Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758 CE) was mighty in the Scriptures.¹For biographies see, Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Reverend, Learned, and Pious Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Northampton, 1804); George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). And exegetical typology enamored that biblical strongman, who spent the “lion’s share of his time” wrestling the text.²Douglas Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete: Biblical Interpretation and Anglo-Protestant Culture on the Edge of the Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 7. He once opined that nearly everything in the Hebrew Bible “was typical of gospel things. Persons were typical persons, actions were typical actions, cities were typical cities, … nations were typical nations, the land was a typical land, God’s providences were typical providences … indeed the world was a typical world.”³Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies”: (Entry Nos. a-z, aa-zz, 1–500), ed. Thomas Schafer, The Works of Jonathan Edwards 13 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 434–35. One can access Edwards’s works electronically at edwards.yale.edu. These comments cause Douglas Sweeney, the modern pioneer of the foreboding forest that is Edwards’s exegetical corpus, to assert that exegetical typology was Edwards’s lifelong, “all-pervasive interpretive passion.” This was, Sweeney notes, a passion saturating almost “all of his manuscripts and treatises,” serving as a “synecdoche for his exegesis.”⁴Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 71. Cf. Robert Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 185.

Given the sea of scholastic literature on Edwards’s life and thought, it is peculiar that scholarship, since the Edwardsean renaissance of the 1940s, has not fully appreciated that Edwards was a biblical exegete joyfully inhabiting a “God-haunted” world.⁵Robert Boss, God-Haunted World: The Elemental Theology of Jonathan Edwards (pub. by author, 2015). Cf. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 473–74. For those outside Edwardsean studies, it is an uncontroversial dictum that Edwards was a normal Congregational minister from a normal family of Bible-believing ministers in eighteenth-century New England holding to normal biblical beliefs.⁶Kenneth Minkema, “The Edwardses: A Ministerial Family in Eighteenth-Century New England” (PhD diss., The University of Connecticut, 1988).

Edwards’s “normality,” though, is the “dirty secret” of Edwards studies.⁷Brandon Withrow, “‘Full of Wondrous and Glorious Things’: The Exegetical Mind of Jonathan Edwards in his Anglo-American Cultural Context” (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 2007), 3–4; Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 7; Conrad Cherry, “Symbols of Spiritual Truth: Jonathan Edwards as Biblical Interpreter,” Int 39 (1985), 263–71, 263. Scholars have been more interested in modernizing Edwards as the philosopher, theologian, homiletician, psychologist, or revivalist—an unparalleled genius far-ahead of his time, who would have shed his ministerial robes if he had the opportunity.⁸Kenneth Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards in the Twentieth Century,” JETS 47 (2004): 659–87, 675. The literature reflects this sentiment. For example, in a recent volume on Edwards and Scripture, Sweeney notes that, as of 2005, looking at M. X. Lesser’s massive annotated bibliography on Edwards studies, “less than half of one percent of scholarship” engages “his interpretation of Scripture.” Sweeney admits, however, that since 2005 this has shifted. He asserts that we have just “begun to appreciate his chief occupation,” as work on Edwards’s exegesis surfaces like the “tip of the iceberg” in the otherwise vast sea of Edwards studies focused on almost everything other than his scriptural interests.⁹Sweeney, “Conclusion,” in Jonathan Edwards and Scripture: Biblical Exegesis in British North America, ed. David Barshinger and Douglas Sweeney (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 249–51. Citing M. X. Lesser, Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in Three Parts, 1729–2005 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). Though Sweeney’s statement reflects fifteen-year-old data, it still is a fair assessment, given the relatively unaltered scholastic landscape in the last two decades. This figure has gone up, at most, a few percentage points since 2005. The forthcoming work to update M. X. Lesser’s annotated bibliography at the Jonathan Edwards Center Midwest will clarify the current scholastic-landscape: https://prts.edu/jec-mid5est-launches-a-new-book-project/. For a fuller introduction to Edwards’s exegesis, and a survey of the scholarly literature—a burgeoning, specialized field—see “Appendix B: An Introduction to Edwards’s Exegesis,” in Cameron Schweitzer,* Towards a Clearer Understanding of Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology: A Case Study in the “Blank Bible” (Dallas: JESociety Press, 2025), 281–88. For recent, important work on Edwards’s exegesis, see Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete; Barshinger and Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and Scripture; Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible; Stephen Nichols, Jonathan Edwards’s Bible* (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013); Stephen Stein, “Edwards as Biblical Exegete,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Stephen Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 181–95.

Given this scholastic oversight, it is unsurprising that there is little work exclusively investigating Edwards’s hermeneutical synecdoche—though exegetical typology runs mightily through nearly all of his published works, sermons, and private notebooks.¹⁰For a discussion of the lop-sided way scholars write about Edwards’s typological thought as compared to Edwards’s own writings devoted to typology, see Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 7–10. Only a handful of treatments exclusively investigate Edwards’s typological exegesis. The voluminous secondary literature on Edwards shrouds these studies strewn across book chapters and articles.¹¹Mason Lowance and David Watters, introduction to Typological Writings by Jonathan Edwards, Works 11:157–82; Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 53–136; Nichols, Jonathan Edwards’s Bible, 58–107; Barshinger, Jonathan Edwards and the Psalms: A Redemptive-Historical Vision of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 164–217; Benjamin Wayman, “Women as Types of the Church in the Blank Bible: The ‘Feminine’ Ecclesiology of Jonathan Edwards,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 2.2 (2012): 56–78; Tibor Fabiny, “Edwards and Biblical Typology,” and Gerald McDermott, “Alternative Viewpoint: Edwards and Biblical Typology,” in Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America’s Theologian, ed. Gerald McDermott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009): 91–108, 109–12; Nelson Kloosterman, “The Use of Typology in Post-Canonical Salvation History: An Orientation to Jonathan Edwards’ A History of the Work Redemption,” MJT 14 (2003): 59–96; Douglas Landrum, Jonathan Edwards’ Exegesis of Genesis: A Puritan Hermeneutic (Mustang, OK: Tate, 2015), 81–120; Linda Munk, “Jonathan Edwards: Types of the Peaceable Kingdom,” in Millennial Thought in America: Historical and Intellectual Contexts, 1630–1860, ed. Bernd Engler, Joerg Fichte, and Oliver Scheiding (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher-Verlag, 2002): 215–28. One important work on Edwards’s biblical typology, though, is Drew Hunter’s article, “Hebrews and the Typology of Jonathan Edwards.”¹²Drew Hunter, “Hebrews and the Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” Themelios 44.2 (2019): 339–52.

1. Hunter’s Essay

In this splendid article, Hunter surveys “Edwards’s interpretive reflections on Hebrews [to] reveal his typological interpretation of the Old Testament.” His goal is to bring “Edwards’s principled typological method” as a uniquely important voice into “several, current theological discussions.”¹³Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 340.

