmy continues and says this.

For example, from what I've seen of Swan Sona's argument from Isaiah 22, he does not appear to be doing the kind of typological argument that Aquinas is warning against, which is uncontrolled and not backed up by the New Testament text. That kind of argument is unsuitable for establishing doctrine, but Swan appears to be mounting a controlled, exegetically based argument from the text of Matthew 16. That is not true. I don't know how much Jimmy has listened to Swan's work on this argument, but it's not limited to Matthew 16. For example, I've mentioned things like Succession or the location in Rome. Swan is attempting, and Cameron is well, to derive these properties. these characteristics of the papacy from the typology, not always with certainty as a deduction,

but as an implication. It's not coming out of the text of Matthew 16, because there's no such thing as succession in Matthew 16, or that's just not there in the text. And people are converting to Rome because of this typological argument. That's why, and I felt it was so important to address and to point out in agreement with Jimmy and I think the vast majority of Christian theologians, throughout church history that that's not how we are to use typology. Jimmy's principles for using typology are much more careful. Okay, what about the non-typological argument from Isaiah 22? Well, I've addressed that in other videos, not the ones that Jimmy interacted with. If we were to get into that, I'd have basically two arguments to make, and I won't develop these. I'll just kind of gesture

towards them, kind of note the talking points here. First, I would just say that I don't feel think Vatican One supremacy or infallibility is there for Peter in Matthew 16 any more than it's there for all the disciples in Matthew 18. And I think the rest of the New Testament text, the rest of the New Testament bears that out. And I think the patristic testimony is very strong that Peter did not exercise supremacy. He did not relate to the other apostles the way the Pope relates to the other bishops. Secondly, I definitely don't think succession is there in the text. In fact, I think I've argued that the idea of any notion of an ongoing office from Peter is just completely absent from the New Testament. There's not a hint of a whisper, of a trace of a

thought, of anything like that. You get lots of discussions about offices in the church. You get passages like Ephesians 4 telling you about the offices of the church. in relation to how they serve the unity of the church, never do you get the idea of the papacy, one guy on top, you know, that's just completely, it's hard to even argue against papal succession in the New Testament because it's like, I think the analogy I used in my debate with Swan is like, it's like trying to argue whether Pluto is a planet on the basis of the New Testament. There's just not even any passages to even know where to begin to engage with, because it's just completely absent.

So if those would be my talking points if I were responding to the non-typological usages of Isaiah 22, I would simply say, number one, you have to mushroom Peters roll up more than what's in the text, and two, you have to somehow get to succession that that's going to go on to the Roman bishops somehow, and I just don't think that's anywhere present in the New Testament, and I don't think it's well supported at all historically in the early historical literature either. So that would be my arguments on that. But again, that simply wasn't the focus of the videos Jimmy was engaging. I was addressing the typological argument from Isaiah 22.

So I hope that will clarify things. Now, my intention in referencing Jimmy was not to bring him into a discussion he may not want to be in. So I apologize if I've roped him into something he doesn't want to be involved in. And I won't engage him anymore unless he puts out more stuff interacting with me. And even then maybe I won't. but the intention was not a gotcha. The intention was not to step on toes or give offense in some way. The intention was, I think of Jimmy as a capable apologist,

someone with stature and influence, and someone who represents a sound and classical approach to typology. So the motive was to try to show this concern about typology is not unique to Protestantism. I wasn't referencing Jimmy as a gotcha or a, sneaky tactic or something. I'm just, I think he's right about typology. And I'm sincerely concerned. That's where my videos on this come from. The issues that we're debating with the papacy are so important. Nothing really could be more important to resolve. If you've decided, if you've made the first step, if I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead, I want to be a Christian.

This is like one of the next issues you have to immediately start to figure out. If a church comes along and says, we're the only church. Gavin Hortland is not, his church is not an actual church, and they don't have a valid Eucharist. And our church, the one true church, our teaching apparatus can speak infallibly at the same level as Holy Scripture. Pope Francis could declare an infallible dogma, and that would come at the same level of authority, namely infallibility, as if Peter or Paul or John were teaching the church. Okay. If a church claims that, that claim is too important not to subject it to scrutiny to see if it holds up. Too much is at stake. We need to know whether that's true or not. So I'm genuinely concerned

about these things. I'm genuinely concerned when I see people converting to Roman Catholicism for what I think are historically eccentric usages of typology. So that's my motive in all this. I'm just trying to bring clarity to this of what typology is and how we should use it in argumentation. Now, if we wanted to get into non-typological arguments for the papacy, then, you know, that would be longer and I need to go into more than I've gone into in this video or in the last few. I've done that a little bit elsewhere. So anyway, I hope this will be clarifying and useful for people following the discussion. Again, there's two different arguments at play here, and we have to be careful to distinguish them, typological arguments and non-typological arguments,

and then we just respond to each in kind. And I don't think, Either of them are ultimately successful, but they're different kinds of arguments. So I hope this will be helpful in clarifying in those ways for people who are following this discussion on these really important issues. So all right, thanks for watching everybody. Hope that helps. God bless. Let me know what you think in the comments. We'll keep this conversation going.

I don't take offense at criticism, really, unless it's like really nasty or something. Which nobody's done that here. So, you know, keep the conversation going. The truth matters. Let's keep arguing about the truth. the truth matter. The truth of this question, whether the Church of Rome is the only church and her teaching office can speak infallibly, that's about as important as it gets. I mean, subsequent to believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, that's like right up there,

right after that. So we've got to keep working through this and keep the conversation going. All right, thanks for watching everybody. God bless you.