Eusebius on the Three Offices

Now, Eusebius is not everybody's favourite theologian/church historian. He is widely regarded as an Arian, and in cahoots with the Emperor Constantine - a little too sycophantic to worldly power perhaps? The idea of the 'three offices of Christ' comes from a person who had a rather ready eye for formal and hierarchical arrangements. Nevertheless, as you can see below, he is determined to ground Christology in the whole Bible, and the 'three offices' helps him to do that with quite a degree of explanatory power. The meaning and significance of Christ lies in the history of Israel which prefigures him:

Eusebius H.E. 1.iii

Chapter III. The Name Jesus and Also the Name Christ Were Known from the Beginning, and Were Honoured by the Inspired Prophets.

"1 It is now the proper place to show that the very name Jesus and also the name Christ were honoured by the ancient prophets beloved of God.
2 Moses was the first 2 to make known the name of Christ as a name especially august and glorious. When he delivered types and symbols of heavenly things, and mysterious images, in accordance with the oracle which said to him, "Look that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shown thee in the mount," he consecrated a man high priest of God, in so far as that was possible, and him he called Christ. And thus to this dignity of the high priesthood, which in his opinion surpassed the most honourable position among men, he attached for the sake of honour and glory the name of Christ.
3 He knew so well that in Christ was something divine. And the same one foreseeing, under the influence of the divine Spirit, the name Jesus, dignified it also with a certain distinguished privilege. For the name of Jesus, which had never been uttered among men before the time of Moses, he applied first and only to the one who he knew would receive after his death, again as a type and symbol, the supreme command.
4His successor, therefore, who had not hitherto borne the name Jesus, but had been called by another name, Auses, which had been given him by his parents, he now called Jesus, bestowing the name upon him as a gift of honour, far greater than any kingly diadem. For Jesus himself, the son of Nave, bore a resemblance to our Saviour in the fact that he alone, after Moses and after the completion of the symbolical worship which had been transmitted by him, succeeded to the government of the true and pure religion.
5 Thus Moses bestowed the name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, as a mark of the highest honor, upon the two men who in his time surpassed all the rest of the people in virtue and glory; namely, upon the high priest and upon his own successor in the government.
6 And the prophets that came after also clearly foretold Christ by name, predicting at the same time the plots which the Jewish people would form against him, and the calling of the nations through him. Jeremiah, for instance, speaks as follows: "The Spirit before our face, Christ the Lord, was taken in their destructions; of whom we said, under his shadow we shall live among the nations." And David, in perplexity, says, "Why did the nations rage and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ"; to which he adds, in the person of Christ himself, "The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
7 And not only those who were honoured with the high priesthood, and who for the sake of the symbol were anointed with especially prepared oil, were adorned with the name of Christ among the Hebrews, but also the kings whom the prophets anointed under the influence of the divine Spirit, and thus constituted, as it were, typical Christs. For they also bore in their own persons types of the royal and sovereign power of the true and only Christ, the divine Word who ruleth over all.
8 And we have been told also that certain of the prophets themselves became, by the act of anointing, Christs in type, so that all these have reference to the true Christ, the divinely inspired and heavenly Word, who is the only high priest of all, and the only King of every creature, and the Father's only supreme prophet of prophets.
9 And a proof of this is that no one of those who were of old symbolically anointed, whether priests, or kings, or prophets, possessed so great a power of inspired virtue as was exhibited by our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the true and only Christ.
10 None of them at least, however superior in dignity and honour they may have been for many generations among their own people, ever gave to their followers the name of Christians from their own typical name of Christ. Neither was divine honour ever rendered to any one of them by their subjects; nor after their death was the disposition of their followers such that they were ready to die for the one whom they honoured. And never did so great a commotion arise among all the nations of the earth in respect to any one of that age; for the mere symbol could not act with such power among them as the truth itself which was exhibited by our Saviour.
11 He, although he received no symbols and types of high priesthood from any one, although he was not born of a race of priests, although he was not elevated to a kingdom by military guards, although he was not a prophet like those of old, although he obtained no honour nor pre-eminence among the Jews, nevertheless was adorned by the Father with all, if not with the symbols, yet with the truth itself.
12 And therefore, although he did not possess like honours with those whom we have mentioned, he is called Christ more than all of them. And as himself the true and only Christ of God, he has filled the whole earth with the truly august and sacred name of Christians, committing to his followers no longer types and images, but the uncovered virtues themselves, and a heavenly life in the very doctrines of truth.
13 And he was not anointed with oil prepared from material substances, but, as befits divinity, with the divine Spirit himself, by participation in the unbegotten deity of the Father. And this is taught also again by Isaiah, who exclaims, as if in the person of Christ himself, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore hath he anointed me. He hath sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, to proclaim deliverance to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind."
14 And not only Isaiah, but also David addresses him, saying, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hast hated iniquity. Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Here the Scripture calls him God in the first verse, in the second it honours him with a royal sceptre.
15 Then a little farther on, after the divine and royal power, it represents him in the third place as having become Christ, being anointed not with oil made of material substances, but with the divine oil of gladness. It thus indicates his especial honour, far superior to and different from that of those who, as types, were of old anointed in a more material way.
16 And elsewhere the same writer speaks of him as follows: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool"; and, "Out of the womb, before the morning star, have I begotten thee. The Lord hath sworn and he will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec."
17 But this Melchizedec is introduced in the Holy Scriptures as a priest of the most high God, not consecrated by any anointing oil, especially prepared, and not even belonging by descent to the priesthood of the Jews. Wherefore after his order, but not after the order of the others, who received symbols and types, was our Saviour proclaimed, with an appeal to an oath, Christ and priest.
18 History, therefore, does not relate that he was anointed corporeally by the Jews, nor that he belonged to the lineage of priests, but that he came into existence from God himself before the morning star, that is before the organization of the world, and that he obtained an immortal and undecaying priesthood for eternal ages.
19 But it is a great and convincing proof of his incorporeal and divine unction that he alone of all those who have ever existed is even to the present day called Christ by all men throughout the world, and is confessed and witnessed to under this name, and is commemorated both by Greeks and Barbarians and even to this day is honoured as a King by his followers throughout the world, and is admired as more than a prophet, and is glorified as the true and only high priest of God. And besides all this, as the pre-existent Word of God, called into being before all ages, he has received august honour from the Father, and is worshiped as God.
20 But most wonderful of all is the fact that we who have consecrated ourselves to him, honour him not only with our voices and with the sound of words, but also with complete elevation of soul, so that we choose to give testimony unto him rather than to preserve our own lives.
21 I have of necessity prefaced my history with these matters in order that no one, judging from the date of his incarnation, may think that our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the Christ, has but recently come into being. "