Hunter believes he is warranted to limit his investigation into Edwards’s typological methodology by examining his exegesis on Hebrews, since Edwards’s “notes on Hebrews” give the “clearest window” through which one appreciates Edwards’s arrangement of the “typological furniture of his hermeneutical house.” Furthermore, because “Hebrews arguably contains more typological discussion than any other biblical writing,” Hebrews is, for Edwards, “the most significant biblical book” for forming “his own thoughts on typology.” Within this methodological limitation, Hunter scans Edwards’s corpus, unearthing “many comments on Hebrews that give a window into Edwards’s typology.”¹⁴Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 340–41. Hunter’s assertions arise from observations on Edwards’s unpublished notebook, “Types,” in his Typological Writings, Works 11:145–55, about which he states, Edwards employed “Types” “to [explain] and [defend] his view of typology,” referring to Hebrews “twice as often as any other book.” For an introduction to “Types,” see its editor’s introduction (Edwards, Typological Writings, Works 11:3–33) and Schweitzer, “How Scripture Justifies Jonathan Edwards’s Typological View of the Old Testament: A Reconsideration of the ‘Types’ Notebook,” in The Jonathan Edwards Miscellanies Companion: Volume 2, ed. Robert Boss and Sarah Boss (Dallas: JESociety Press, 2021): 261–86.

From his data, Hunter organizes his essay in three parts. In the first part, he provides “exegetical examples from texts that [Edwards] viewed as typological.” In the second part, he takes a “step beyond” by constructing six “theoretical principles” of Edwards’s exegetical-typological methods. The final part of Hunter’s essay provides five ways in which Edwards “serves exegetes and theological interpreters as a model of thought and principled theological interpretation.”¹⁵Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 341, 348.

In part one, Hunter constructs three categories for Edwards’s exegetical examples from Hebrews. First, there are types of “sacrifice and priesthood.” Hunter comments that “sacrifice and priesthood are two of the most prominent themes in Hebrews. Therefore, it is no coincidence that these are also the most prominent typological examples in Edwards’s reflections on this book.” Hunter then provides Edwards’s thoughts about the sacrificial system’s “typological aspects.” These “aspects” include Israel’s altars, Moses’s ceremonial law, and its various elements. Lastly, Hunter describes Edwards’s thinking on the “typology of other institutions,” drawing the reader to Edwards’s ideas that “demonstrate a broader understanding of typology.” He highlights Edwards’s types for the church, heaven, and eschatological rest found in Jerusalem, Mount Sinai, and Israel’s entrance into Canaan.¹⁶Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 341–43.

Building upon these examples, Hunter then provides six “principles of typology” from Edwards’s thoughts on Hebrews. Hunter’s critical principle about Edwards’s typology is that “types always and only point to spiritual things related to Christ and the gospel.” Since, for Edwards, “the antitype is always related to Christ and ‘gospel things’ of the New Testament age … these ‘gospel things’ that have arrived in Christ are the substance of not just some, but all ancient types.”¹⁷Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 344–45. Surprisingly, given Hunter’s attention to Edwards’s “Types” notebook, he missed Edwards’s statement that “types are used in the New Testament as well as the Old.” Statements like these should have given Hunter pause before making sweeping statements about Edwards’s “christological” typology.

From this intimate connection between Old Testament types and christological antitypes, Hunter proposes five additional Edwardsean, exegetical-typological principles. First, there is continuity and discontinuity between type and antitype. Second, there are more types in the Old Testament than the New Testament provides.¹⁸Edwards, The “Miscellanies,**” 434–35. Third, an interpreter can discover types that the New Testament never mentions.¹⁹On this point, Edwards writes in his “Types” notebook, musing upon 1 Corinthians 13:2, that Paul “implies that there were [an] abundance of mysteries then not understood … divine truths wrapped up in shadows.… There is a medium between those that cry down all types, and those that are for turning all into nothing but allegory and not having it to be true history” (Edwards, Typological Writings, 151). Fourth, interpreters should only name types when properly “warranted.”²⁰Edwards’s principle of “typological warrant” is critical for his typological exegesis. He states in “Types” that “persons ought to be exceeding careful in interpreting types, that they don’t give way to wild fancy; not to fix an interpretation unless warranted by some hint in the New Testament of its being the true interpretation, or a lively figure and representation contained or warranted by an analogy to other types that we interpret on sure grounds” (Edwards, Typological Writings, 148). Edwards believes, therefore, that “biblical warrant” allows one to draw “typological deductions.” Namely, when Edwards finds New Testament precedent for a given type, he believes, by “warranted analogy,” he can draw additional types from that same Old Testament type even with the New Testament’s silence. For example, Edwards interprets Eve’s formation from sleeping-Adam’s side as a type for the Church’s formation from the resurrected Christ, since Paul typologically interprets Adam and Eve as figures for Christ and the Church in Romans 4 and Ephesians 5. Edwards reasons, therefore, that since Paul understands Adam and Eve typologically, then on “sure grounds” he is warranted to interpret their actions typologically, constructing his less-established type on an established one’s surer ground (Jonathan Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” Works 24:135). Lastly, if one does not see biblical types, then it is solely the interpreter’s fault.²¹Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 343–47.

The essay’s final section provides five ways that Edwards’s exegetical-typological practices and principles aid exegetes today. First, Edwards provides a “model of thoughtful and principled typological interpretation,” patterned after the New Testament, showing both “freedom and constraint.” Second, Edwards embodies how one can imitate the New Testament’s typological hermeneutic while moving beyond its own typological-exegesis. Third, Edwards provides a template that evangelical scholars can employ as they respond to biblical criticism while upholding the Bible’s integrity—“appropriating where able and responding where needed.” Fourth, Edwards’s typological exegesis and whole-Bible hermeneutic, rooted in his belief of the canon’s “remarkable unity,” bequeath an apologetic to Christians that contends for the Bible’s divine authorship. Lastly, Edwards exemplifies how scholars can have “theological integrity,” allowing the Bible supreme authority in one’s life, such that it shapes “interpretive practices and publications.” Hunter then ends his essay forcefully. Drawing everything together, he states that Edwards models “a pastor-theologian who delighted in and submitted to the Bible as a divinely authored, aesthetically beautiful, and unified work that points us to Christ and ‘gospel things.’”²²Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 347–52.

Hunter’s essay powerfully highlights an undeniably rich and important dimension of Edwards’s typological exegesis, providing a real contribution to Edwards scholarship and the church. Readers should commend Hunter’s work for three reasons. First, it ventures into a largely unexplored area of Edwards’s typological exegesis, as Hunter focuses on analyzing Edwards’s writings and synthesizing his exegetical-typological principles. This is a needed contribution to Edwards scholarship. Second, by publishing in Themelios, Hunter invites non-Edwardsean scholars into a burgeoning field in Edwards studies. Opening Edwards’s corpus to new researchers is praiseworthy. Third, Hunter’s essay shows how authors can appropriately retrieve Edwards for pertinent conversations today. Inviting others to do the same, he helpfully provides an imitable template. His work also reminds Edwards scholars that his thought ought not be untethered from the church, for this was the body Edwards spent his life serving.

