23 January 2009

Goppelt: The Focal Point

With the following two sentences Leonard Goppelt jolted me out of the increasingly hypnotic slumber into which his 1939 doctoral dissertation on typology had been sending me.

If Jesus of Nazareth is 'the one who was to come,' if he is the goal of all biblical history, then he is the focal point that gathers all the rays of light that issue from Scripture. Now they do not shine miraculously here and there, but give a clear, unambiguous picture that is consistent with the salvation that Christ brings.

I would only change, under the influence of Jonathan Edwards' History of the Work of Redemption and typological writings in the second half of vol. 11 of the Yale Works, "biblical history" to "human history."

Leonard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, 58

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