TYPES, SENSE OF. — The biblical sense of types (v.) which, beyond the literal sense, expresses a reality (person, event, institution) signified by another reality of which it is the image (τύπος). The typical sense, also called “spiritual” or “real,” occurs when a person or thing (institution, action, event) in the Old Testament, expressed by the word (littera), in the intention of God, the primary author of Holy Scripture, is ordered to signify a more sublime truth in the New Testament, something higher and future in the order of salvation. Thus Adam is a type of Christ (Rom 5:14), and the flood is a type of Baptism (1 Pet 3:21).
The term is strictly biblical: “type” (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 10:6), τυπικός “typically” (1 Cor 10:11); corresponding to it is the antitype (ἀντίτυπος; 1 Pet 3:21: Baptism is the antitype of the flood, which is the reality signified by the type). While the typical sense is the technical and classical expression, there are also similar terms, which however must 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 sqq.).
The typical sense is one of the four senses of Scripture, the others being the literal, the moral or tropological, and the anagogical or eschatological, which “leads upward” and has as its object the future life. A classic example for this triple typical sense, and at the same time for the literal sense, is the city of Jerusalem. In the Middle Ages, the quadruple sense of Scripture was very widespread in Dacia (v.): “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). Types are also distinguished as personal (e.g., Adam, Melchizedek, David), real (e.g., the Paschal lamb, the brazen serpent), and legal (e.g., the prohibition against breaking the bones of the Paschal lamb). Like the literal sense, the typical sense can also 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, professed by the Apostles in their speech and writing, following the example of the Master, pointed out by the constant tradition of the Church, and finally declared by the most ancient usage of the liturgy...” (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 has been denied, in antiquity by the Marcionites, in the 16th century by some Protestants, and today by the “liberal” exegetes.
The extent of the typical sense was poorly defined by two extreme currents: the “figurists” (J. Coccejus, C. Vitringa), following the footsteps of Origen, wished to find types throughout the Old Testament, even in the smallest details; the “antifigurists,” on the other hand, admitted no types other than those explicitly established by the New Testament writers.
The typical sense, strictly understood, is demonstrated by the sources of the faith, i.e., it is revealed in whatever explicit form by God. One may, however, go a step further and see a spiritual sense even where this Revelation is only implicit. Every interpretation of a fact or person in the Old Testament that presents an internal likeness to a truth of salvation in the New Testament, according to the principle of St. Paul that in the Old Testament “all things happened to them typically” (τυπικώς) (1 Cor 10:11), may be advanced as a typical or spiritual sense, and the greater this likeness, the more probable the spiritual sense. Without doubt, however, in the exploitation of 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 Testaments, in Antoniunum, 25 [1950], p. 431 sqq.). “Let Catholic exegetes discover and expound this spiritual sense, intended and ordained by God, with that diligence which the dignity of the divine word demands; but let them scrupulously avoid presenting as the genuine sense of Holy Scripture other figurative values of things...” (Divino affl. Spiritu, loc. cit., p. 339).