Two issues come to mind, though, when assessing Hunter’s work. The first concerns Hunter’s research constraints for acquiring his data of Edwards’s exegetical-typological practices and principles. In this article, Hunter only investigated Edwards’s typological thinking on Hebrews. While one sympathizes that he had to limit himself such that his findings fit in an article’s parameters, one wonders if Hunter’s limited study is sufficient to support some of his broad conclusions. A reader cursorily familiar with Edwards knows that he has scores of volumes devoted to exegeting, interpreting, and applying the Old Testament for his audience in the early American colonies. Also, one wonders if there are more books upon which Edwards commented wherein the reader could find many other instructive aspects of his exegetical-typological hermeneutic that would contribute to a fuller understanding of his interpretive practices and principles. Given his research limitations, it seems hasty for Hunter to conclude that for Edwards “the antitype is always related to Christ and ‘gospel things’ of the New Testament.”²³Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 345.

The second issue relates to some of Hunter’s conclusions drawn from his data. In the article’s first section, Hunter recognizes that there are non-christological antitypes in Edwards’s exegesis. Hunter refers to these examples as the “typology of other institutions” that demonstrate Edwards’s “broader understanding of typology,” providing the examples of Jerusalem and the “true Jerusalem,” Mount Sinai and heaven, and Israel’s promised land “rest” and the saints’ eschatological rest. These examples suggest, therefore, that Hunter may have been too quick in concluding that “Christ and ‘gospel things’ are the substance of not just some, but all ancient types.”²⁴These statements highlight a weak point of Hunter’s article: he does not always clearly define his terms. This undermines his thesis of the christological nature of Edwards’s exegetical typology. Hunter speaks of “gospel things” related to Edwards’s understanding of antitypical fulfilment but does not define the “things” to which “gospel things” refer. One wonders, “are these ‘things’ immediately attached to Christ, like his gifts of applied redemption?” If so, one can justifiably relate these “gospel things” to Christ’s person and work. Or, one asks, “are these ‘things’ further removed from Christ, such that one cannot consider them strictly christological, like the Holy Spirit’s or anti-Christ’s advent, or eschatological judgment?” This lack of definitional clarity obscures Hunter’s “christological thesis” when he speaks of Edwards’s “broader understanding of typology” and provides examples that point to the New Testament church, heaven, and eschatological rest, since these antitypes are not, explicitly speaking, the gospel or Christ—the antitypes to which Hunter claims Edwards’s “types always and only point.” It is possible, though, given Hunter’s definition of “gospel things,” to include these other antitypes such that he does not undermine his thesis about Edwards’s “christological” exegetical typology. To include these other antitypes within Hunter’s definitional categories, however, would either require Hunter to provide greater definitional clarity or for the reader to be quite charitable in their interpretation of his terms. Even limiting himself to Edwards’s thoughts on Hebrews hints that Edwards’s construal of biblical typology is broader than Hunter’s narrow “christological” boundaries. His study is a step in the right direction to better understanding Edwards’s exegetical typology. It seems, however, that a broader study is necessary to unearth better terminology to describe his typological exegesis.

2. Thesis and Scope of the Article

This essay provides such a study by introducing Edwards’s exegetical-typology through surveying Edwards’s longest, most-beloved exegetical notebook, The “Blank Bible.” Edwards penned roughly 5,500 entries in this Bible notebook over three decades. For this reason, this exegetical manuscript outnumbers—in terms of published page count in the Yale University series—the combined totals of his other exegetical notebooks: Notes on Scripture, “Types,” “Types of the Messiah,” and Revelation commentary. The “Blank Bible” is a fitting subject for this essay, then, because it allows readers to probe the inner workings of Edwards’s interpretive mind by providing a window through which to observe his exegesis of the entire Bible.²⁵Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 123–1248. Edwards received this small King James Bible in the early 1730s, in which he interspersed blank pages to provide ample space for notes on the adjacent texts. Consequently, this volume is one of the most important yet peculiar pieces in Edwards’s corpus. For a robust introduction to the “Blank Bible,” see Stephen Stein’s introduction (Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 1–117). For a shorter treatment of the document, see “Appendix A: Jonathan Edwards’s Blank Bible,” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 273–80.

This essay will contend that Hunter’s thesis that “Christ is the substance of all ancient types” is too narrow to account for all the available evidence. The data of the “Blank Bible” will suggest that more precise yet simultaneously broader terminology is needed to describe Edwards’s exegetical-typological practices better. Edwards’s notes in his Blank Bible are too diverse in their assignment of antitypes, as well as the manner and time in which he asserts types find fulfillment, for Hunter to assert accurately that for Edwards “the antitype is always related to Christ and the ‘gospel things’ of the New Testament age.”²⁶Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 345. For similar statements of Edwards’s “christological” typology, see Glenn Kreider, Jonathan Edwards’s Interpretation of Revelation 4:1–8:1 (Dallas: University Press of America, 2004), 287–89; Nichols, Jonathan Edwards’s Bible, 103–4; Michael McClymond, Encounters with God: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 68; Stephen Holmes, God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 107; William Tooman, “Edwards’s Ezekiel: The Interpretation of Ezekiel in The Blank Bible and Notes on Scripture,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 3.1 (2009): 17–39; Janice Knight, “Learning the Language of God: Jonathan Edwards and the Typology of Nature,” William and Mary Quarterly 48.4 (1991), 531–51; Sean Lucas, God’s Grand Design: The Theological Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 49–50; James Detrich, “A Recital of Presence: Christological use of Scripture in A History of the Work of Redemption” (PhD diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 2016), 340–41.

To underscore the inadequacy of Hunter’s description of Edwards’s “christological” typology, this essay will survey the 143 notations in the “Blank Bible” in which Edwards uses a word from the “type family” (type, types, typify, typifies, etc.) to connect a redemptive-historical sign with an antitypical signification that is not strictly “christological.”²⁷The “Blank Bible” does not have numbered notations. Rather, Edwards appends each note to the scriptural text giving rise to that particular reflection. Thus, the easiest way to delineate one note from the next is to refer to it by the text to which it is connected, i.e., Genesis 27:5 or Matthew 1:11. Given the present argument, this essay will not overview the sixty-seven notations in the “Blank Bible” in which Edwards connects a type with a christological antitype (i.e., his person, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, exaltation, or his application of redemption).²⁸For a treatment of his christological and soteriological antitypes, see chapters 2–4 in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 31–90. In the other 143 notations, Edwards speaks of eleven antitypes to which various types point. These include the Holy Spirit, “intra”-Old Testament, “intra”-New Testament, the Church, eschatology, Christian ministry/ministers, Christian spirituality, the demonic, sin, the world, as well as “gospel things.” For brevity’s sake, this essay provides a brief summary for each of these antitypical categories, in addition to analyzing an example from each. The intent is to allow the reader to appreciate the diversity of Edwards’s typological exegesis.²⁹For a thorough analysis of the 210 typological notations in Blank Bible, see my* Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology*, 31–261. After surveying Edwards’s typological exegesis, the essay then summarizes its findings and proposes different terminology for categorizing Edwards’s exegetical typology.

3. The Biblical Typology of Edwards’s “Blank Bible”

3.1. Types of the Holy Spirit

Edwards typologically connects the Old Testament to the Holy Spirit in five “Blank Bible” notes.³⁰For Edwards on the Holy Spirit, see Robert Caldwell, Communion in the Spirit: The Holy Spirit as the Bond of Unity in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007); R. A. Leo, “Holy Spirit,” in The Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia, ed. Harry Stout, Kenneth Minkema, and Adriaan Neele (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 298–300; Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 262–72. Leaning on the New Testament’s metaphorical depictions of the Spirit, Edwards finds types in the Old Testament’s first-fruit offering and its description of water in relation to God’s presence.

