SUMMARIZATION VERSES PENETRATION (Santamaria)

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: 17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. 18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind Colossians 2.16

Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. Hebrews 8.5

For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. Hebrews 10.1

There’s an old saying among the Baptists: some men are “Bible repeaters,” others are “Bible preachers.” The difference may sound small, but it’s as wide as the Jordan at flood stage.

A man may take the pulpit, read a chapter of Scripture, and then spend thirty minutes simply re-narrating the story. He tells you David picked up five stones, that he ran to meet Goliath, that the sling whirred and the giant fell. The congregation is reminded of a story they already knew, but nothing new enters their heart. Such preaching is safe and tidy: it adds nothing, subtracts nothing, and risks nothing. But it also leaves the hearer where he began. It is like holding up a mirror but never pointing out the reflection.

By contrast, when the Spirit opens a text to a preacher, he doesn’t merely retell it—he draws out the marrow of it. The story is not just about David; it is about Christ, the true champion who defeats sin and death when no Israelite dares step forward. It is not only about five stones in a brook; it is about the seeming weakness of divine means, chosen to overthrow the strength of man. Suddenly, the passage has weight. It presses the conscience, it comforts the heart, it enlarges the view of Christ.

Of course, this introduces a tension: adding “spiritual meaning” can slide into allegorizing, where every pebble, tent peg, or donkey becomes a symbol of some lofty truth. The danger there is that Christ’s gospel can be obscured under the preacher’s creativity. Yet when handled faithfully, spiritual exposition is not invention but unveiling—the Spirit showing how all Scripture testifies of Christ.

Retelling the bare narrative gives knowledge of the letter; expounding the spiritual sense gives life to the soul. One can leave a sermon saying, “I remember the story.” The other leaves one saying, “I saw Christ in the story.” The former educates; the latter edifies.

This old divide echoes Paul’s words: “the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” The letter alone, however accurate, remains external; the Spirit, through the preached word, presses eternal truth into the inward man.

If you’d like, I can sketch out how this distinction was viewed by different traditions—say, Puritans with their typology, versus Old School Baptists with their warnings against fanciful allegory. That might show how preachers have walked the tightrope between bare retelling and Spirit-given meaning.

Alright, let’s set the stage with some contrasts across traditions. Different groups have wrestled with the question: how much of “spiritual meaning” is faithful exposition, and how much is preacher’s embroidery?

Puritans and Typology
The Puritans were fond of “types and shadows.” They looked at the Old Testament as a gallery of prefigurations of Christ. The Passover lamb was Christ slain, the ark was Christ our refuge, the temple was Christ’s body. They were careful—at least in theory—to ground these types in New Testament warrant. But in practice, some Puritans could spin webs of allegory that grew elaborate. Their hearers loved it: a single verse might blossom into three sermons on Christ’s sufferings, intercession, and kingship, all drawn from some small ceremonial detail. To them, Scripture was a treasure chest, and each hinge and nail had significance.

Primitive/Old School Baptists
By contrast, Old School Baptists (like Beebe, Trott, and their successors) walked cautiously. They warned against “fanciful allegories” that let imagination run ahead of revelation. A preacher who turns every river into baptism, or every fig tree into the law, risks obscuring the plain sense of the Word. Yet they didn’t forbid spiritual meaning. In fact, they insisted the gospel is in all Scripture. The Red Sea crossing, for instance, was not just history but a figure of deliverance through Christ. The difference was emphasis: they would rather under-spiritualize than over-invent. For them, the Spirit, not the preacher’s ingenuity, must open the text.

Luther and the Reformers
Luther blasted the medieval fourfold sense of Scripture (literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical) as a playground for fanciful speculation. He called for sola scriptura—Scripture’s own plain meaning. But even Luther could not resist seeing Christ in the psalms and prophets, and his sermons often burned with typological fire. Calvin likewise warned against “unbridled license” in allegory, but his commentaries still unfold Christ throughout Moses and the prophets. Their rule was simple: preach Christ, but don’t make the Bible say what it does not.

The Core Tension
So here’s the tension:

• Too much bare retelling, and the sermon becomes a history lesson.

• Too much allegory, and the sermon becomes a guessing game.

• In the middle lies Spirit-led exposition, where the preacher opens the text in its context and then shows how it testifies of Christ.

This middle ground is what the old Baptists often called experimental preaching: not abstract theorizing, nor theatrical allegory, but bringing the Scripture into living contact with the believer’s soul—convicting, comforting, and pointing to Christ.

That balance is why some preachers can take one verse and feed a flock, while others can take a whole chapter and leave it lean as straw.

