Many Catholics find the Old Testament difficult to understand. The apostles also struggled to understand the Old Testament, even though they were much more familiar with it than Catholics tend to be. In the days after His Resurrection, Jesus spent a lot of time teaching the apostles how to understand the Old Testament. As Saint Luke reports in this Sunday’s Gospel, “He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” In a sense, Jesus guided the apostles through multiple bible studies. Jesus gives us two important principles that can help us make sense of the Old Testament.
The first important principle Jesus gives the apostles is that we need a guide. The apostles needed Jesus to show them how to understand Scripture. After He has finished teaching them, Jesus gives the apostles the authority to interpret Sacred Scripture. The apostles then handed this authority on to their successors, the bishops, and so on. This authority to interpret Scripture is called the Magisterium. The Magisterium is the unique teaching authority of the bishops, which includes the authority to teach the meaning God intends the Scriptures to possess. The bishops are guided in this work by a special gift of the Holy Spirit. This means that whilst we can all read the Scriptures, we must be careful that our personal interpretations fall within the bounds of Catholic teaching. We must read the Scriptures with humility, guided by the Magisterium, recognizing that the true meaning of any passage is given to that passage by God, not by my personal creativity.
The second important principle that Jesus gave the apostles for understanding the Old Testament is called “typology”. The Catechism explains that typology “discerns, in God’s works of the Old Testament, prefigurations [or types] of what he accomplished in the fullness of time in the person of his incarnate Son. This is what Jesus means when he says that “the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” are “about me” (cf. Luke 24:44). Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen. Such typological reading discloses the inexhaustible content of the Old Testament.” Hugh of St. Victor, a medieval scholar, puts it simply: “All divine Scripture speaks of Christ.”
Scott Hahn, an American Catholic scripture scholar, explains that a type is a “real person, place, thing or event in the Old Testament that foreshadows something greater in the New Testament.” Saint Paul identifies Adam as a type of Jesus (Rom 5:14). The Letter to the Hebrews identifies the Jewish sacrificial system and Temple as types of Jesus (Heb 8:5). Saint Peter himself identifies the Flood and Noah’s Ark as types of Baptism and the Church (1 Peter 3:21). Wooden trees and sticks usually refer to the Cross, gardens usually refer to heaven, anything with bread and wine refers to the Eucharist, anything with water refers to the death of sin and life of grace. Thus, the Garden of Eden is a type of Heaven, the Tree of Life is a type of the Cross (another piece of wood the gives Life), the Ark of the Covenant is a type of Mary, the Red Sea is a type of Baptism, and so on.
The point of typology is to help us understand God’s saving work. Every ‘type’ refers to a way that God saves us from eternal death and administers us the Life of sanctifying grace through Jesus and the Church. Can you think of a type in the Old Testament that might refer to Jesus, the Church, or the Sacraments? Let me know!