Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Charles Tieszen on the Use of Typological Exegesis to Support Icon Veneration by Christians Responding to Islamic Critics

  

Explaining the Symbols of the Cross
with Typological Exegesis

 

Many of the authors in this chapter attempt to strengthen their explanations of cross veneration through biblical exegesis. In this way, they appeal to biblical precedents, arguing that pre-cursors of the cross or cross veneration can be located in the Old Testament or that such examples function typologically. Typological exegesis of the Bible was not uncommon among Christian communities and was certainly not limited to ventures in finding examples of the cross in the Old Testament. For example, Origen, the third-century Christian theologians, was well known for his allegorical and typological readings of scripture. Though not limited to Christian usage, the result for Christian exegetes was that many things in the New Testament or elements of Christian doctrine could be located or foretold via literal, allegorical or typological readings in the Old Testament. In like manner, testimonia, collections of quotations from sources like the Old Testament, were compiled and used to ground arguments in ancient text.

 

When it comes to our authors, validating veneration of the cross meant giving their devotion precedents in ancient monotheism. . . . for example, Leo III defends his claim that the cross bestows honour upon Christ by appealing to scripture. Accordingly, he asserts that in Isaiah 60:13, when the prophet Isaiah looks forward to the return of the Jews from exile and the reconstruction of their temple, that the wood of the cross is actually in mind: ‘The fir tree, the pine and the box together, to render honourable the place of My sanctuary; and I will render glorious the place of My feet’. Solomon, too, is made by Leo to speak of the wooden cross when he writes, ‘Blessed be the wood by which justice is exercised’ (Wisdom 14:7; here referring to the refuge offered by a wooden vessel in a storm) and ‘It is the tree of life for all those who embrace it, and who attach themselves solidly to it as the Lord’ (Proverbs 3:18; here referring to wisdom personified). Each of these passages has its own exegetical context, but they are made by Leo to support his arguments for the wood from which crosses should be made. Overall, Christians are simply following the example of their forebears when they venerate the cross.

 

Bar Koni refers to Old Testament texts concerning the Ark of the Covenant in is attempt to distinguish between the wood of the cross that is not worshiped and the person for whom it stands who is worshiped. The master in Bar Koni’s text asks the student, ‘tell me, do you regard the Ark of the Covenant as God or as silent wood?’ When the student responds that it was obviously just wood, the master asserts, ‘Joshua son of Nun “fell on his face before the Ark of the Lord” (Joshua 7:6), did he not?’ The student agrees, so the master presses, ‘Is it the wood [that Joshua] adored, or God?’ Of course, the student responds that Joshua was worshiping God because he lived in the Ark of the Covenant. When the master asks if the student means that God lived in the wood of the Ark, the student clarifies that God did not live in the wood, but his nature was joined to it as a means for showing the way he operated in the world. This clarification is then used by the master to demonstrate the way that Christ is worshiped by venerating a wooden cross and how this relationship is comparable and even more significant than the relationship of the Ark and God’s presence. In all of this, the Ark of the Covenant becomes, in Bar Koni’s exegesis, a type of the cross.

 

. . .

 

Bar far the most important and consistently used example among these authors is Moses, Leo explains that Christians honour the cross, having learned to do so from a command given by God to Moses. Here, Leo refers to Exodus 28:36-8 and the golden plate (tsīts) that God directed Moses to make as a priestly vestment. On it was engraved the phrase ‘holy to Yahweh’ (qodesh layahweh)—though Leo claims that the vestment ‘bore the image of a cross, as the Word of God who suffered for us in His human nature’. The vestment was to be worn by Aaron on his forehead (on the front of his turban) and signify that he was bearing the guilt of the Israelites so that their gifts to God might be acceptable. For Leo, the golden plate prefigured the cross as a symbol and its function as the locus of Christ’s vicarious atonement for humanity. Perhaps this is why Leo offers the curious invention of the cross allegedly inscribed on the plate (instead of the Hebrew phrase meaning ‘holy to Yahweh’). Even more interesting, Leo claims that this is the source of the Christian tradition of making the sign of the cross on their foreheads. Of course, Leo may have had in mind an exegetical tradition similar to one attached to Ezekiel 9:4, 6. Here the Hebrew letter tāv, at one time written with intersecting lines in the shape of a cross (either a ‘+’ or reclining on its side as ‘x’), was put on the foreheads of those who mourned the abominations committed in Jerusalem. Like Tertullian or Origen in the third century, exegetes looking in the Old Testament for types of the cross could find ready material in the passage for their pursuit. In a similar way, perhaps, the sign of the cross is given Old Testament precedent by Leo. (Charles Tieszen, Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World: Christian Identity and Practice Under Muslim Rule [The Early and Medieval Islamic World; London: I. B. Tauris, 2017], 76-77, 79-80)

 

Further Reading:


Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons

Blog Archive