In this episode Trent critically examines Mike Winger’s arguments against Marian typology (especially Mary as Ark of the New Covenant) and shows how Winger’s approach undermines traditional Christology.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn.
Trent Horn:
In a previous video. I said that sometimes I see Protestants looking at the Bible with one standard for general Christian doctrine, like the deity of Christ, but then they have a much more critical standard when it comes to evaluating what the Bible says about Catholic doctrine.
Trent Horn:
And today’s episode follows in that critique and that understanding of what I’ve seen.
Trent Horn:
But before we get into that, though, I just want to remind everyone that you can really help the podcast in one of two ways.
Trent Horn:
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Trent Horn:
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Trent Horn:
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Trent Horn:
All right, what I want to talk about today is typology and how Protestant pastor Mike Winger addresses it when it comes to the Virgin Mary.
Trent Horn:
So typology involves finding echoes of God’s activity in scripture. It’s been said that when human beings communicate an idea, they use words, but because God is all powerful, he can send a message through events in history itself by providentially ordering the world. And one way he can do that is by foreshadowing his future salvific activity, or revealing himself in ways that call back to his past salvific activity.
Trent Horn:
For example, the first letter of Saint Peter says that the flood, Noah’s flood, wiped away evil in the world, and it was a type of baptism. And just as Noah and the occupants of the Ark were saved through water, so too, we are saved through baptism. That’s 1 Peter 3:21.
Trent Horn:
Likewise, the crossing of the Red Sea is a type of baptism. It prefigures how we pass through water to be saved, just as ancient Israel passed through the water of the Red Sea to be saved from slavery in Egypt.
Trent Horn:
So you can find types for the Christ, the church, and for Mary. I want to caution though, sometimes typology, it can be overstated to try to turn it into a proof of dogma. And that’s not the most helpful way to use typology. I see it more as a way to make a doctrine more intelligible to us.
Trent Horn:
But what’s problematic is when you have people like Mike Winger, they’ll talk about topology in this really free and joyful way when it comes to Christ, but not when it comes to Mary. In fact, Mike uses a double standard when he evaluates these kinds of types in the Old Testament that are said to correspond to either Jesus or Mary.
Trent Horn:
In this episode, I’m going to look at a video he did. I’m not going to go through his entire episode on Marian typology. I just want to focus on one example, Mary being the new Ark of the Covenant. I think there’s a lot of evidence for this claim.
Trent Horn:
The old Ark had the word of God written on stone tablets, the 10 commandments, inside of it. Mary carried the word, God the word, the son become flesh, within her body. A cloud would overshadow the tabernacle where the Ark was kept in the old covenant, in the Old Testament. Gabriel, the angel Gabriel, said the holy spirit would overshadow Mary when she conceived Jesus.
Trent Horn:
When the Ark was brought to David, he said, “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?” When Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, she said, “Why is this granted me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”
Trent Horn:
2 Samuel 6:16 records how David, he leapt in the presence of the Ark of the covenant. Luke 1:41 says John the Baptist leapt in the presence of Mary, the unborn John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb.
Trent Horn:
Finally, the Ark of the Covenant was in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months in the old Testament. And Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months.
Trent Horn:
Now I’m not saying this proves Marian dogmas. I’m just saying it makes them more intelligible. It helps us to see how all of scripture fits together under this view of Mary.
Trent Horn:
But Mike is not impressed with this evidence. And so as we look at some of his arguments, I want you to notice how Mike is more than willing to accept certain kinds of evidence for typology related to Jesus being the new Ark or the new tabernacle, but not for Mary.
Mike Winger:
I found an article on National Catholic Register, which is a website where they promote Catholic teachings and doctrines and things like that. And the title of the article was Amazing Parallels between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant.
Mike Winger:
So they’re trying to draw parallels between the Ark and we just did last time. We did the temple and how the Ark represents Christ. They’re saying that that’s really about Mary.
Trent Horn:
It can be both. There’s nothing that keeps images from the Old Testament from having multiple meanings.
Trent Horn:
For example, you can show how the temple represented is a type of both Christ and the church as the people of God.
Trent Horn:
So we aren’t saying these things only prefigure Mary, but that they do prefigure her.
Mike Winger:
Now you might ask, how do you find that in the New Testament? And they find it in Luke 1:35, Luke 1:35. In Luke 1:35, it says, “And the angel answered her. The Holy Spirit will come upon you in the power of the most high will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God.”
