by James Hamilton, Jr.
Book Review
It is humbling to know that the Christian church has struggled for nearly two millennia to know exactly how we are to preach the Old Testament. To be a Christian is to understand that we find the hope of our redemption in a new covenant, but the New Testament can only be understood and appreciated as the fulfillment of the covenant of old. The New Testament offers us ample evidence of how the apostles preached the Old Testament, and even how Jesus applied the Old Testament to himself and to His followers. And, to raise the issue of the New Testament use of the Old Testament, is to address the
question of typology.
At this point, we have to understand that evangelicalism in the last half of the 20th century was largely divided between those who gave themselves to typological exegesis with abandon and those who were alarmed at the effort, as they saw it, to turn every punctuation mark in the Old Testament into a type of Christ. Gladly, we are now on safer and saner terrain. Much of this is due to a larger theological recovery among evangelicals which has led to a far more biblical understanding of the biblical concept of covenant itself.
Furthermore, the plain fact is that the inspired New Testament authors often understood themselves to be pointing to Old Testament types of Christ, and thus it would be a rejection of biblical inspiration and apostolic authority to deny typology as a major category for biblical interpretation.
Into this conversation arrives James M. Hamilton, Jr. and his new book. This is one of the most significant books on biblical typology to emerge in decades. Any conversation about typology among evangelicals must now reckon with this book. James Hamilton is a very careful biblical scholar, and he is careful and passionate about introducing Christians to the riches of what he calls a “promised-shaped typology.” Every preacher will be enriched by engaging this book and deepening our understanding of the glory of Christ as anticipated in the Old Testament.
“When the biblical authors compose their writings, they intended to signal to their audiences the presence of the promised-shaped patterns. Thus, even if they did not fully understand the significance of the pattern and/or how the promise would’ve been fulfilled, the Old Testament authors intended to draw attention to the recurring sequences of events, and they did so with the view to the future.
Because these sequences of events had themselves been shaped by the promises, the promises were reinforced by each new installation in the pattern of events, and the growing sense of the significance of both promise and pattern developed.”
