Typology and Narrative

Wright writes that Paul’s “re-reading” of the OT is not “a matter merely of typology, picking a few earlier themes and watching the same patterns repeating themselves, though this also happens often enough.” Rather, “Paul had in mind an essentially historical and sequential reading of scripture, in which the death and resurrection of the Messiah formed the unexpected but always intended climax of God’s lengthy plan.”

But what Wright describes as a “historical and sequential” reading is what typology at its best always did – to read Scripture as a single book climaxing in Jesus. But, like any good narrative, the Scriptural story gives faint foreshadowings and dark hints to the end long before the end. It’s a detective story: All the clues are are there but it takes the master detective to demonstrate how the clues could only be pointing to this conclusion.