The Old School men were very plain about this. They knew the danger of “letter-preaching” on one side and fanciful allegorizing on the other. Here are some passages (paraphrased and quoted) that show the balance they struck:

Elder Gilbert Beebe (Signs of the Times, 1830s–40s):
Beebe often rebuked sermons that were “mere rehearsals of Scripture history.” He said:

“To preach the word is not to repeat it. The child can repeat the lesson; the parrot can mimic the sound. But the gospel is preached only when the Spirit applies the truth of Christ crucified to the heart.”

He would point out that Goliath is not just a giant, but a figure of the great adversary, and David’s victory shows Christ conquering in weakness. But he warned against forcing symbolism where the Spirit had not revealed it.

Elder Samuel Trott (Black Rock Address, 1832):
Trott and his companions objected to “modern preaching” that was more storytelling or moralizing than gospel proclamation. He wrote elsewhere:

“The Scriptures contain many histories; but these histories are not given for us to admire their antiquity. They stand as shadows of the good things to come, and as witnesses to the Christ of God. A sermon that stops with the history leaves the soul unfed.”

He allowed spiritual application but despised “wild allegories” that turned every detail into preacher’s invention.

Black Rock Address (1832):
That famous declaration included this:

“The gospel is not a system of moral lessons, nor a school-boy rehearsal of sacred history. It is the power of God unto salvation. Ministers, if they are indeed called, are to declare the testimony of God, not the wisdom of men.”

This was aimed partly at Missionary Baptists, who were filling pulpits with polished orators giving moral lectures or retelling Scripture as if it were Aesop’s fables.

David Bartley (later 19th century):
Bartley reflected on this very distinction:

“Many preach who never touch the conscience, because they only narrate the events of Scripture. Others preach who wound or heal, because they open Christ in the Scriptures.”

For Bartley, preaching without Christ in it was not preaching at all.

So the thread is clear:

• Bare retelling = lifeless, like reciting genealogy without knowing the family.

• Spirit-led exposition = showing Christ as the marrow of the text, but resisting the itch to invent symbols out of every twig and pebble.

This was not just a stylistic preference for them; it was doctrinal. To “preach the word” was to preach Christ crucified wherever He is revealed in the text.

Yes — that’s exactly the heartbeat of how many Old School and earlier writers understood the Old Testament: not as a dead archive, but as a treasury of Christ veiled.

Paul himself gave them warrant. He wrote that “all these things happened unto them for ensamples [types], and they are written for our admonition” (1 Cor. 10:11). The wilderness wanderings, the manna, the serpent lifted up — all were shadows cast forward by Christ’s light before He came in the flesh. Hebrews says the law had “a shadow of good things to come.” Shadows mean there is substance behind them; the gospel preacher’s work is to trace the contour of that shadow back to the substance, Christ.

The old Baptists loved this. Beebe once said the Old Testament was “a gallery of types and figures, in which Christ stands in every form and color.” Trott spoke of the histories not as curiosities, but “foreshadowings of spiritual things in Christ and His church.”

But here’s where they drew the line: the preacher’s calling is not to make types, but to bring them forth where the Spirit has placed them. Israel’s Red Sea passage is explicitly called a baptism in 1 Corinthians 10 — safe ground. The brazen serpent is applied by Christ Himself in John 3 — safe ground. But to say, for example, that the five stones David chose each represent a different Reformation doctrine, or that Ruth’s gleanings point to denominational tithing — that was the sort of preacherly invention they distrusted.

So the key distinction:

• Yes: All things in the Old Testament are shadows pointing forward.

• Yes: They are written for our edification.

• Yes: The preacher must bring them forth, lest the church be left with mere story.

• But: Only as the Spirit opens them in the gospel, not as the imagination forces them into tidy symbolic codes.

That’s why the Old School men insisted on dependence on the Spirit in preaching. The task is not to entertain with clever parallels, but to unveil Christ where God Himself has written Him in shadow.

It makes preaching less about intellectual ingenuity, more about spiritual discernment. And it ties into their doctrine of experimental religion: the type, once opened, is not just explained but applied — it speaks to the hearer’s condition, comforts the heart, or reproves the conscience.

Alright — let’s build that “type-key” chain. These are the passages where the New Testament itself interprets Old Testament events as types or shadows. Old School preachers leaned heavily on these because they gave safe ground: you weren’t inventing a symbol, you were following the Spirit’s own commentary.

Explicit Type-Keys in Scripture

1. Adam → Christ

• Romans 5:14: “Adam, who is the figure of him that was to come.”
  Adam is a type of Christ, but as the federal head: one brings death, the other brings life.

