I’m grateful for Cameron Schweitzer’s thoughtful engagement with my article “Hebrews and the Typology of Jonathan Edwards.”¹Drew Hunter, “Hebrews and the Typology of Jonathan Edwards,” Themelios 44(2019): 339–52; Cameron Schweitzer, “Does Edwards’s Exegetical Typology ‘Always and Only Point to Spiritual Things Related to Christ?’ A Response to Drew Hunter from the Evidence of the Blank Bible,” Themelios 50(2025): 534–51. In that article I examined what Edwards’s interpretive reflections on Hebrews reveal about his practices and principles of exegetical typology. I showed how Edwards’s principled typological method contributes to recent discussions about typology and the Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament.

In response, Schweitzer contends that my account of Edwards’s typology is too narrowly christological. This rejoinder offers three responses: I will show that (1) his critique suggests a narrower understanding than I intended, that (2) the wording I use in my claim is drawn from Edwards’s own articulation of his typology, and that (3) our conclusions are ultimately complementary. Our analysis of Edwards’s typology differs in description and emphasis, rather than substance.

First, I will clarify the argument of my earlier essay. Schweitzer argues that my thesis regarding Edwards’s typology is too narrow. He writes that I claimed that, for Edwards, types “always and only point to spiritual things related to Christ” and are “only and always related to Christ.” He argues that we should “replace the imprecise term, ‘christological,’ with more accurate and broader terminology to describe Edwards’s biblical typology.”

By presenting this summary as my thesis, he suggests that the main burden of my article was to argue that Edwards’s typology is narrowly christological. Additionally, he suggests that I used the term “christological” to articulate my view. In fact, my claim appeared not as the thesis but as a smaller sub-point within the broader article. In the section where it appeared, I distilled six principles of Edwards’s typological interpretation drawn from his reflections on Hebrews. The principle addressed in the critique is that “The purpose of a type is to teach about Christ and ‘gospel things.’” In my article, I did not use the term “christological” to summarize Edwards’s view. Instead, I wrote that, for Edwards, “types always and only point to spiritual things related to Christ and the gospel,” and “the antitype is always related to Christ and ‘gospel things’ of the New Testament age.” Given the brevity of this section, I did not thoroughly define these terms, and some of my wording could invite a narrower interpretation than I offered. By “gospel things,” I was referring to realities bound up with Christ and his redemptive work, including both inaugurated and eschatological fulfillment. Thus, typological realities like the temple, New Jerusalem, the church, and rest are all connected to Christ and the new age of fulfillment he inaugurated.

Second, the language of my claim is drawn from Edwards’s own description of his typology. In the places where the critique refers to my language as overly narrow, I am primarily quoting or paraphrasing what Jonathan Edwards himself wrote. For example, in one place Edwards argued that types are shadows, and shadows cannot be fully understood until light shines on them. Then he wrote this critical sentence, from which I drew the principle: “the light that was plainly to reveal the gospel things came after Christ, the substance of all ancient types.”²Jonathan Edwards, Typological Writings,ed. Wallace E. Anderson, Mason I. Lowance, and David H. Watters, WJE 11 (Yale University Press, 1993), 149. Edwards presents light as shining on the Old Testament shadow-types, which he said revealed “gospel things,” and that Christ is “the substance of all ancient types.” This is Edwards’s own way of articulating his typology.

Therefore, when the critique suggests that “Hunter’s thesis that ‘Christ is the substance of all ancient types’ is too narrow to account for all the available evidence,” it’s worth noting that this language is drawn from Edwards himself. It is possible that Edwards’s own language is too narrow or unclear at this point. However, my working assumption is that Edwards’s own articulation of his principle does not contradict the examples of types that he provides. For Edwards, types that point to the church, the New Jerusalem, rest, and so forth, can be understood as relating to Christ and what he calls “gospel things.” For Edwards, this seems to function not as a narrow category but an expansive one.

Third, I think my claim and Schweitzer’s conclusions are best viewed as complementary rather than competing. He acknowledges this possibility in footnote 24, in which he says my use of the term “gospel things” could refer to a strictly christological category, or it could refer to a more expansive one. He then wrote, “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.” He suggests this would require me to “provide greater definitional clarity or for the reader to be quite charitable in their interpretation of his terms.” As I noted above, and which the examples in my article substantiate, Edwards operates with an expansive category of typological fulfillment, which can include eschatology, the temple, the church, the theme of rest, and so forth. According to Edwards, all such types are ultimately bound up with Christ and the gospel realities of the new age he inaugurated.

Schweitzer’s article helpfully advances the discussion of Edwards’s exegetical typology by providing precise and broad terminology to describe Edwards’s practices. In summarizing his work, he wrote, “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.” He then provides four categories that encapsulate Edwards’s typology: spiritual, historical, teleological, and eschatological. This is illuminating, and I propose Edwards would say these categories are also rightly connected to Christ and the gospel realities of the age of fulfillment.

My understanding of Edwards’s language is similar to Jesus’s claim that Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms spoke of him (Luke 24:44), and the Apostle Paul’s statement that “all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor 1:20). It is similar to statements by the modern biblical theologian, Graeme Goldsworthy, who wrote that Christ “is the ultimate substance of all the promises of God in which these people trusted” and “all texts in the whole Bible bear a discernable relationship to Christ and are primarily intended as a testimony to Christ.”³Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (Eerdmans, 2000), 108, 113. These are each concise summaries of how all God’s promises are ultimately fulfilled in Christ and his redemptive work—even if the details are complex to work out. Jonathan Edward would agree.

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