How the Church Fathers Read the Bible

A Short Introduction

Gerald Bray

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781683595830
• eBook ISBN: 9781683595847
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

"How the Church Fathers Read the Bible is an accessible introduction to help you read Scripture with the early church. With a clear and simple style, Gerald Bray explains the distinctives of early Christian interpretation and shows how the fathers interpreted key Bible passages from Genesis to Revelation. Their unique perspective is summed up in seven principles that can inspire our Bible reading today. With Bray as your guide, you can reclaim the rich insights of the fathers with reverence and discernment"--

V

CASE STUDIES

It is one thing to talk in general terms about the way the church fathers read the Bible and another to examine more closely what they said about particular passages. A short introduction cannot do justice to the whole of the biblical canon, but those who want a comprehensive overview can now consult the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, which covers the material, including the Apocrypha, in twenty-nine volumes.1 Of course, some passages attracted more attention than others, and they have retained their importance in the life of the church today. Looking at some of them will give us not only a flavor of patristic exegesis but also a sense of how it relates to subsequent, and particularly to modern, approaches to the texts. Opinions will differ as to the extent to which ancient interpretations can be recycled for modern use, but whatever conclusions we may come to about that, knowing how our ancestors in the faith understood key biblical texts will provide us with an important resource to illumine our own spiritual understanding.

For the purposes of this study, ten significant texts have been selected for further investigation:

Old Testament
Genesis 1:26–27	The image of God
1 Samuel 28:13–14	Saul and the witch of Endor
Psalm 22:1–8	The cry of dereliction
Song of Songs 2:1–4	The bridegroom and the bride
Isaiah 7:14; 9:6	The messianic oracles
New Testament
Matthew 4:1–11	The temptations of Jesus
John 3:3–8	The new birth
Romans 5:12–14	The nature of sin
Hebrews 11:1–3	The nature of faith
Revelation 20:1–6	The eschatological millennium

OLD TESTAMENT

GENESIS 1:26–27

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

The narrative of creation was perhaps the most commented on text of Scripture in ancient times, for reasons that we have already explored. At the heart of that narrative is the creation of the human race, which was given a mandate to exercise dominion over the rest of the material world, including both the sea and the air. Nothing is said about spiritual creatures like angels, but we learn from other passages that human beings were considered to be lower than they were, which would seem to exclude any jurisdiction over them.2 On the other hand, the apostle Paul told the Corinthians that we shall judge the angels, presumably by participating in God’s judgment of them (1 Cor 6:3). The fathers did not ignore this functional aspect of creation in God’s image, but true to their philosophical inclinations, they were more inclined to focus on what the image tells us about human nature.

According to Clement of Alexandria, to be created in God’s image was to be endowed with an eternal soul whose rational faculty has made it possible for us to communicate with God. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Logos or mind of God, was the full and perfect manifestation of the divine image in a human being.3 A century and a half later, the same theme was reiterated by Marius Victorinus, who insisted that Adam was made “according to the image,” the image of the image, so to speak, because only Jesus was the true image of God.4

As far as the rest of humanity is concerned, we have all been made in God’s image, but most of the fathers regarded this as something distinct from his likeness. They did not have a firm grasp of Hebrew parallelism. Instead of seeing the two terms as virtually synonymous, they preferred to think of the likeness as something extra. Irenaeus believed that Adam and Eve lost the image when they fell because they lacked a direct revelation of the Son and therefore could not tell what the true image was like.5 But most of the fathers thought that God had created Adam and Eve in his image, reserving the acquisition of the likeness to a later stage of growth and perfection that has not yet arrived. As with so much else, this idea seems to be traceable to Origen, who wrote, “The fact that God was silent about the likeness tells us that man received the honor of God’s image at his creation, but that the perfection of the divine likeness was reserved for him at the consummation [of all things]. The reason for this was that man had to acquire God’s likeness for himself, by earnestly striving to imitate him, so that although he could have obtained perfection through the image, in the end it would be by his works that he would obtain for himself the perfect ‘likeness’ of God.”6

Two hundred years later Diadochus of Photice (c. 400–474) claimed that the likeness of God is granted only to those who have subjected their innate freedom to the will of God, because it is only when we no longer belong to ourselves that we can become like him.7 Meanwhile, Augustine of Hippo put his own interpretation on it by saying that the image of God in humanity is an image of the Trinity, but that this image can never be a perfect likeness because of the fundamental difference between the infinite God and finite human beings.8 Different again was Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote that we possess God’s image by creation but acquire his likeness by exercising our free will. His justification for that was that human beings might thereby become worthy of the reward that comes from God.9 The Christian life, culminating in the resurrection from the dead, was thus interpreted as a process of sanctification that would lead ultimately to the restoration of the divine likeness in those who would be saved.