2. Passover Lamb → Christ’s Sacrifice

• 1 Corinthians 5:7: “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”
  The lamb, its blood, its bones unbroken — all shadows of Christ crucified.

3. Israel’s Wilderness Experiences → Christian Pilgrimage

• 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 11: Israel’s baptism into Moses, the manna, the water from the rock — all “types” for us.
  Paul even says, “That Rock was Christ.”

4. The Rock → Christ

• 1 Corinthians 10:4: “They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”
  A direct identification — the rock struck once, not twice, as a picture of Christ’s once-for-all smiting.

5. Brazen Serpent → Christ Lifted Up

• John 3:14-15: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”
  The serpent: cursed image, raised high, healing by a look — all pointing to the crucified Christ.

6. Tabernacle and Priesthood → Christ’s Heavenly Work

• Hebrews 8:5; 9:9; 10:1: Priests, sacrifices, holy places were “patterns,” “figures,” “shadows” of the true.
  Christ is the great High Priest, the true sacrifice, the heavenly temple.

7. Melchizedek → Christ’s Eternal Priesthood

• Hebrews 7: King of righteousness and peace, without recorded genealogy, abides a priest forever.

8. Jonah → Christ’s Burial and Resurrection

• Matthew 12:40: “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be…”

9. Sabbath Rest → Gospel Rest

• Hebrews 4:4-11: The seventh-day rest pointed to the true rest in Christ, finished from the foundation of the world.

10. Isaac → Son of Promise

• Galatians 4:22-31: Isaac and Ishmael are figures of the two covenants — the freewoman and the bondwoman.

How the Old School Used This

Beebe, Trott, Dudley, Bartley, and others used these “keys” as their primary entry points. Their rule was: where the apostles spiritualize, we spiritualize; where they are silent, we walk softly.

For example:

• Preaching on Jonah, they would show Christ’s burial and resurrection, as Christ Himself did.

• Preaching on manna, they would bring forth John 6, where Jesus says, “I am the bread which came down from heaven.”

• Preaching on the tabernacle, they would echo Hebrews: Christ is the true veil, rent for us.

They didn’t deny that all the Old Testament was a shadow of Christ, but they leaned on these Spirit-given interpretations as the solid anchors, and from there extended carefully.

Excellent — let’s take the crossing of the Red Sea as our test case. Both Puritans and Old School Baptists saw it as a type, but they handled it differently.

Puritan Handling (Typological Exuberance)

A Puritan preacher like Thomas Goodwin or John Owen might go something like this:

• The Red Sea itself = death and judgment.

• Pharaoh’s army = Satan and the powers of darkness.

• Moses’ rod = the cross of Christ stretched over the waters.

• Israel’s safe passage = the believer’s justification and baptism into Christ.

• The walls of water = God’s law, threatening on both sides, held back only by divine power.

• The song of Moses after crossing = the doxology of the redeemed in heaven.

Every element of the story gets mapped onto some piece of Christian doctrine. The Puritan imagination turns the Red Sea into a full-length sermon series — edifying, yes, but often pushing well past what the apostles themselves ever said.

Old School Baptist Handling (Spirit-led Restraint)

Now consider how Elder Gilbert Beebe or Samuel Trott would approach it:

They would point first to 1 Corinthians 10:1-2, where Paul says, “Our fathers… were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” That is the Spirit’s own interpretation. The Red Sea = baptism, a deliverance event where God separates His people from bondage.

• Pharaoh’s army they would cautiously call “a figure of the enemies of God’s people,” since the text itself implies destruction of the oppressor.

• Israel’s deliverance they would tie to Christ as Deliverer: the passage was not by Israel’s might, but by God’s power — just as salvation is by grace, not works.

• The water as judgment they might apply to Christ Himself, bearing the flood of wrath, so that His people pass safely.

But they would stop short of allegorizing every wave and pebble. If a detail had no NT confirmation or no Spirit-driven application, they left it as history.

Beebe once warned that to invent allegories beyond Scripture’s warrant is to “feed the flock with wind.” Better a plain, Christ-centered connection than a clever but human contrivance.

The Contrast

• Puritan style: Red Sea becomes a theological kaleidoscope — dazzling, but sometimes speculative.

• Old School style: Red Sea becomes a Christ-centered picture drawn from the Spirit’s own key in 1 Corinthians 10 — restrained, weighty, experiential.

This one example shows the tension: all things are indeed types and shadows for our edification, but not all details must be forced into a type. The Old School method was like gold mining: dig where the Spirit has shown veins, not where imagination fancies glimmers.

May the Lord bless all these words to our preachers and their listeners!