The Scope of Typology in the Works of Theodore of Mopsuestia

The Keystone of the Liturgy and Exegesis

Abstract

Theodore of Mopsuestia is known as a representative of the Antiochene School of exegesis in the Holy Scripture. He was considered heretical in the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople on the charge of being the ‘doctrinal founder of Nestorianism’. However, since the Syriac translation of his Catechetical Homilies was discovered, he has been considered an eminent theologian in liturgical spirituality. The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship of his typology between the liturgy and exegesis.
Theodore's standard of typological interpretation in the Old Testament is very rigid. He approves only three passages in the Old Testament from the typological point of view; 1) blood of lamb, 2) serpent made of bronze, 3) Jonah in the belly of a great fish. All of these share the same features; 1› these events or passages are cited in the New Testament with a typological meaning; 2› through these process, people actually achieved salvation from death, although the difference between these patterns of salvation and salvation through Christ is immeasurable. The case of Jonah is also investigated in detail, and it becomes clear that it was not the Jews but the foreigners that achieved salvation through both Jonah and Christ.
The theory of ‘catastasis’ or the condition or circumstance of two ages, the present and the future, is characteristic in the theology of Theodore. Christ opened the second catastasis through his resurrection from the dead. The age of the Old Testament falls within the first catastasis, but for us, the baptism means the ‘typos’ of the second. The liturgical action is told as a ‘typos’ of the suffering of Christ, but because Christ's action opened up the second catastasis, the reason why the liturgy is said to be a ‘typos’ is consistent with his theory of catastasis.
Theodore insists that the Christ presented in the Eucharist, and the Corpus of Christ is not a ‘typos’. Theodore's rigid standard of typology seems to have limited the scope of typology very narrowly as compared with Alexandrian theologians, but the continuity of the two testaments remains firm through this rigidity and the sense of salvation in liturgy. The result of Theodore's method offers an opportunity for both historical and literal investigation of the text of the Old Testament, free from an allegorical exegesis.