In a note on Daniel’s vision of “the Prince” in the prophet’s ninth chapter, Edwards reflects on the typological significance of anointing oil’s witness to the Spirit.³¹Daniel 9:25 states, “understand that from the going forth of the commandment to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks.” All scriptural citations are from the King James Version, as this was the English translation Edwards used. He begins this long note by observing that Gabriel refers to the prince as “the Messiah.” For he “had been spoken of as ‘anointed.’”³²For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other notes on pneumatological types, see the section “Pneumatological Types of the Blank Bible” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 257–61. In four “respects” Edwards then shows why Jesus must be that “Messiah, Christ, or the anointed”—tying each “respect” to the Holy Spirit. Edwards makes these connections because he notices that God anoints individuals for his sanctified purposes only by his Spirit. Therefore, according to his thinking, the Old Testament’s description of leaders being “anointed by oil” must prefigure the Holy Spirit’s anointing Jesus to fulfill his God-given, messianic role. In his interpretive eyes, consequently, “simply reading passages that contained imagery of ‘oil’ thus excited ideas of the work of the Spirit,” given his belief that Scripture itself typifies the Holy Spirit by oil.³³For the Bible’s connection of anointing-oil with the Holy Spirit, see Isaiah 61:1; Acts 10:38; and 1 John 2:20, 27. Ryan Hoselton, “Spiritually Discerned: Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Experiential Exegesis in Early Evangelicalism” (PhD diss., Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat Heidelberg, 2019), 205; cf., Barshinger, Edwards and the Psalms, 221–22.

From such typological reasoning, Edwards asserts that this passage adumbrates four “respects” in which the Spirit anointed Jesus, the Messiah. First, Jesus was anointed “in his divine nature … as the Father doth eternally pour forth the Spirit of love upon him.” Second, he was anointed “in his human nature … as the Spirit dwelt in him from the first moment of his existence in union with the eternal Logos.” Third, God anointed Jesus by the Spirit at his baptism “to consecrate him for his [mediatorial] work.” Fourth, “every believing soul” anoints Jesus by “the exercise of the grace of the Holy Spirit towards him.”³⁴Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 767–68.

3.2. Edwards’s “Intra”-Old Testament Typology

In the “Blank Bible,” one finds that, for Edwards, sometimes Old Testament types have a shorter antitypical gaze than the New Testament. To be specific, in the “Blank Bible,” Edwards composed fifteen notations in which he states that an earlier part of the Old Testament typified a later part of the same Testament. He writes of these typological pairs in eleven Hebrew books.³⁵Exodus, Genesis, and Numbers, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and Zechariah.

These notations fall into two broad categories. Eight speak of typical things/events that find fulfillment in later antitypical things/events, while seven speak of types that find fulfillment in later prophesies. Types in the first group include Melchizedek’s blessing, Jacob’s smitten thigh, or the baby Moses’s preservation in the Nile. This group’s antitypes include events like God’s blessing to Abram, Jacob’s tumultuous life, and Israel’s preservation in Egypt. While in the latter seven examples, Edwards’s types include Exodus’s smitten rock, Hannah’s Song, or the sun that stood still for twenty-four hours. The antitypical prophesies to which they point include the works of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and Zechariah.

An instructive example from the first category is Edwards’s brief note on Joseph’s exaltation in Potiphar’s house and its typological significance for his life (Gen 39:4–6).³⁶“Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and Potiphar made him overseer over his house, and all he had … it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all he had, that the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house.… And he left all he had in Joseph’s hand.… Joseph was well favoured.” He comments, “what we are informed of in these verses, of Joseph’s being set over all Potiphar’s [house], seems to be typical of the same thing as Pharaoh’s setting of him over all Egypt.”³⁷Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 188. For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other “intra”-Old Testament types, see the chapter “Edwards’s ‘Intra’ Old Testament Typology,” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 121–42.

Edwards roots this typological connection around the similar and dissimilar ways in which Joseph was “set over” all that his masters placed under him. Edwards makes three observations in typologically comparing Joseph’s two exaltations. First, Joseph’s exaltation in Potiphar’s house temporally precedes his exaltation under Pharaoh. Second, Edwards notes that both of Joseph’s masters set him over “all they had.” Third, Edwards points out the dissimilarity of these two exaltations. Potiphar was master over his house, while Pharaoh was master over Egypt. So, in the first instance, Joseph merely governed Potiphar’s house, while in the second he governed Egypt. In Edwards’s mind, therefore, Joseph’s earlier exaltation typifies his later and greater exaltation.

3.3. Edwards’s “Intra”-New Testament Typology

The “Blank Bible” unveils another startling aspect of Edwards’s biblical typology. He believes that types are not only the Old Testament’s purview nor are antitypes exclusively the New Testament’s property. In seventeen notes in the “Blank Bible,” Edwards speaks of type-antitype pairs circumscribed by the New Testament. Edwards left two such notes in his comments on the Old Testament, and the other fifteen in the Christian Testament.³⁸Old Testament: Psalms and Isaiah. New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and 1 Corinthians. These notations situate into eight categories. These include his principled statements about New Testament typology, New Testament types in Old Testament notes, types of Christ’s preaching, the typological significance of Christ washing his disciples’ feet, types of Christ’s redemption, ecclesiological types, in addition to types of sin and heaven.

An intriguing example is Edwards’s note on Isaiah’s “virgin sign” in which he offers a few thoughts on the typological witness of Jesus’s virgin birth.³⁹Isaiah states, “The Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s New Testament typology, see the chapter “Edwards’s New Testament Typology” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 145–64. He states that Mary’s conception “is typical of the purity of Christ’s conception,” for she was a “typically pure,” “undefiled virgin.” Her purity is symbolically significant, Edwards contends, because there is “defilement in coition,” as our “propagation from the more unclean parts of bodies” ceremonially defiles. Here he appeals to “the law of Moses” as proof of this defilement—likely having a text like Leviticus 15:16–18 in mind and its statement about the defiling nature of “copulation.”

Edwards states that sexual intercourse ritually defiles because “original sin and corruption [is] conveyed by generation.”⁴⁰For Edwards’s treatment of the topic, see his Original Sin, Works 3:107–437. Edwards echoes the historical teaching of “traducianism”: the soul and body come into existence through the parents’ sexual union. Every individual, therefore, is born “sinful” and “corrupted,” due to one’s inheriting Adam’s original sin, embodied, Edwards believes, in the “uncleanness” of sex itself. The significance of Christ being born from a virgin, consequently, is that he was “not conceived in sin.” Of all men, he was born without sin, and his unstained-holiness was typified in his proceeding forth “from a pure virgin.” As Mary was physically undefiled, so Christ was spiritually undefiled.⁴¹Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 636–37.

