My latest question has arisen from my two history classes. In one we have been studying the beginning of German pietism in the early 1700's; in the other, reading Augustine's Confessions.

Augustine of Hippo could write typological exegesis with a vengeance. Out of the first thirteen verses of Genesis, he gets the triune nature of God, the tripartite nature of man, and the comparison of the unformed void of the earth before creation to the the unformed void of our souls before God shines His light on us. And that is not to mention the discourse on time and eternity and the discourse on sound and song.

But why exactly do some modern Christians seem to fear the typological interpretation of Scripture? Do they believe they will lose the "plain meaning" of the text if they admit that it may have more than one meaning? Is this just plain old pietistic dislike of theology, or is there a more specific connection between pietism and a distrust of typology? Or maybe it's simply so foreign to anything many are taught today, that they have to acclimate.