Watchtower: Fewer “Types and Antitypes”?

Articles in the March 15, 2015 Watchtower may change hundreds of teachings that were based on the use and idea of “types and antitypes.” This could stretch the organization’s definition of “new light” as this would signal a major shift in past and current doctrines – and especially the many “end times” predictions by the Governing Body.

In fact, in that particular Watchtower magazine, the writers indicate that most – if not all – of their examples of ancient “types” being equal to modern “antitypes” may be completely trashed. Remember that everything that is printed in the Watchtower magazine – especially the “study articles” – must be approved by the Governing Body or their “helpers.”

To find out more, go to the March 15, 2015 Watchtower [Link to PDF version] and read all about it for yourself in the article, “THIS IS THE WAY YOU APPROVE.” You can download a copy and discover for yourself how these changes are presented. In fact, the writers devoted almost the entire magazine to this subject.

If you want to take an easier route to find out what this change is all about, you can read for yourself a fascinating commentary about the new trends recently published in the March 15, 2015 Watchtower on the AD1914.com website. [Link to article]

The following excerpts from that same commentary provide both a background and a description of the doctrinal change:

Historically, The Watch Tower publications have consistently claimed . . . that Biblical parables . . .  should be treated as prophecies. If it was an event or circumstance from someone’s life . . . it also had to be explained as a prophetic drama where various characters and details were prophetic of some future events. Those events usually related to the history of the Watch Tower Society in the last 100 years.

The March 15, 2015 Watchtower states that we should now see a clear change to a ‘way of teaching’ . . . referred to as the ‘type and antitype’ method. Although it has not been abandoned entirely, the article indicates that it should only be used when there is a clear Biblical statement that the illustration or narrative is, in fact, a prophecy.

DECADES OF INCREASED CLARITY AND DISCRETION?
The March 15, 2015 Watchtower states that for decades these explanations have been gradually and steadily moving toward this more refined ideal of simplicity and clarity. Note:

The same issue includes a “QUESTIONS FROM READERS” which states:

A MOST INTERESTING PARALLEL
In light of this change, there is an extraordinary statement made over a century ago in the July 15, 1909 Watch Tower. It is found on page 219, paragraph 5 in the article: “THE DUAL FEATURE IN RACHEL.”

This turns out to be very significant.

We don’t know just how serious Charles Taze Russell was about gladly welcoming “new and better light.” Over the next 100 years, however, “explanation of types not directly or indirectly referred to in the New Testament” reached a new and glaring level of intensity. Watch Tower publications have published thousands of pages covering hundreds of “type and antitype” teachings. These doctrines have been presented as “deep truths” and as “new light” from the “faithful and discreet slave” and were to be studied in detail and accepted as “truth.”

HELPING THE DISCREET SLAVE BECOME MORE DISCREET

This supposed “new and better light” permeated almost every publication after 1919. This is a bit ironic, because, after a recent doctrinal change, Charles Taze Russell (who died in 1916) was effectively “dismissed” from the ranks of the “faithful and discreet slave” class, even though he had long been thought to have held the title himself. (Watchtower, July 15, 2013, page 23, now states that the “slave” did not exist until 1919.) Therefore, the supposedly “more discreet” discreet slave, after 1919, failed to heed the discretion and caution that had just been recommended by Russell.

Also, relegated to the scrap heap of irony, then, would be the following claims about the so-called credentials of the “faithful slave” found in the March 1, 1981 Watchtower, page 26:

The full “partial list” contains 80 examples! And, of course, these are all “types” where the “antitype” is the “faithful and discreet slave” class, since 1919, now identified specifically as the members of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Therefore, we are unavoidably brought right back to the key claim in the March 15, 2015 Watchtower:

Yet, this “discreet slave” is inadvertently admitting that they were not all that discreet over most of their own self-defined history. More than a century of the supposed “better light” that Russell referenced is now considered obsolete.

But that’s not the worst of it. What the article doesn’t mention is that the doctrine of the “faithful and discreet slave” itself must fall under the same category of currently discarded explanations. Yes, it is also based on creating a “type and antitype” out of a parable in Matthew 24 about a faithful and an unfaithful slave, where “there is no specific Scriptural basis for doing so.”