Liturgy and Sacrament, Mystagogy and Martyrdom

Essays in Theological Exegesis

Jeffrey L. Morrow

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532693809, 9781532693816
• eBook ISBN: 9781532693823
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

For far too long the Bible has been studied as just one among many historical and cultural documents from ancient history. That it is a foundational text for Western civilization is clear. What is too often forgotten or ignored in academic discussions, however, is that the Bible has also inspired the lives of countless saints throughout history; men and women who sought to love God and love neighbor to the point of offering heroic sacrifices, sometimes giving up their very lives. Much of biblical scholarship over the past two centuries, however, has reduced the Bible to a dead historical document with little-to-no relevance for today, beyond intellectual curiosity. This, in part, lies at the root of the tragic separation of theology from biblical studies. That theology and biblical exegesis are at an impasse has become a commonplace in academic discourse. Liturgy and Sacrament, Mystagogy and Martyrdom is an attempt to bridge the gap between theology and exegesis. It seeks to develop a theological interpretation of Scripture relying upon the best of traditional Christian exegesis and modern biblical scholarship, so that the Bible can serve, once again, as the wellspring of Christian life.

1

Rightly Reading the Sacred Page

A Brief History of Catholic Biblical Interpretation

Before we engage in theological exegesis, it would be beneficial to review the Church’s rich interpretive tradition. In what follows, I provide a cursory overview of the history of Catholic biblical interpretation spanning two millennia. Of necessity such a summary will remain partial, but it will be important for situating the theological exegetical work this volume is attempting to accomplish, in light of the post-Conciliar period context with which this chapter concludes. As we shall see, biblical interpretation developed through the centuries quite naturally with a desire to understand better the Scriptures and thereby facilitate an encounter with the God who authored them. In the modern period, an overemphasis on an anemic reason, increasingly severed from faith, set biblical interpretation on a trajectory that would drive a wedge between attention to history and faith commitments.16 Within the Catholic world, the Second Vatican Council attempted to provide the outline of a more unified approach, united faith and reason, in a hermeneutic from the heart of the Church.

The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, was an important magisterial document setting forth the Church’s teaching, including its discussion of Sacred Scripture, within the context of the Church’s tradition and the event of the Council itself. Dei Verbum synthesized the tradition in a clear and marvelous way, especially taking up the Magisterium’s late nineteenth and twentieth century teachings on Scripture regarding a number of related issues. One of these central issues pertained to the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, which is found in paragraph 12 of Dei Verbum.17 In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI issued his post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Verbum Domini, which was the most thorough and significant document pertaining to Scripture to come from the Magisterium since the Second Vatican Council. Pope Benedict’s broader theological work holds such potential and promise for profoundly shaping the future of Catholic exegesis, and therefore a number of Catholic scholars have commented on its significance, particularly in bridging the gaps of older debates and taking Catholic biblical interpretation forward.18

In this chapter, I will begin with a longue durée, surveying briefly the first nineteen hundred years. Secondly, I will consider more extensively the dawn of the twentieth century leading up to the Second Vatican Council, and finally I will narrate the trends that have since unfolded in Catholic biblical scholarship. It should be borne in mind, as we approach the Second Vatican Council and the time period afterwards, that Catholic biblical scholars had a difficult road to walk, as many feared censure in the anti-Modernist period, and for a long time were not treated as equals in the wider world of non-Catholic biblical scholarship.19 My reason for spending so much time on roughly the last century within this two thousand year history is that the remainder of this volume is my attempt at contributing to the post-conciliar theological exegesis, and thus this last period of time serves as the proximate historical context necessary for understanding the work I seek to do.

Catholic Exegetes within the History of Biblical Interpretation

The Earliest Christian Centuries

It has become commonplace to describe early and medieval Christian biblical interpretation in reference to the quadruplex sensus, the fourfold sense. In reality, the fourfold sense of Scripture is really composed of two senses, the literal and the spiritual. The literal sense pertained to the sense of the words themselves, whereas the spiritual sense was further subdivided into three, hence a fourfold sense: one literal and three spiritual senses. As with Jewish interpretation, the church fathers evidenced a vast array of exegetical diversity far broader than this fourfold sense.20 The liturgy is where biblical interpretation was continually born anew and lived. Prayer, and particularly the eucharistic liturgy, has always been the prime setting for biblical interpretation among Christians.21 Scripture is thus by its very nature liturgical, sacramental, and performative; it is intended primarily for liturgy, where it functions sacramentally and prepares for the sacraments, and then facilitates their efficacious work in our lives, leading to our divinization, or deification.22

Quite naturally, Christian exegetes had concern for more than simply the literal sense...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Rightly Reading the Sacred Page
• Chapter 2: Priestly Humanity in the Temple of Creation
• Chapter 3: St. Joseph and the Value of Work
• Chapter 4: Heavenly Bread
• Chapter 5: St. Thomas More as Biblical Interpreter
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Bibliography