3.4. Edwards’s Ecclesiological Typology

After Edwards’s christological and soteriological typologies, his comments uniting Old Testament types with ecclesiological antitypes form his largest group of typological notes in the “Blank Bible.”⁴²Benjamin Wayman addresses this topic in his “Women as Types of the Church.” He argues that Edward’s ecclesiological typology in the “*“Blank Bible” is “overwhelmingly feminine.” This author believes, though, that Wayman’s conclusions are over-stated and inaccurate. See Schweitzer, “Does Edwards Have a “Thoroughgoing ‘Feminine’ Ecclesiology?” A Response to Benjamin Wayman in a Reconsideration of the Evidence from The Blank Bible,” Jonathan Edwards Studies* 11.2 (2021): 147–82. Edwards’s ecclesiological types account for forty-seven notes.⁴³For Edwards’s ecclesiology, see Sweeney, “The Church,” in The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Sang Hyun Lee (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005): 167–89; Rhys Bezzant, Jonathan Edwards and the Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Amy Plantinga-Pauw, “Jonathan Edwards’ Ecclesiology,” in Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary, ed. Don Schweitzer (New York: Lang, 2010), 175–86. There are four categories into which these notations fall: general, ecclesial types, types of the Gentile church, types of the Jewish church, and his “functional” ecclesiological antitypes. The term “functional” is used in the sense of what Edwards believes the church ought to do, what God has done in/with it, or what may occur in the church. The types Edwards uncovers are quite diverse. He asserts that the infant Moses’s preservation in the Nile, the Law’s rules for leprosy-stricken dwellings, and important women like Rebecca, Rachel, and Mary all typify the church.

An amusing, compact example of Edwards’s ecclesiological typology is his note on 1 Chronicles 25:9–31.⁴⁴For a complete catalog and analysis of Edwards’s many ecclesiological-typological notes in the “Blank Bible,” see the chapter, “Edwards’s Ecclesiological Typology,” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 93–120. Edwards asserts that the ranked and ordered “company of singers in the temple” is a “lively type of the triumphant church.” Edwards finds significance in the company’s numbers: twenty-four “wards” with “twelve persons in each ward” totaling “twice twelve times twelve.” This “is agreeable,” he observes, to Revelation’s numbering God’s church. Thus, “the leaders or heads of these twenty-four wards do probably typify the same thing that is signified by twenty-four elders in Revelation.” These numerical similarities are not accidental, granted that, in Edwards’s mind, “numbers are not simply historical markers.” But numbers can “show how God foreshadowed the millennium even in the Old Testament.”⁴⁵Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 409–10. Kreider, Edwards’s Interpretation of Revelation, 161. For more on Krieder’s interpretation of Edwards’s numeric typology, see 159–61, 186–87.

3.5. Edwards’s Eschatological Typology

Scholars have well documented Edwards’s fascination with eschatology.⁴⁶For an introduction, see Stein’s introduction to Apocalyptic Writings by Jonathan Edwards, Works 5:1–94; McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 566–79; C. C. Goen, “Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure in Eschatology,” CH 28 (1959): 25–40; Brandon Withrow, “A Future of Hope: Jonathan Edwards and Millennial Expectations,” TJ 22 (2001): 75–98; Mark Rogers, “A Missional Eschatology: Jonathan Edwards, Future Prophecy, and the Spread of the Gospel,” Fides et Historia 41 (2009): 23–46. It is not as well known, however, that Edwards’s typological curiosities fused with his eschatological interests. The “Blank Bible” shows that Edwards’s Old Testament types did not only point to New Testament events and persons but also to antitypes in the “last days” and the age to come.

Edwards uses “type” and its derivatives to connect the Old Testament to the eschaton typologically in twenty-nine “Blank Bible” notations. This makes eschatology Edwards’s third most favored antitype behind Christ’s person and work (sixty-seven notes) and ecclesiology (forty-seven notes). These twenty-nine notations occur in nineteen biblical books.⁴⁷Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, 2 Samuel, 2 Chronicles, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, Romans, Hebrews, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation. Edwards’s antitypes include events and persons in the “last days,” eschatological judgment and hell, and heaven with its eternal rest. His types include the flood, Egypt, Mount Sinai, Daniel’s lion’s den, or people like Absalom.

Edwards left a fascinating note speaking of Christ’s parousia in Leviticus 9:22–23.⁴⁸Leviticus states, “Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people, blessed them, and came down from the offerings.… Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle, came out, and blessed the people: and the Lord’s glory appeared.” For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other eschatological types, see the chapter, “The Eschatological Typology of the Blank Bible,” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 167–89. There he points himself to the “Interleaved Bible” note on Hebrews 9:28, which elucidates how “Aaron’s coming out after offering the sacrifice to bless the people” typifies Christ’s second advent. Edwards states that the events in Leviticus’s ninth chapter are not accidentally akin with how Hebrews 9:26–28 speaks of the nature and purpose of Christ’s advents.

Edwards argues that for the author of Hebrews “there is not an image that can enter in the Jewish mind, more suitable to convey the grand idea” of the glory of Christ’s parousia than recalling “the grand solemnity” of the high priest coming out in golden robes to bless the people after having made atonement. It is Christ who will return in glory “not to deal with sin, but to save those who eagerly wait for him.” Just as the priest came out to the congregation a “second time” to offer pardon after making atonement, so Christ will return a “second time” after having ritually purified heaven, having completed our pardon. Edwards argues, therefore, that Aaron’s movements in Leviticus typify Christ’s parousia.⁴⁹Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 252, 1150–51.

3.6. Edwards’s Types of Christian Ministers/Ministry

In four “Blank Bible” notes, Edwards typologically connects the Old Testament to Christian ministers/ministry and the sacraments.⁵⁰For Edwards and the ministry, see William Schweitzer, ed., Jonathan Edwards for the Church: The Ministry and the Means of Grace (Welwyn-City, UK: Evangelical Press, 2015); and Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009). For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other notes on ministerial types, see the section “Types of Ministers and Ministry” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 254–56. Edwards points out that the Hebrew Scriptures adumbrate Christian ministers and important functions of their office like preaching, prayer, and sacramental administration. He finds these types in a dug-out well, Moses’s intermediation, and David’s slung stones.

In one such note, Edwards comments on the Old Testament’s witness to the minister’s intercession in his note on Jabez’s prayer (1 Chr 4:9–10).⁵¹“Jabez called on God, saying, ‘Oh that thou wouldest bless me, and enlarge my coast, that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil!’ And God granted his request.” Edwards points out that Jabez “was probably a scribe” of esteemed honor who excelled in “learning and piety.” Granted Jabez’s profession and status, Edwards concludes that his prayer made him “especially a type of the ministry.” For God’s responding to his request to “enlarge [his] coast” embodies “God’s enlarging the church in answer to the prayers of ministers.” For it is through ministerial prayers, Edwards implies, that God expands his church’s “coasts” as he did for Jabez.⁵²Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 403–4. Edwards so strongly believed in prayer’s ministerial importance that he devoted a treatise to underscoring how it will bring about Christ’s kingdom. See his “An Humble Attempt” in Jonathan Edwards, Apocalyptic Writings, Works 5:309–437. It is only through prayer that God “remarkably pours out” his Spirit.⁵³Detrich, “A Recital of Presence,” 208–9.

