Thursday, September 14, 2017

Typology - the authentic Christian approach to the Old Testament



Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have always been a devotee of the typological approach to the Old Testament. Go HERE for my remarks on this by way of introducing the work of Methodist scholar, Margaret Barker.

Today, in his blog post on lamentable modern paraphrases that nudge out of a particular Marian devotion some well-known Old Testament imagery and expressions, the redoubtable Fr John Hunwicke makes some important points about how the Old Testament was understood in the early centuries of the Church.  

In my opinion, he firmly hits the nail on the head when he says: 

... My next reservation is more substantial: a form of Litany of our Lady is offered, clearly designed to be be more ‘modern’ than the traditional Litany (“of Loretto”). You know what I mean: instead of (ex.gr.) “Turris Davidica”, one might invoke “Woman of Faith”; instead of “Ora pro nobis”, one might pray “Keep us in mind”.

I mention this not for the rather cheap motive of inviting you to groan at the inept ‘modernity’ of such things, but because what we are losing here is in fact something extremely important: the typological character of the old Litany. The titles of our Lady in that Litany include many of the  typological titles which Christian devotion, since at least the time of the Council of Ephesus, has discovered in the Old Testament as pointers to the Mother of the Incarnate Word.

Typology is discerning in the Old Testament the Figure of Christ and his Mother and the events of their lives, so that the Old Testament passage is the Type and the New Testament Figure or event is the Antitype. Typology is the central way in which the Great Tradition of both East and West has appropriated the Old Testament. It goes back to the New Testament texts themselves: Christ as the New Adam ... and see I Corinthians 10:1-11 ... and look at I Peter 3:20-21 ... etc.etc.. Typology is part of the fundamental Grammar of the Faith; something even deeper than dogma.

Today ... the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross ... liturgical texts reminded us that the Lifting up of the Son of Man on the Cross is the Antitype of which the Lifting up of the serpent in the desert was the Type (Numbers 21:4-9; S John 3:13-17; S John 12:32). 

I know that most laity have not been taught about Typology; because the Clergy weren’t taught it either; because there were so much more important things for them to be taught in seminary (the Synoptic Problem... the inauthenticity of most of S Paul’s letters ...). But seeing the Lorettan Litany displaced by a modernist ‘relevant’ formula devoid of Typology brought home to me again the radical impoverishment of current Catholic culture.

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