Mike Winger:
That word overshadow is episkiazo. At least that’s the lexical form of the word. Episkiasa is another way to put it. But here’s what the National Catholic Register, their website, said about this word and how they use it to say that this proves, this “The holy sprit will overshadow you,” proves that she is the new Ark.
Mike Winger:
They say, and I quote, “The Greek word for overshadow is episkiaso, which describes a bright glorious cloud.” Notice their description of this Greek word. It describes a bright glorious cloud. It is used with reference to the cloud of transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, and Luke 9:34. And also has connection to the kind of glory of God, Exodus 24:40 and 1 Kings, chapter 8.
Mike Winger:
But if you actually look up this word, episkiaso, or episkiasa, in a Greek dictionary, you find out that it doesn’t mean anything bright or glorious. Do you know what it means?
Mike Winger:
Write this down. This is important, right? Because you’re going to find, when you look up Greek words, they usually mean the same thing as they were already translated to mean in your Bibles. It means overshadow. That’s all it means.
Trent Horn:
I agree with Mike that the original article at the Register, it should not have made the bold claim that the verb episkiaso describes a bright glorious cloud. It should have said it denotes, or it’s often associated with bright glorious clouds that overshadow important people and things in scripture.
Trent Horn:
And that’s where you get the typology from. You don’t get it from the mere definition of a word, but from how the word is often used in scriptures. So keep that in mind as we continue.
Mike Winger:
They’re just, it’s just Greek gobbledygook. It’s gobbledy Greek is what it is. This is not, people try to sometimes manipulate others, saying, “Oh, in the Greek there’s a special thing here.”
Mike Winger:
And usually that’s not the case. For instance, the same author of Luke 1:35, the same guy wrote the book of Acts, right? Luke wrote Acts as well. And in Acts 5:15, he uses the exact same word. And he’s talking about Peter and how Peter was traveling and they wanted Peter’s shadow to fall on them that they might be healed. Let me read the passage and ask yourself if you think this means a “bright, glorious cloud.”
Mike Winger:
So Acts 5:15, “So that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats that as Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them.”
Mike Winger:
Obviously Peter was being followed by a bright and glorious cloud. No, that’s just not what it means. Like this is just… it’s not true. It’s just not true.
Mike Winger:
But from that word overshadow, they say that relates to the tabernacle. By the way, that word is never used related to the tabernacle in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. I looked for it. I can’t find it. It’s other words that are used. I won’t get into all the details there, but, basically this is fabricated. This is a fabricated connection. It’s not established in the text.
Trent Horn:
So according to Mike, why should we think it’s interesting this word is used of Mary when it’s also used to describe Peter casting a shadow on people?
Trent Horn:
Before I show the inconsistency, I want to point out what seems like a factual error. Mike said episkiazo is not used of the tabernacle in the Old Testament, and I’m not sure what he means. That’s true if he means the Bible does not say the tabernacle itself overshadowed people. But episkiazo is clearly used of the cloud that overshadows the tabernacle.
Trent Horn:
Michael Bird writes about Luke 1:35 in his recent book, Evangelical Theology. He says “The verb episkiazo is ordinarily translated overshadow and means to interpose something like casting a shadow. The image is reminiscent of how the glory of God settled on the tabernacle in Moses’s day.” And he says the Septuagint of the book of Exodus uses episkiazo as the verb.
Trent Horn:
This is interesting because Mike cites this very verse in another video when he’s just talking about how the tabernacle prefigures Christ and so Christ is the new tabernacle.
Trent Horn:
The old tabernacle, by the way, was the dwelling tent where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. So Jesus is the new tabernacle where God dwells among us in the flesh.
Trent Horn:
Also notice how Mike’s defense of this claim Jesus is the new tabernacle is going to turn on the meaning of a particular Greek word.
Trent Horn:
So I want you to listen and then I’ll show you how Mike’s own arguments against Marian topology undermine Christological typology as well.
Mike Winger:
In John 1:14, it says of Jesus “and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth.” Now we know this passage, you might be like, “Okay, how does this have to do with the tabernacle?”
Mike Winger:
Well, the word dwelt there it is in the Greek, skénoó, excuse me, skénoó, is a Greek word that actually can be translated to live or camp in a tent. In the New Testament this word is only used by John. Like they don’t even use this term, for the most part, throughout the rest of the New Testament. It’s just not there. John uses it and he uses it here. In one case, it could literally be to pitch a tent and dwell. That’s from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.
