Biblical Realism

The philosophical theology of the Reformed Classicalist vision (its metaphysical stance) may be called theological realism. However, when concentrated upon the arena of biblical theology we can speak of a biblical realism. We will need a working definition of biblical theology in order to get a sense of what will be covered here. 

The modern master of the discipline, Geerhardus Vos, first defined theology as “the science concerning God.”1 He added that, “Other definitions either are misleading, or, when closely examined, are found to lead to the same result.” Accordingly he defined biblical theology as dealing “with revelation as a divine activity, not as the finished product of that activity.”2 Given the increased attention to Vos’ own classical commitments, I take it that he was warring not only against the kind of nineteenth century “biblical theologian” who meant to reduce divine truth to secular anthropology, but also the mere biblicist who would unwittingly help the skeptic do that by a constant fracturing of the text into a one-dimensional, left-to-right, hyper-inductive exercise. 

Presuppositionalists will speak of a “revelational” viewpoint by which they echo the maxim of Van Til (and even Bavinck would use this language) to “take one’s stand in Scripture.” Yet since general revelation and special revelation are both precisely revelation, it follows that a coherent revelational viewpoint would be one where biblical and systematic theology, faith and reason, nature and Scripture, will all form one songbook from which the faithful sing. No view is divinely “revelational” that is at war with itself. No view is “revelational” that does not treat that which is most real as most real everywhere it moves. But this is not just a matter of keeping God central in pious words only, but of maintaining more essential categories against the crashing waves of what might look like conflicting ink patterns on the inspired page. 

James Dolezal explains:

“[It] seems to me that biblical theology, with its unique focus on historical development and progress, is not best suited for the study of theology proper. The reason for this is because God is not a historical individual, and neither does His intrinsic activity undergo development or change. This places God beyond the proper focus of biblical theology. God is not changed by what He does—though what He does certainly brings about progress in history, creatures, and salvation.”3

Dolezal was not saying that God is not revealed truly in biblical theology, but that he is revealed in a particular manner and for a particular purpose—such purpose not being for an immediate alternative for the metaphysics of God. When the modern seminarian means to focus on a “biblical” or “narrative” approach, this usually comes to mean an “anti-metaphysical” reading of the text. However, what God is in himself cannot be captured in a snapshot treatment of his word. His word is not given for that. God gives to us the gift of rational reflection upon that word.

Elements of a Coherent Revelational Biblical Theology

Although this idea of biblical realism deserves a much greater treatment than I could give to it at present, it seems to me that the most familiar entry point may be to consider it from the perspective of eschatological models. Specifically the four basic models for understanding the prophecies concerning the “things to come” after the First Advent of Christ. These four are named Idealism, Historicism, Preterist, and Futurism. Of course there is also a fifth that is sometimes called an “Eclectic” view borrowing from the other four views. What I want to suggest is something far more holistic than such a borrowing: something more like a unification of the diversity of insights. Something that philosophical theology does by its very nature, always keen to see Christian theology resolving the age old problem of the one and the many. 

To come right to it: Idealism corresponds to the archetypes above, Historicism to the ectypes below, Preterism to the types to the left, and Futurism to the antitypes to the right. These are like the four points on a compass, except (obviously mixing metaphors) that here our “west,” “south,” and “east,” actually have to come to an equilibrium, standing as level points on a historical timeline, with our “north” being what will look (suspiciously to some) like Plato’s realm of the forms, but which I prefer to think of as Augustine’s vision of the City of God.

Now with the demise of the classical realist vision, these four points spun away from each other as a fractured universe, issuing forth into four competing visions of eschatology, and ways of interpreting the book of Revelation in particular. In point of fact, these four are not to be regarded as four “options” for the way things are or will be, but rather four different aspects of what is in all things, whether past, present, or future, and always bringing about on earth as it is in heaven. 

Typological Instances as Participation in Archetypal Being

Let’s start with the least controversial point: a type. We all know what a type is in the Bible. It is like a symbol or a shadow of something more substantial to come. “More than any other New Testament writer,” says Greidanus, “the author of Hebrews is known for his use of typology. Although he uses the word ‘typos’ only once, he indicates types with other words such as copy or sketch (hypodeigma, 8:5; 9:23; antitypos, 9:24), shadow (skia, 8:5; 10:1), and symbol (parabole, 9:9).”4 Hebrews sees Christ as the substance of the Old Testament. In drawing this forth, its inspired author works from a particular understanding of type and antitype, or shadow and substance.

Here again Vos is profound. In his excellent little commentary The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews he sees 10:1 as a crucial passage: “the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.” That expression, αὐτὴν τὴν εἰκόνα, may also rendered “the very image.”5 So if the Old was full of the copies, what can it mean that the New contains still images? Vos answers by considering how an artist first draws a sketch (skia) and then the final picture (eikoon).

Note that “both the sketch and the real picture are only representations of some real thing which lies beyond both of them. This real thing would then be the heavenly reality.”6

The upshot for Vos may strike some as too Platonic, though by this he only means that the author differs from the other Apostles in how they have the Old “shadowing” the New. 

The author of Hebrews has the real heavenly essence “shadowing down” all earthly exemplars (Old and New), while the Old still drives (left to right) toward the New. Hence there are past ectypes, present ectypes, and future ectypes, all participations of the eternal archetypes. But since “the present” is a thing more fleeting than even Zeno’s paradox could take a snapshot of, it is better to consider the historical as a constant flow from preterist and futurist instantiations. 

Eschatological Models as Four Dimensions of One Reality

Now if these four “points” on our compass have wider application than simply eschatological models, we may still wonder how it plays out in the case of Revelation, or other relevant passages such as the Olivet Discourse. I will have nothing to say here about the date of the book of Revelation, nor the relationship of that date to the question of the destruction of Jerusalem or end of the Jewish age, except to say that preterism has much going for it in that focus. But as my thesis has already suggested, it is but one perspective of a single reality. 

Even if partial preterism could be pushed as far toward full preterism as one desires (so long as essential truths like the resurrection to come, the Second Coming, and Final Judgment are retained), there is nothing in such ideas that precludes the type / antitype relationship between, say, a Nero as typological antichrist and a more menacing antichrist at the end. Nor would it preclude a “tribulation” such as the slaughter of those in Jerusalem by the armies of Titus in AD 70—not to mention John’s reference to being a fellow partaker with his immediate readers “in the tribulation” (Rev. 1:9)—on the one hand, and an unprecedented final tribulation still to come on the other. 

Christians have a common sense that these can go together, even if they lack a metaphysical paradigm to ground their eschatological reasoning. I have known many simple believers who say to this, “Yes, I can see how both of those can be true.”

Biblical realism answers that not only can type and antitype go together, but that this is literally the way everything already is because of the relationship between ectype and archetype.

This is not merely an interesting proposal for eschatology. This is a way to envision biblical narrative theology and classical metaphysical theology going together without all of the tensions. Such tensions are not real. They have been forced between the “upper and lower stories” by the amateur thinkers who have inherited the academic institutions that classical Christianity forfeited to them in the Enlightenment.

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1. Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2014), 3.

2. Vos, Biblical Theology, 5.

3. Dolezal, All That is In God, xv.

4. Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 219.

5. Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 55.

6. Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 55.