Distinguishing from a Real Type of Christ and a Coincidental Similarity

There is no clear way to determine what is and is not a type of Christ. Types are identified by looking for similarities between historical events and spiritual realities. How can you tell when a similarity is really a type or just a coincidence? This is a really hard question. There has been a great deal of academic debate about it. Marsh claimed that you could only recognize a type if the New Testament identified it as such; otherwise, types did not exist or they could not be recognized. R.T. France offered a more balanced perspective. He suggested that both the Old Testament type and its New Testament equivalent must operate on the same theological principle. So a type may go beyond what is clearly presented in the New Testament; however, a type may never introduce something into the Old Testament text that is really foreign to it.

Another recent suggestion has been that a type must be first a symbol in the Old Testament. That symbolic meaning can then point beyond itself to a future reality. Then, of course, there are people willing to see types in any kind of situation in the Bible, almost anywhere. Unfortunately, there are no clear answers to the problem. Try to keep a balance in your typological interpretations. Try to get a vision of what may be going on in the background. At the same time, keep your common sense and don't buy into weird and impossible parallels.

If you want to be extremely careful, then only see types where the New Testament has revealed this truth. If it's not clear in the Old Testament or the New Testament; and the type is not present in the words, phrases, or sentences themselves, then what authority do we have to go beyond what is written? If God the Holy Spirit did not divinely inspire the writers to write the type into the text or in the context itself, then even if there is a type, then is it discernible? God the Holy Spirit would have to divinely inspire the hearers of Scripture in the exact same way He inspired the authors of Scripture.