Mike Winger:
So it’s saying, and in some translations actually put it this way, “the word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us.” Because it means to dwell in a tent amongst us.
Mike Winger:
So that’s just an interesting terminology there. Later, John uses the same term in Revelation 21:3. [inaudible 00:11:27] I’ll just read it to you.
Mike Winger:
I don’t have a slide for it, but it says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne,” here with the consummation of all things. It says, “behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.” With man. “He will dwell with them.” Tabernacle with them. “He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.”
Mike Winger:
So here’s another use of the term. So he takes a term that seems to be similar to the term tabernacle. It means to dwell on a tent. He refers it to Jesus tabernacleing amongst us, and then the final consummation. Okay, now it’s fully achieved, God is with us. God is with us.
Mike Winger:
So very interesting, interesting stuff, but there’s another connection. And that’s in John 1:14 when it says “he dwelt or tabernacled amongst us, and we saw his glory.” We’ve seen his glory. Well, that’s interesting because it reminds me of Exodus 40 in that same, remember the passage of Exodus we were talking about, right?
Mike Winger:
Here’s Exodus 40 here is the end, after the tabernacle is built. And after it’s all built, after it’s finally been tabernacled amongst them, it says in Exodus 40:33 and 34, “So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”
Mike Winger:
So once the tabernacle was built, they saw in some sense, the glory of God. And so Jesus, he came and he tabernacled, and we saw his glory. So we see there’s these connections, these sort of literary connections between Jesus and the tabernacle. I think it’s really interesting.
Trent Horn:
Now I agree. Jesus is the new tabernacle who dwells among us. But if I wanted to be as nitpicky as Mike, I could apply his same arguments against Mary against this typology. I mean, I could say something like this.
Trent Horn:
Apologists like Mike Winger claim this Greek word skénoó proves Jesus is the new tabernacle. But if you actually look up skénoó in a Greek dictionary, it doesn’t specifically mean the Holy Tabernacle of ancient Israel. It’s a verb that just means to dwell.
Trent Horn:
In the Greco-Roman world skénoó primarily meant living in a tent in a military encampment. In fact, John, John who wrote this verse also wrote the book of Revelation. And in Revelation 12:12, it says “Rejoice then, oh heaven. And you that dwell therein.” So are all these people in heaven actually tabernacles, even though I thought Christ was the new tabernacle? And none of this makes sense.
Trent Horn:
And besides even if this gobbledy Greek he’s using about skénoó, even if that’s true, it doesn’t prove the infinite immaterial God who is always one person is now two people, and one of them is human. It doesn’t prove any of that at all.
Trent Horn:
All right. So Zach Morris timeout here. Obviously I don’t believe that line of argument. I would only make that kind of argument if I was already predisposed to reject arguments for doctrines like the deity of Christ.
Trent Horn:
My point is just that he’s using two different standards here. One standard looks at typology and it treats parallels between the Old Testament and Christ as kind of innocent until proven guilty. But with Mary, any parallel is looked at with suspicion and there’s never enough evidence to show it’s a fair parallel to make.
Trent Horn:
What’s ironic is that Protestant commentaries do notice this parallel between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant. The Southern Baptist scholar, A.T. Robertson says this of episkiazō’s use in Luke 1:35, “A figure of a cloud coming upon her, common and ancient Greek in the sense of obscuring, and with accusative, as of Peter’s shadow in Acts 5:15, but we have seen it used of the shining bright cloud of the transfiguration of Jesus. Here it is like the Shekhinah glory, which suggests it. Where the cloud of glory represent the presence and power of God.”
Trent Horn:
And also in that passage, he cites Exodus 40:38, where the cloud settles over the tabernacle.
Trent Horn:
So, all right, let’s look at the next example where Mike says the similarities between the Ark and Mary don’t actually hold up.
Trent Horn:
First, he says the passages are too different to count as a typological reference. Remember the parallels. Here are the parallels. When the Ark was brought to David, he said, ‘How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?” When Mary visited Elizabeth, she said, “Why is this granted me? That the mother of my Lord should come to me?” David leapt in the presence of the Ark of the covenant and John the Baptist leapt in the presence of Mary.
Trent Horn:
Finally, the Ark of the Covenant remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months. And Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months.
Trent Horn:
Mike says the passages just don’t correspond enough. So it doesn’t count as typology. Here’s what he says.
Mike Winger:
And let’s just keep reading the next verse.
