Eagles and Emus
I was told once, after using a symbolic illustration from the Tabernacle while I was song-leading, that “we don’t want to head in that direction.” Basically, modern evangelicalism is not really all that interested in the Bible. The Tabernacle actually structures the New Testament at many levels, but modern Christians are classified as too dumb to cope with it. How many popular theologians ever deal with this stuff? This material IS the Bible.
Peter Leithart has been hauled over the coals for his use of typology in his commentary on Kings. But this is practically the same attitude the Jews have, when they accuse ALL Christians of eisegesis for seeing Christ in all the Scriptures.
Dr Leithart has a new book you can pre-order here, defending, I assume, his method. Those who question the validity of a sound use of typology would benefit from seeing how the Bible itself provides a safe framework for it.
I don’t know what examples Dr Leithart will give, but one that comes to mind is related to literary structure. When a passage of Scripture obviously recapitulates the structure and symbols of the Creation Week (as the one in my previous post did), is it eisegesis to draw from the passage interpretations related to this observation that are not actually written in the text? The Jews actually have it all over us on that one!
I do fear that Dr Leithart’s book might be an attempt to explain the how-to of flying like an eagle to a flock of emus. To use another analogy, the Bible is like a rainbow coloured balloon they are too afraid to actually inflate.
