'Unashamed enthusiasm for Scripture'

How do you handle the Old Testament? In particular, how are we to use Old Testament people, events and institutions as types of the work of Christ and His church?

Is typology a dangerous game, where we over-spiritualise any detail we want to fasten on and try and draw a line to Christ? How should we control that? These were the issues addressed at a recent half-day organised by the Association of Grace Baptist Churches (AGBC) at London Seminary.

The guest speaker was Jim Hamilton, Professor of Biblical Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), in London to speak at the EMA (see report here). Jim gave two sessions, the first focusing on typology as a God-ordained and author-intended facet of Scripture. Our task is not to see what we can find, but what God has revealed and the author intended.

The second session looked in detail at Isaiah’s fourth servant song (Isa.52:13-53:12), showing how it picked up themes from earlier in the Old Testament.

Phil Heaps, co-pastor at Highbury Baptist Church, said: ‘The morning displayed a refreshing blend of unashamed enthusiasm for Scripture (in the face of the many distractions thrown up by unbelieving Biblical scholarship) together with rigorous forensic exegesis: following up clues, sometimes in the original Hebrew, so as to avoid the unconstrained speculation that has previously dogged the subject of typology.’

After lunch, a Q&A session was chaired by Alex Arrell of Grace Church Guildford (himself a student of SBTS).