Mike Winger:
“So David was not willing to take the Ark of the Lord into the city of David.” And is that parallel with Elizabeth somehow? “How can you come to me? You can’t. Go away.” Like she doesn’t reject Mary, the connection doesn’t hold.
Mike Winger:
“But David took it aside to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite.” Now, if Elizabeth had housed Mary in somebody else’s house, maybe it would be a better case for a connection there.
Mike Winger:
“And the Ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months and the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and all his household.”
Mike Winger:
So what’s the connection between Mary and Elizabeth? It’s literally just the phrase, come to me. That’s the whole connection.
Trent Horn:
So Mike is saying, “Look, it’s not parallel enough because David didn’t accept the Ark, but Elizabeth accepted Mary.” This is actually a pretty common argument among Protestant Biblical scholars.
Trent Horn:
The modern typology of Mary and the Ark of the Covenant comes from the French theologian René Laurentin. He first wrote about this in the 1950s actually. And contemporary Protestant scholars, Darryl Bach would be an example. In his recent two volume commentary on, I think it’s on Luke / Acts, at least on Luke. He says, “Identifying Mary as the new Ark is ‘too subtle.’ And that the Ark for David was a cause for fear, not joy, since that Ark was an instrument of God’s judgment.”
Trent Horn:
Here, I would say the typological parallels sometimes subvert what happened in the Old Testament as part of their fulfillment.
Trent Horn:
For example, we call Christ the new Adam because he was created without original sin, just like the old Adam. But unlike the old Adam, Christ perfectly obeyed the father.
Trent Horn:
Likewise, Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant that is given the proper welcome and respect that the old Ark of the Covenant did not receive in the book of 2 Samuel.
Mike Winger:
And then the third connection is leaping, leaping. In 2 Samuel 6:14, when, three months after Uzzah, then they bring the Ark in, and David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was girded with a linen ephod. King David leaping and dancing before the Lord. That’s also 1 Chronicles 15:29. So, we have him dancing in 2 Samuel. In 1 Chronicles, we have the word leaping specifically.
Mike Winger:
Luke 1:44. Here’s what Elizabeth says. “For behold when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” So this is again, three months later, these are two separate events and they’re trying to smash them together to create a type.
Mike Winger:
But the dancing is not Elizabeth, is it? If Elizabeth supposed to be David, then why is John dancing? Is John David? Well, then Elizabeth was the one shouting and saying, “Come to me.” So this whole type is just kind of like patchwork.
Mike Winger:
Here’s my problem. First Elizabeth is David. David. Then Elizabeth is all Israel shouting. Then she’s David again, in the third example, or the second example I should say. Then John is David, when he’s leaping. Then Elizabeth is Obed-Edom when she’s bringing the Ark to her house, because that’s where the Ark stayed was Obed-Edom’s house, not David’s house. So it just doesn’t make sense. Like the type doesn’t hold together very well.
Trent Horn:
Let me summarize Mike’s, and these other Biblical scholars, objections to this typology.
Trent Horn:
Basically they say it’s not a valid comparison because the Old Testament role of David is not seen in only one person like Elizabeth. It’s seen in Elizabeth and the unborn John the Baptist. So he’s saying to be a valid type, it can’t be shared across people or things, there needs to be a one-to-one correspondence.
Trent Horn:
The problem with this approach though, is that it would undermine traditional types of Christ that are found in the Old Testament that aren’t a one-to-one correspondence.
Trent Horn:
For example, look at what Mike says about Jesus being the new tabernacle and the new Ark of the Covenant.
Mike Winger:
Three things were inside. Again, I said, this is a container. There’s three things in the container. Inside of it.
Mike Winger:
One of them is the two tablets of stone carrying the 10 commandments that Moses wrote down after he broke the other ones. The 10 commandments. Now, how does that represent Jesus? Well, Jesus shows up Matthew 5:17, he says, “Do not think that I’ve come to abolish the law or the prophets. I’ve not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.”
Mike Winger:
Christ fulfills the things that are written here. He actually does it. Now they all failed, but Christ fulfills it. They stand there forever in the middle of Israel as this constant testimony of what the people aren’t doing. You’re failing, you’re sinning. Jesus comes in, he actually accomplishes it. He actually does it. So the 10 commandment represent God’s righteous standards. They are kind of picturesque of all of God’s moral truths. You know, it’s kind of like standing in that representative place. Jesus fulfills it. He walks the perfect life. He lived sinlessly. He obeys the law.
