Christian Theologies of Scripture

A Comparative Introduction

Justin S. Holcomb

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780814790656
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

All religious traditions that ground themselves in texts must grapple with certain questions concerning the texts' authority. Yet there has been much debate within Christianity concerning the nature of scripture and how it should be understood—a debate that has gone on for centuries.

Christian Theologies of Scripture traces what the theological giants have said about scripture from the early days of Christianity until today. It incorporates diverse discussions about the nature of scripture, its authority, and its interpretation, providing a guide to the variety of views about the Bible throughout the Christian tradition.

Preeminent scholars including Michael S. Horton, Graham Ward, and Pamela Bright offer chapters on major figures in the pre-modern, reformation, and early modern eras, from Origen and Aquinas to Luther and Calvin to Barth and Balthasar. They illuminate each thinker's understanding of the Christian scriptures and their views on interpreting the Bible. The book also includes overview chapters to orient readers to the key questions regarding scripture in each era, as well as chapters on scripture and feminism, scripture in the African American Christian tradition, and scripture and postmodernism.

This volume will be indispensable reading for students and all those interested in the nature and authority of Christian scripture.

Part I
Patristic and Medieval

1
Patristic and Medieval Theologies of Scripture

An Introduction

LEWIS AYRES

The Contours of a Revival

Pre-Reformation biblical interpretation has come to be of interest to scholars in all fields of Christian thought across a broad and ecumenical front in recent years. In order to introduce the chapters that follow, I will sketch some general categories for reading these early interpreters and consider the reasons for and scope of this growing interest.¹ Doing so will help to highlight questions that should be borne in mind when reading these initial chapters.

We should begin by noting why patristic and medieval exegesis was of far less interest to scholars for much of the past two centuries. In Protestant theology the rise of modern historical-critical methods of exegesis in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries meant that there was little place for the reading of patristic and medieval interpretation within the emerging academic field of biblical study. A similar situation pertained in systematic theology, a field that also began to take on its classically modern form in this period. Premodern exegesis was largely seen to lack appropriate foundations in historical consciousness and to be a product of Greek philosophical categories overcoming biblical truth. Thus a distinction was presumed to exist between the “scientific” structures of modern exegesis and theology and the occasionally useful but more fanciful work of earlier centuries.

In Catholic contexts premodern exegesis has been valued much more consistently—not least because of the presence of so much patristic exegesis in the daily office—but most nineteenth-century Catholic theologies did not actively promote the reading and imitation of these premodern models. During the twentieth century, the gradual accommodation of much Catholic biblical scholarship to Protestant historical-critical methods marginalized patristic and medieval exegesis, and the shifts in theological method that occurred in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) further distanced many strands of Catholic thought from premodern interpreters. This was, however, not universally true. Of particular note and influence are the theologians associated with the nouvelle théologie movement in France in the first half of the twentieth century. Here the magisterial work of Henri De Lubac on patristic and medieval exegesis is still seminal in its field.² These theologians (and figures such as Hans Urs von Balthasar who were associated with them) laid the foundations for a significant recovery of premodern interpretation by Catholic theologians at the end of the twentieth century.

The idea that a great distinction exists between the needs of theology in late modernity and the practice of premodern interpreters has been widely questioned over the past three decades. The variety of contexts and traditions from which such questions have arisen reflects the complex nature of theologians’ attempts to consider the character of appropriate theological practice in late modernity.

Barthian and postliberal Protestant theologians of various types have become increasingly interested in the recovery and promotion of early and medieval accounts of scripture. Theologians who insist that the Bible is the Church’s scripture, inspired by the Spirit and to be read under the Spirit’s guidance within the Church, have become suspicious of the idea that modern academic historical-critical exegesis is a necessary prerequisite to appropriate reading of the Bible.³ Such theologians have sometimes turned to premodern exegesis, and particularly to interpretive practices that assume the Church’s doctrinal belief to be an important guide in reading scripture in the Christian community. These early sources have seemed to reunite exegesis, theology, and the life of nonacademic Christians, thus overcoming some of the particular tensions that have arisen between the Church and the academy in modernity. Within Catholic theology there has also been a revival of interest in premodern interpretation, in part as a reaction against the accommodation of Catholic biblical scholarship to Protestant models, and in part because of a desire to reconnect Catholic thought with its premodern core and foundation.