3.7. Edwards’s Types of “Christian Spirituality”

Not all of Edwards’s Old Testament types in the “Blank Bible” looked forward to historical, concrete antitypes. For in a few notes, Edwards details how the Hebrew Scriptures adumbrated trans-temporal, spiritual truths about the Christian experience. These are Edwards’s types for “Christian spirituality.”⁵⁴This category, the previous, and a few to follow, underscore the difficulty of categorizing Edwards’s exegetical typology, for he often connects a type to an antitype that is a general principle or to an action or role that is repeatedly replicated outside Scripture. Not a few authors might refer to these examples of Edwards’s exegesis as “allegorical” rather than “typological,” even though Edwards uses “type” and its derivatives to refer to the connection others label “allegorical.” Hunter speaks too hastily, therefore, when he states that “Edwards was not an allegorist.” Depending on how one distinguishes allegory from typology, they may or may not conceive of Edwards as engaging in “allegory and disregard[ing] an event’s historical and literary context,” reading meanings into texts not there. Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 348. These notations underscore that just as “spirituality was central to his life,” so too Christian spirituality is important to Edwards’s exegetical typology.⁵⁵William Van-Vlastuin, “Spirituality,” in Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia, 543–45. For an introduction to Edwards’s spirituality, see Jonathan Edwards’ Spiritual Writings, eds. Kyle Strobel, Adriaan Neele, and Kenneth Minkema (New York: Paulist, 2019); Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013); McClymond and McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 60–76.

When concentrating on Edwards’s employment of “type” and its derivatives to connect the Hebrew Scriptures to Christian spirituality, one finds fourteen relevant notes in the “Blank Bible.” These notes occur in seven biblical books in the Jewish canon, and one in a Gospel that looks back to the Old Testament.⁵⁶Genesis, Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Matthew. There are four broad antitypical categories to which these types point: a Christian’s experience of regeneration and conversion, the practice of repentance, the Christian life’s journey-like nature, as well as the Christian’s faith. His types include events like Lot’s wife becoming a salt pillar, the golden calf, and Elisha’s miracles, and individuals like Ittai the Philistine or Ruth the Moabite, and even Jonadab’s abstinent command to his posterity.

An intriguing example is Edwards’s short but significant note on God’s curse of Eve in Genesis 3:16.⁵⁷For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other types of “Christian spirituality,” see the chapter, “The Spiritualistic Typology of the Blank Bible,” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 217–37. He focuses on God’s statement that “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” Edwards states succinctly that Eve’s curse of painfully bearing children “is fulfilled in a literal and mystical sense.” It is consummated literally, of course, in Eve’s immediately bearing children agonizingly—and continuously realized in every painful birth since.⁵⁸Scriptures speaking of the “pains of childbirth” or “birth pains”: Jer 48:41; Mic 4:9–10; 5:3; John 16:21.

Edwards’s only clue as to what he means by “mystical sense” is his passing comment “of which the former is a type.”⁵⁹Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 139. In other words, he believes that birthing’s literal pains typify the “pains” of one’s “spiritual birth” through the church. Edwards’s interpretation is not surprising given his frequent appeal to femininity as an important characteristic of the church.⁶⁰For Edwards’s understanding of women and ecclesiology, see “Edwards’s Ecclesiological Typology” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 93–117. He says in note 314 of Notes on Scripture that the church “is often in Scripture represented as [a] mother,” “travailing” to bring Christ “forth in the hearts of believers.” Edwards believes, therefore, that “each believer, irrespective of gender, conceives and bears a principle of new creation within.”⁶¹Jonathan Edwards, Notes on Scripture, Works 15:288. Paula Cooey, “Eros and Intimacy in Edwards,” The Journal of Religion 69.4 (1989): 484–501, 495. Cf. Barshinger, Edwards and the Psalms, 228–29. He also says in his previous note in the “Blank Bible” on Genesis 3:15 that, “in the new creation the man is taken out of the woman.” That is, for Edwards, Christ births the “new man” through his bride, the Church (John 3:3). Edwards reasons, therefore, upon his “typological warrant,” that childbirth’s pains must typify the difficulty with which Christ brings forth spiritual children.⁶²Edwards may have had Paul’s statement to the Galatians in mind as this connection’s biblical basis: “my little children, over whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal 4:19). Paul considers himself the spiritual “progenitor” of his disciples (1 Cor 4:14–15; 1 Tim 1:2; Titus 1:4; Philem 10).

3.8. Edwards’s Demonic Types

One of Edwards’s more intriguing antitypical categories in his “Blank Bible” is his group of ten notes that typologically connect the Hebrew Bible with the demonic.⁶³For Edwards on the demonic, see Kamil Halambiec, “Satan,” in Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia, 509–10; Christopher Reaske, “The Devil and Jonathan Edwards,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 12–38; Amy Plantinga-Pauw, “Where Theologians Fear to Tread,” Modern Theology 16 (2000): 38–59. Edwards’s typological eye focuses on a few Old Testament characters: the pharaohs, the leviathan, and Tyre’s prince. He highlights that the former testament does not only adumbrate Satan himself, but even typifies his defeat at the cross and his kingdom’s final destruction.

In two interconnected “Blank Bible” notes, Edwards states that the pharaohs of Exodus were satanic types. He ties his first reflection to the cruel pharaoh who, at the beginning of Exodus, instructs the Egyptians to kill the baby boys of the Hebrews (Exod 1:16, 22).⁶⁴“Pharaoh said, ‘When ye [be] a midwife to the Hebrews, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.’” For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other devilish type-antitype pairs, see the section, “Demonic Types in the ‘Interleaved Bible,’” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 247–51. Edwards notes that, in so doing, he acted as a “type of the great red dragon” from Revelation 12. For the dragon, personifying the devil, “stood to devour the child as soon as it was born,” just as pharaoh stood at Hebrew birth stools to “devour” the boys.⁶⁵Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 206. See Edwards’s reflections on Revelation 12 in his “Notebook on the Apocalypse.” There he interprets the woman and dragon as a portrait of the early church’s triumph over paganism (Edwards, Apocalyptic Writings, 107–10). Ruminations like these underscore that Hunter is too hasty to state that “Edwards did not find types that point to various early church figures, locations, or events in post-biblical world history.” Edwards did find antitypes outside of biblical history. Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 344.

In his note on Hosea 2:15, Edwards similarly connects Exodus’s second pharaoh with Satan. He comments on Hosea’s prophecy that in the future Israel will “sing as in the day when she came forth from Egypt.” Edwards asserts that this “refers to that triumphant song that Moses and Israel sung when they came up out of the Red Sea.” It was then that pharaoh “was ready to swallow ’em up at the Red Sea.” Edwards states simply that the pharaoh was, therefore, “a type of the devil.”⁶⁶Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 777. In Edwards’s mind, such a connection between these two characters is reasonable, because the pharaoh arrogantly thought he could exterminate God’s people at the sea, bringing them to naught, just like the devil, who, for Edwards, is the ultimate “confluence of pride and hatred” and has angrily and foolishly raged to exterminate God’s people every day since that afternoon by the seaside.⁶⁷Plantinga-Pauw, “Where Theologians Fear to Tread,” 47.