It is often thought that the fathers regarded women as inferior to men, not least because it was Eve who first responded to the temptation of the serpent, but this is inaccurate. Not all of the fathers commented on human sexual difference, but those who did indicated that the image of God transcended it and applied equally to both male and female, because both were necessary for the completion of humanity and the propagation of the human race. Origen even managed to allegorize this, as we can see from the following: “Our inner man is composed of both spirit and soul. The spirit is male and the soul is female. If they agree with each other, that agreement allows them to increase and multiply so that they produce children—good inclinations and useful ideas—by which they fill the earth and exercise dominion over it.”10 One consequence of this approach was that sexual intercourse was alien to the image of God. John Chrysostom stated that intercourse, and hence the reproduction of the human race, began only after the fall, when the sublime goodness of angelic virginity gave way to the lusts of the flesh.11

How much of this can a modern Christian appropriate? It is obvious that the distinction the fathers made between the image and the likeness of God cannot stand up to examination, and so any interpretation based on that must either be abandoned or at least severely modified. But if we confine ourselves to what the fathers had to say about the image, there is much with which we can agree. There is undoubtedly something about human beings that sets us apart from the rest of the material creation and allows us to commune with God. The dominion he has given us is real, and we are responsible to him for the way in which we exercise it. It is a privilege granted to all human beings, whether they are believers or not, but as the fathers sensed in their musings about the likeness, there is something different about Christians. We are people who have been enlightened by the truth, and because we possess the Holy Spirit, we can order our lives according to it. We are not perfect, but that the Christian life is a growth in the knowledge and experience of God, none of us would deny. Finally, the image of God is the common possession of both male and female—sexual differentiation makes no difference in terms of our relationship with him. That too, we are more than willing to affirm.

To sum up, although the fathers were mistaken in their analysis of the likeness of God, most of what they had to say about the image is still valid today and needs to be reemphasized in a world where too many have been persuaded that human beings are no more than highly intelligent apes and that all talk of a relationship with God our Creator is essentially mythical.

1 SAMUEL 28:13–14

The king [Saul] said to her [the witch of Endor], “Do not be afraid. What do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see a god coming up out of the earth.” He said to her, “What is his appearance?” And she said, “An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe.” And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage.

This curious story is part of the sorry tale of how Saul, the first king of Israel, fell short of the destiny to which the prophet Samuel had called and anointed him. Among the good things that Saul had done, he had expelled witchcraft from the nation, but after Samuel’s death he lost heart in the struggle against his Philistine enemies and went against his own actions. Instead of looking to God, he sought out a medium who could tell him what the future held. He disguised himself so as not to appear to be breaking his own laws, but the medium he approached soon realized who he was. Saul reassured her that she would not get into trouble, and he asked her to conjure up Samuel, the man who had made him king in the first place. Saul got more than he bargained for—not only did Samuel appear, but instead of advising Saul as to how he might overcome the Philistines, he prophesied the king’s defeat and death. To modern minds, this story seems alien, though the practice of spiritualism is more common than most of us are prepared to admit. In ancient times, this sort of thing was common and widely accepted, though Jews and Christians recognized its falsity and did what they could to stamp it out.

The fathers knew, of course, that Saul was going against his better judgment and believed that he got what he deserved, but there was another, more immediate dimension to their interpretation of this story. This was the question of whether believers could be brought back after death as a result of witchcraft. Were Christians in the church triumphant in heaven subject to this kind of attack? In other words, was the ghost who came back the real Samuel or a satanic deception? Behind this strange story lay the question of the eternal assurance of the believer, and it was to that issue that the fathers addressed themselves.

The dilemma that confronted the fathers was well expressed by Origen: “If such a great man was indeed under the earth and a medium brought him up, would it not have been the case that a demon had power over the prophet? What can I say? These things are recorded. Is it true or false? To say that it is false encourages unbelief … but to say that it is true presents us with a dilemma.”12 Origen was inclined to believe that it was the real Samuel who had been conjured up because to say anything else would be to cast doubt on the truth of God’s word. It was hard to believe that Samuel was in hell, but this could be resolved by saying that although Samuel did not deserve to be there, he spent time in the company of sinners for the purpose of saving them. In the end, claimed Origen, the story shows us that there is nowhere that does not need the saving presence of Christ, and the prophets went to hell in order to proclaim that message.13

That the souls of the righteous might fall victim to satanic machinations after their deaths was admitted by Justin Martyr, who argued that it explains why Christ taught us to pray that such a fate might not befall us.14 Tertullian seems to have accepted the possibility that the witch of Endor had been given the power to bring Samuel back from the dead, but he argued that it was a unique case and that, generally speaking, no soul can be called back by a demon.15 His solution to the problem was somewhat different: “The spirit that created the phantom was no different from the one who made Saul believe in it. The same spirit was in both the witch of Endor and the apostate Saul, so it was easy for him to suggest the lie that he had already made Saul believe [that he was Samuel].… Saul saw nothing but the devil, through whom he believed that he would see Samuel.”16

In the end, Tertullian’s objections were overruled and Origen’s beliefs were upheld. As Origen himself said, the phantom told the truth and prophesied the future correctly, which a demon could hardly be expected to do.17 Augustine went further and claimed that it was not impossible for God to send dead people to speak truth to the living. In support of this he cited the story of the transfiguration of Jesus, in which Moses (who was certainly dead) and Elijah appeared alongside him in order to proclaim his divinity. He even mentioned the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, in which Ben Sira, its author, seems to have referred to this incident.18

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the patristic interpretation of this passage is that it shows us why the church fathers were so concerned to emphasize that, after his crucifixion, Christ descended into hell. This doctrine is enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed, but its biblical basis remains obscure and many people in modern times have questioned its validity. Yet if we reflect that the struggle between good and evil is a holy war that does not cease with our death, because it is spiritual and not physical in nature, we can see why this strange story captured the imagination of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• I. What Is Patristic Biblical Interpretation?
• II. The Clash of Worldviews
• III. The Four Senses of Interpretation
• IV. The Search for Consensus
• V. Case Studies
• VI. Seven Theses on How the Church Fathers Read the Bible
• General Index
• Scripture Index
• Old Testament