Hans Frei on Typology or Figural reading

Hans Frei has done most in recent decades to rehabilitate figurative or typological reading as a necessary component of Biblical hermeneutics. Building on the work of literary scholar Eric Auerbach, Frei argued that the Bible points to its own unity and inner coherence by inviting figural interpretation. In Auerbach’s terms:

Figural interpretation establishes a connection between two events or person in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while second involves or fulfills the first. The two poles of a figure are separated in time, but both, being real events or persons, are within temporality. The are both contained in the flowing stream which is historical life, and only the comprehension, the intellectus spiritualis, of their interdependence is a spiritual act.[1]

In other words: typology shows that two events or characters are part of the one connected stream of history in way that is not necessarily obvious from mere analysis of causality. The prefiguring of one by the other is discerned by (or, perhaps better, revealed to) the reader. In theologian Frei’s words:

In figural interpretation the figure itself is real in its own place, time, and right and without any detraction from that reality it prefigures the reality that will fulfill it. This figural relation not only brings into coherent relation events in bibical narration, but allows also the fitting of each present occurrence and experience into a real, narrative framework or world. Each person, each occurrence is a figure of that providential narrative in which it is also an ingredient.[2]

Unlike allegorical reading, typological interpretation points to the embeddedness of the events in a common narrative framework governed by providence.[3] These are ‘real’ or ‘historical’ at least in the sense that they gain their meaning from a relation to divine providence – the same providential narrative in which the reader of the text then in turn finds herself.[4]

This observation dovetails with Nicholas Lash’s proposal for a ‘performative’ reading of Scripture. There is a sort of double typology at work: the reader of Scripture is invited to see not only types of the Messiah in the OT narratives, but also then to model his own life (and death) after the pattern of the life of Christ. The structure of shadow and fulfilment is not repeated in the life of the believer (the believer’s life is not the reality prefigured in some way by Christ); but the typological similarity serves to bind the disciple into the same reality as the world of the text, within the frame of the same providential narrative. The text may serve not only as a type of Christ but also, in a secondary way, as a type of the follower of Christ.

[1] Erich Auerbach, Mimesis : The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 73.
[2] Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative : A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 153.
[3] The great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye, for his part, wrote: ‘Typology points to future events that are often thought of as transcending time, so that they contain a vertical lift as well as a horizontal move forward.’ Is ‘transcending’ the right verb? Typology as it is used in the NT, and as observed by Hans Frei, reconfigures time certainly, but doesn’t overcome or dispense with it (if that is what is meant by ‘transcending’ here). Northrop Frye, The Great Code - the Bible in Literature (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1982), p. 82.
[4] This is what Frei argued had been ‘eclipsed’ in all the debates about what it was the texts refered to.