Trent Horn:
So the art contained the 10 commandments and Christ fulfilled the 10 commandments, or he’s the righteousness of God just as the commandments were God’s righteousness.
Trent Horn:
Well, so wait, Mike. Is Jesus the Ark that contain the commandments? Or is Jesus the 10 commandments themselves? Or is he both the Ark and the 10 commandments at the same time? It sounds like you’re mish-mashing things a little bit.
Trent Horn:
Now to be clear, I think it’s obvious. Jesus is a type of the tabernacle and of the 10 commandments.
Trent Horn:
But once again, I’m applying to Mike the same harsh criticism he gave gives to Marian typology. You can especially see this in what Mike says about Jesus being a type of the lampstand that was found in ancient Israel’s tabernacle.
Mike Winger:
But here in the tabernacle area where they would come more frequently, you have the lampstand and they were to never let it go out. It can never go out. It always had to have oil from olives, constantly producing light. Jesus, he says, John 8:12, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Mike Winger:
You know, in the context of the tabernacle, that was the light of the tabernacle, right? Jesus comes, he says, “I’m the light of the world.” And it’s maybe perhaps in a greater sense. He then calls us to be the light as well.
Mike Winger:
The gold itself was of hammered work. And that’s specifically what the text says. It says it had to be of hammered work. The lampstand. The other items in the tabernacle, they’re not called hammered. This is called hammered work. You have to beat it. You have to beat it into shape. That’s the idea. It was hammered or beaten work. I think Isaiah 53:5 seemed to indicate Jesus was beaten. He was crushed. He was bruised. He was pounded for us. He was beaten for us.
Mike Winger:
So there’s thorns connected to this. There’s a beating connected to this. And there’s something else in the tabernacle that was also beaten. That’s Exodus 27:20, “You shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light. That a lamp may regularly be set up to burn.”
Mike Winger:
So there, the olive oil itself was pure beaten olive oil. I mean, he could have said olive oil, but he says pure beaten olive oil. Olives show up in the New Testament as well.
Mike Winger:
In one particular moment when Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, which some of you know means the garden of the olive press. It was literally an olive grove where they were growing olives. He’s in the garden of the olive press, where the olives are pressed, where they’re smashed to produce their oil. And here Jesus is sweating great drops of blood. And he’s bearing this incredible burden of what’s about to happen and who knows what was going on spiritually with him at the time. Jesus was crushed for us. So I think that’s really interesting.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So notice the difference here. Mike makes a typological argument that even he would probably admit if someone pushed back on him, is pretty weak.
Trent Horn:
I mean, here’s what I gathered from his whole argument.
Trent Horn:
So Jesus is the light of the world. And of course the lamp in the tabernacle also gave off light. The lamp in the tabernacle was hammered metal, and Jesus was hammered or beaten. The lamp also used olive oil, and Jesus was burdened or crushed by fear in an olive grove so that he sweat blood that would save us.
Trent Horn:
I mean, talk about mishmash, right? But here’s the thing. Mike is willing to make this argument because he loves Jesus. And that’s a good thing. Even if it’s a weak connection, he loves Jesus. And he gets really excited about seeing connections between Jesus and the Old Testament. And that’s great. I would just say, don’t be such a downer about Catholics making similar connections between Mary and the Old Testament, because we love Mary. And we love Mary because she always leads us to her son. That is her role in salvation history.
Trent Horn:
So this example, and many others Mike offers in his whole series, it shows the connections between the Old and the New Testament. They don’t have to have a perfect one-to-one correspondence. They can be more of what you would call echoes in salvation history.
Trent Horn:
In fact, the Protestant Word Biblical commentary, it writes this “Echoes of 2 Samuel 6:2-19 are to be found in verses of Luke 1:41, 43, 44, and possibly 56. If the last be granted, verse 56, “Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months,” Then we must go further and say that this taking up of paradigmatic responses has been artistically carried through by treating the presence of Mary, or the unborn Jesus, as equivalent to the presence of the Ark of the Covenant.”
Trent Horn:
So I hope this was helpful to you all. If you would like to go more in depth on the subject of Marian dogmas, I’d recommend Tim Staples’s book, Behold, Your Mother, as well as the last two chapters of my book, The Case for Catholicism. There’s also great material on Marion typology in Matthew Levering’s study of Mary’s assumption.
Trent Horn:
So hope that’s helpful for you all. Thank you guys so much. And I just hope that you have a really blessed day.
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