3.9. Edwards’s Types for Sin

In five “Blank Bible” notes Edwards speaks of various types for sin.⁶⁸For Edwards’s hamartiology, see his Original Sin, Works 3:102–437; Clyde Holbrook’s introduction to Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, Works 2:1–67; McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 339–56. He twice appeals to leaven as an embodiment of sin’s multiplying, sour corruption. He also believes that blood, Egyptian task-slavers, and sexual intimacy are types of sin.

One of this group’s more detailed notations is Edwards’s thoughts on the typological connection between leaven and sin.⁶⁹For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other types for sin, see the section, “Types for Sin in the Blank Bible,” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 251–53. Edwards describes these typological connections in his note appended to Hosea’s likening of Israel to a baker’s baking bread (Hos 7:4). Edwards points out that here, “as is common in Scripture,” the author compares sinful Israel to two things: “to an oven heated, and to the dough leavened, and kneaded, and so fitted to be cast into the hot oven.” Edwards then draws out the fittingness of these comparisons. First, Israelites are like a burning oven “because their hearts are heated with lust.” Second, they are akin to “dough leavened” because Scripture uses it “as a type of wickedness.” For just as dough is leavened and kneaded so “to be cast into the oven,” so too, men “ripen in wickedness … for destruction.” Edwards accentuates these points by comparing Hosea’s implied baker with Satan. He asserts that just like a baker mixes leaven into the lump and kneads it, waiting on the dough “to thoroughly ferment” that he may throw it into the oven, so the devil casts “the leaven of wickedness into men’s hearts” and thoroughly kneads it through so as “to establish the heart in sin.” Thus, the baker of sinful souls “waits till the measure of their sin be filled,” then draws them into hell’s oven.⁷⁰Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 782–83.

3.10. Edwards’s Nature Typology

In his “Blank Bible,” Edwards left several notations which underscore that his typological musings upon nature are not only the purview of his notebook, “Images of Divine Things.”⁷¹Edwards, Typological Writings, 50–142. Writing on Edwards’s nature typology is voluminous, being a particularly popular subject for Edwards scholars. For an introduction to this literature, see Schweitzer, “‘See Notes On’: The Blank Bible’s Contribution to Edwards’s Images or Shadows of Divine Things,” in The Jonathan Edwards Miscellanies Companion: Volume 2, ed. Robert Boss and Sarah Boss (Dallas: JESociety Press, 2021): 227–60, 227–31. For the most recent and important work on Edwards’s natural typology, see Lisanne Winslow, A Great and Remarkable Analogy: The Onto-Typology of Jonathan Edwards (Gottingen: V&R, 2020), and Robert Boss, Thunder God, Wonder God: Exploring the Emblematic Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Dallas: JESociety Press, 2023). In his note-taking Bible, he left eighteen notations fusing his natural and biblical typologies, placing them in twelve biblical books from Genesis to Revelation.⁷²Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, 2 Kings, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Luke, and Revelation. The biblical-natural types he locates include the stars, hair, the Nile, grapes, wheat, and the sun. He claims that these types find antitypical fulfillment in Christ’s person and work, institutions like the church, or places like hell. These eighteen notes fall into five categories: Edwards’s luminary types, the sun’s various antitypes, types of Christ’s person and work, types of the Church, the Christian life, hell, and final judgment.⁷³In “Images” no. 156, Edwards provides two additional categories into which the reader can group these reflections: “spiritual mysteries,” which are “typified in the constitution of the natural world,” and Scripture making “application of the signs and types in the book of nature as representations of spiritual mysteries.”

In his “Blank Bible” note on Joshua 10:13, Edwards compactly demonstrates how his understanding of nature, scriptural language, and typology coincide to evidence God’s recapitulative manner of working in redemptive history.⁷⁴For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other ontological types in the “Blank Bible,” see the chapter, “The Nature Typology of the Blank Bible,” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 191–215. Commenting on Joshua’s description of the solar events during Israel’s battle with the Canaanite kings, Edwards discusses the typological ties between the sun, moon, and stars, with Christ, the church, and angels.⁷⁵Joshua reads, “The sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people avenged themselves upon their enemies … and hasted not to go down about a day.” Edwards also tells himself to “see nos. 117, 167, 207, and 209” in his Notes on Scripture (Works 15:83, 98, 129–31, 134–35). The first speaks of how the moon “stopped.” The second comments on how God places everything “in subjection to the church.” The third unfolds how the luminaries typify Christ and the Church. The fourth argues for the story’s historicity by appealing to other ancient histories that speak of a “scorching” sun. Edwards first points out that this event fulfills Job 9:7, for God commands the sun neither to rise nor the stars to move. Then he quotes from Deborah’s Song that speaks of “the stars” fighting Sisera (Judg 5:20). Next, Edwards states that because “the angels are called stars,” “Christ is often compared to the sun,” and the moon to the “heavenly church,” then “here we have all the heavenly hosts … standing still to fight against the enemies of God’s people.” Given these connections, Edwards claims that these events represent Christ, “all the heavenly hosts of saints,” and “all the angels” contending with the Church’s enemies.

Edwards then provides further canonical roots for this heavenly event, stating, “hereby is typified that which is … in Rev. 19.” He comments that this text, in addition to Revelation 16, speaks of the Church’s final victory that inaugurates “millennial” glory, having made “valiant progress against her enemies.”⁷⁶Bezzant, Edwards and the Church, 98. At this time, the “sun shall no more go down,” fulfilling, he believes, the prophecies of Isaiah 60:20 and Zechariah 14:6–7. He claims that these prophecies point to the same reality that the sun’s standing still typifies.⁷⁷Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 326–27. Given the antitypical referents of the luminaries, as well as the various Scriptures Edwards wields in support, he interprets these otherworldly objects as actors in the church’s eventual eschatological triumph. This notation exemplifies, therefore, Edwards’s belief that the Bible “makes application” of natural types because they do not merely analogize helpfully what God intends to teach those attuned to his word. Rather, the Bible employs natural types because God intentionally designs these worldly things to communicate spiritual truths.⁷⁸Lisanne Winslow, “‘A Great and Remarkable Analogy’: Edwards’s Use of Natural Typology in Communicating Divine Excellencies,” in Regeneration, Revival, and Creation, ed. Chris Chun and Kyle Strobel (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020): 220–34, 223. Cf. Paul Helm, Introduction to Treatise on Grace and other Posthumously Published Writings (Cambridge: Clarke, 1971), 17.

3.11. Edwards’s Types of “Gospel Things”

The last antitypical category is Edwards’s most general in his “Blank Bible.” In ten notations, Edwards makes general comments about the Old Testament’s typological witness to “gospel things” or “redemption.” These notes do not detail the specificities of these “gospel things” or the aspects of “redemption,” nor do Edwards’s comments elucidate the nature of the type-antitype connection. Edwards uncovers these types in seven biblical books, finding them in the Old Testament’s description of the patriarch’s blessings, the exodus, the flood, the sacrificial system, and “rest.”⁷⁹Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, and John.

