TYPICAL, SENSE. - That of the biblical senses (v.) which, beyond the literal sense, expresses a reality (person, event, institution) signified by another reality that is its image (τύπος). The typical sense, also called "spiritual" or "real," occurs when a person or thing (institution, action, event) of the Old Testament, expressed by the word (littera), in the intention of God, the primary author of the Holy Scriptures, is ordered to signify a more sublime truth in the New Testament, something higher and yet to come in the order of salvation. Thus Adam is a type of Christ (Rom. 5:14), the flood a type of Baptism (1 Pt. 3:21).
The name is strictly biblical: "type" (Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 10:6), τυπικῶς "typically" (1 Cor. 10:11); corresponding to it is the antitype (ἀντίτυπος; 1 Pt. 3:21: Baptism is the antitype of the flood, which is the reality signified by the type). While "typical sense" is the technical and classical expression, there are also similar terms, which however are to be used with great caution, because they can give rise to misunderstandings: "parable" (Heb. 9:9), "allegory" (Gal. 4:24), "spiritual" (1 Cor. 10:3 f.).
In the encyclical Humani generis (12 Aug. 1950) Pius XII speaks on this point in a predominantly apologetic manner, targeting systems that not infrequently introduce strange fancies into Holy Scripture; for this reason he does not use the technical term "typical sense," but that of "spiritual" sense. Similarly the Instructio of the Pontifical Biblical Commission of 13 May 1950: "Spiritualem quoque verborum significationem, dummodo eam a Deo intendi secundum sapientissimas normas a Summis Pontificibus identidem statutas rite constet, debito modo explicare curet..." (AAS, 42 [1950], p. 501).
A threefold species of typical sense is customarily distinguished: dogmatic or allegorical, which prefigures and illustrates the history of the Redemption and of the kingdom of God on earth (Christ and the Church); moral or tropological, which has as its object the morals of the faithful; anagogical or eschatological, which "leads upward" having as its object the future life. The classic example for this threefold typical sense and at the same time for the literal one is the city of Jerusalem. In the Middle Ages the distich of Augustine of Dacia (v.) on the fourfold sense of the Holy Scriptures was extremely widespread: "Littera gesta docet; quid credas allegoria - Moralis quid agas; quo tendas anagogia" (cf. H. de Lubac, Sur un vieux distique, in Mélanges offerts au r. p. Ferdinand Cavallera, Toulouse 1948, pp. 347-66). Further subdivisions are made into personal types (e.g., Adam, Melchizedek, David), real types (e.g., the paschal lamb, the bronze serpent), legal types (e.g., the prohibition against breaking the bones of the paschal lamb). Like the literal sense, the typical sense too can be either proper or improper.
The existence of the typical sense is often affirmed in the writings of the New Testament. "Such a sense is shown and taught to us by the Divine Savior himself in the holy Gospels, the Apostles profess it in speech and in writing, following the example of the Master, the constant tradition of the Church points it out, and finally the most ancient usage of the liturgy declares it..." (Pius XII, Divino affl. Spiritu, AAS, 35 [1943], p. 339). The sole criterion for knowing the existence of the typical sense is Revelation in its twofold source, Scripture and Tradition (Fathers, liturgy, Christian archaeology). The existence of the typical sense was denied in antiquity by the Marcionites, in the 16th century by certain Protestants, and today commonly by "liberal" exegetes.
The extent of the typical sense was poorly defined by two extreme currents: the "figurists" (J. Coccejus, C. Vitringa), following in the footsteps of Origen, wanted to find types in the entire Old Testament, down to the smallest details; the "antifigurists" on the other hand admitted no types other than those established explicitly by the hagiographers of the New Testament.
The typical sense strictly understood is demonstrated by the sources of the faith, that is, it is revealed in some explicit form by God. One can however advance a step further and also see a spiritual sense even there where this Revelation is only implicit. Every interpretation of a fact or person of the Old Testament that presents an internal resemblance to a truth of the salvation of the New Testament, according to St. Paul's principle that in the Old Testament "all these things happened to them in figure (τυπικῶς)" (1 Cor. 10:11), could be put forward as a typical or spiritual sense, and the greater this resemblance is, the more probable is the spiritual sense. Without doubt, however, in exploiting the typical sense broadly understood, where there is no express dogmatic testimony for it, great moderation is required (cf. A. Miller, Zur Typologie des Alten Testamentes, in Antonianum, 25 [1950], p. 431 f.).
"This spiritual sense, intended and ordained by God, let Catholic exegetes therefore discover and expound with that diligence which the dignity of the divine word requires; let them instead scrupulously guard against presenting as the genuine sense of Holy Scripture other figurative values of things..." (Divino affl. Spiritu, loc. cit., p. 339).