Edwards left a fascinating note in the “Blank Bible” about Proverbs’ typological witness to “gospel things.” He attaches one such thought to the sage’s statement that “a word fitly spoken” is “like apples of gold in pictures of silver” (Prov 25:11).⁸⁰For a catalog and analysis of Edwards’s other types of “gospel things,” see the section, “Types of ‘Gospel Things,’” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 240–46. Stephen Stein argues that this note represents Edwards’s “mature thinking on Proverbs.” Stein, “‘Like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver’: The Portrait of Wisdom in Jonathan Edwards’s Commentary on the Book of Proverbs,” Church History 54.3 (1985): 324–37. In this note, Edwards details how proverbial sayings are like “gold conveyed under the appearance of silver.” That is, “when both the thing spoken is good … and when it is spoken in an agreeable manner … the words are the silver, and the sense is gold.” Even “eloquent words,” which one wields to speak wisely, are “not better than the things spoken or represented, nor yet near so good.” For it is “the use of it,” in Edwards’s mind, that is the gold.⁸¹Stein, “Like Apples of Gold,” 327.

Edwards ends the note by stating, “this proverb is remarkably verified in the words spoken to us by God” by which “he communicates divine things to us.” These “divine things” are exemplified in “types and similitudes,” like the “tabernacle, temple, ark, mercy seat, golden altar, candlestick, and the glorious robes.” These, Edwards avers, signify “the glorious things of the gospel.” Like the two-fold sense of a wise saying, types are like “beautiful and precious pictures,” but the antitypes are “far more so.”⁸²Edwards, The “Blank Bible,” 572–74.

4. Conclusion

This essay has tried to accomplish several things. First, it surveyed the recent scholarly landscape on Edwards’s exegesis, suggesting that work still remains to be completed and, in particular, work on Edwards’s exegetical typology. This article then interacted with Drew Hunter’s article detailing Edwards’s biblical typological practices and principles from Hebrews. The foregoing evidence has suggested that Hunter’s research limitations, examples cited, and definitions provided, on the whole, lend themselves to a reassessment of the evidence.

This essay then provided an overview of 143 notations in the “Blank Bible” wherein Edwards uses a word from the “type” word family to connect a redemptive-historical sign with a signification not strictly christological. This essay noted that the types within these 143 notations find fulfillment in one of eleven antitypical categories: the Holy Spirit, “intra”-Old Testament, “intra”-New Testament, the Church, eschatology, Christian ministry/ministers, Christian spirituality, the demonic, sin, the world, as well as general “gospel things.” This article provided an example from each of these categories to allow the reader to sense something of Edwards’s wide-ranging typological exegesis exemplified in his “Blank Bible.”

This evidence suggests that Hunter may have concluded too hastily that Edwards “operated with the principle that types always and only point to spiritual things related to Christ and the gospel.”⁸³Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 344. Edwards’s exegetical-typological notations in the “Blank Bible” pose five challenges to Hunter’s thesis. First, they highlight that Edwards does not only connect Old Testament types to christological antitypes. Second, for Edwards, Old Testament types can point to antitypes within the Old Testament. Third, Edwards claims that there are New Testament type-antitype pairs that are not strictly christological nor bound by that Testament’s boundaries. Fourth, Edwards believes that Old Testament types can adumbrate eschatological antitypes. Lastly, Edwards connects historical types to ahistorical antitypes that embody theological or spiritual principles.

The foregoing evidence appears to imply that Hunter improperly categorized Edwards’s exegetical typology as one in which he “always related” antitypes to Christ.⁸⁴Hunter, “The Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” 345. Edwards’s array of antitypes are too diverse to fit within such limiting strictures, just as the manner and time in which Edwards purports that types find fulfillment resist christological confines. It seems appropriate, therefore, to replace the imprecise term, “christological,” with more accurate and broader terminology to describe Edwards’s biblical typology.

The “Blank Bible” seems to commend to its readers that Edwards understands biblical typology as a kind of historiographical framework by which he interprets the world and redemptive history as a constant movement towards its God-ordained teleological and eschatological ends. These four, important concepts, therefore, appear to encapsulate best Edwards’s biblical typology: spiritual, historical, teleological, and eschatological.⁸⁵For a fuller explanation of these terms, see “Concluding Reflections” in Schweitzer, Jonathan Edwards’s Biblical Typology, 265–69.

One can refer to his typology as “spiritual” in the sense that Edwards believes that God sovereignly unites types with antitypes. For Edwards, “types” are God’s intentionally designed harbingers of greater and/or future redemptive-historical realities.⁸⁶An example of a type-antitype relationship that is “future” and “greater” is Aaron and Christ. Christ arrives later in history than Aaron and is also Israel’s “greater” priest. An example of a type-antitype relationship that is simply “greater” is Edwards’s connection of leaven with sin. Leaven does not precede sin in redemptive history, but its sour, spreading nature is eclipsed by sin’s “greater,” spiritually sour, infecting nature. Types and antitypes, in Edwards’s worldview, therefore, are “ontologically real” entities that exist in explicit relationship because God intended for them to exist-in-relation.⁸⁷Lisanne Winslow, A Trinitarian Theology of Nature (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020), 55.

Edwards’s biblical typology is also “historical,” because it is a schema that he strives to anchor in history. In his “Blank Bible,” Edwards roots all of his biblical types in sacred Scripture’s history, and most of his antitypes in that same history, too. If one examines the types Edwards mentions in his “Blank Bible,” the reader will find that they all are persons, events, objects, or institutions in Holy Scripture. While Edwards ties most of his antitypes to the Bible’s redemptive-historical narrative, some of his antitypes, however, do not relate to redemptive history in the same way. Some are timeless propositions about the world, God, salvation, or the church, while others are aspects of the lived experience of God’s people throughout history that one cannot anchor definitively to redemptive history’s timeline. Having said that, though, both the genesis and anchor of Edwards’s exegetical typology is God’s sacred history of redemption recorded in the Bible.

It seems appropriate, also, to refer to Edwards’s biblical typology as “teleological.” Granted that, as far as the present researcher has observed, in all of Edwards’s type-antitype relationships, he always states that the antitype is the “greater,” more “significant” entity to which the “lesser,” less “significant” type points. As one moves from type to antitype in Edwards’s system, they will find that the antitype, when compared to its corresponding type, is more theologically robust and narratively significant for the history of redemption.

Lastly, one can also fittingly call Edwards’s exegetical typology “eschatological.” Given that, in most of Edwards’s type-antitype relationships, he finds that the type precedes its antitype on redemptive history’s timeline.⁸⁸Type-antitype pairs that are not eschatological include some of his types of Christian spirituality in which the type does not temporally precede the antitype (like leaven and sin), and some of his biblical-ontological types wherein the type exists before and after its antitype (i.e. the rising and setting sun that typifies Jesus’s death and resurrection), in addition to his ahistorical antitypes embodying theological truths or aspects of the Christian experience (i.e., the Christian’s faith). To summarize, Edwards’s exegetical practices preserved in the “Blank Bible” recommend that it is more precise not to refer to his biblical typology as “christological,” but as his spiritual, eschatological, and teleological framework for interpreting God’s unified orchestration of redemptive history.

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