Within the field of biblical studies, the past few decades have seen the emergence of a wide range of reader-response approaches, which recognize the significance of the history of interpretation and the diversity of biblical reading styles apparent in non-European cultures and postcolonial contexts. A number of scholars influenced by postmodern thought—not only biblical scholars, but also theologians and philosophers—have found in the plurality of meanings that premodern exegetes saw in the text of scripture the prefigurement of some postmodern theory, or at least a resource to be exploited in adapting that theory to theological ends. Although these approaches are only beginning to stimulate biblical scholars to use premodern interpreters in their work, they have been an important factor in creating the sense outside the field that such exploration may yield fruitful results.

Historical scholarship on early Christian theology and exegetical practice has also changed in recent decades. First, recent work has undercut many of the fundamental categories used to describe early Christian exegesis: the distinction between “allegory”⁴ and “typology” is increasingly seen as problematic and misleading; the notion of the “literal” sense of scripture has been more and more carefully differentiated from modern understandings of the term; and the division between “Antiochene” and “Alexandrian” exegesis has been increasingly questioned.⁵ Questioning of these categories has prompted closer study of actual exegetical practice and its diversity. Second, historical scholarship has focused much attention on the debts of early exegesis to the reading techniques taught in Hellenistic and Roman contexts. (I discuss these debts in further detail below.) Third, students of doctrinal history have increasingly explored doctrinal controversies as being always also exegetical controversies. In the light of this scholarship it has become clearer that doctrines emerge out of and develop through the negotiation of “interpretative undecidability.”⁶ Studying the reception history of particular verses (such as Proverbs 8:22 and John 10:30) has given rise to increasingly sophisticated accounts of the interaction between Christian philosophical thought and biblical exegesis such that any simple account of their relationship makes little sense.

One of the notable aspects of these attempts at recovery is their plurality. Scholars from remarkably different theological contexts have come to see their own concerns reflected in and supported by premodern exegesis. It is important to ask how far those attempting to recover early and medieval reading practices are willing also to recover and adopt the theology of scripture that early interpreters assumed. As we shall see in the remainder of this chapter, early and medieval Christians read their scriptures on the assumption that God had provided a text that helped to redirect the minds of fallen Christians toward the contemplation of the divine mystery. Accounts of scriptural reading (and especially of figural reading) were thus inseparable from theologies that offered very particular accounts of the goals and nature of Christian life. Early and medieval Christians also assumed that the Church was drawn by the Spirit to develop clear formulae of faith that could both sum up the message of scripture and guide interpreters of it. These theologies of scripture, as well as the reading practices concomitant with them, may offer a stronger challenge to modern Christians seeking a way beyond modern accounts of exegesis and theology than is usually realized.⁷

Some Basic Categories

In the light of recent scholarship on patristic exegesis, what basic categories for description and analysis might we use? Before outlining these categories in detail, it is important to bear in mind that the classical patterns of Christian exegesis they describe evolved over a long period. The process of borrowing and developing ancient reading techniques that I describe here began to emerge clearly at the end of the second and the beginning of the third century with figures such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. While Christians are likely to see these developments as the work of the Spirit, much historical work remains to be undertaken to understand better how and in what circumstances they occurred. In what follows, I describe the reading practices and then gradually draw out ways in which they were linked with a particular theology of scripture.

Early Christian exegesis takes as its point of departure the “plain” sense of the text. I avoid the term “literal” here because it is frequently associated in modern discussion with the sense intended by the human author of a text or the sense that a text had for its initial readers.⁸ The plain sense is “the way the words run”⁹ for a community in the light of its techniques for following the argument of texts. In early Christian exegesis, then, it is the sense that a text had for a Christian of the period versed in ancient literary critical skills. We must keep in mind that this approach is inherently pluralistic. Some writers explicitly state that God providentially ordered the words so that they could be taken in different ways. For others the flexibility of the plain sense results from its speaking about realities that are beyond comprehension. As will be clear from the chapters on Origen and Augustine, Christian writers closely linked their sense of scripture’s status as simultaneously revealing God and yet revealing of mystery to their overall understandings of the nature of Christ as revealer. Christ revealed the Father (John 14:9), and yet he revealed the Father as the mysterious origin of all, whom we can only comprehend as our vision is slowly purified.

I suggest we divide early Christian reading strategies into two categories, the “grammatical” and the “figural.” These categories are not mutually exclusive: grammatical techniques are also used within figural practices. Grammatical techniques are, however, the fundamental reading tools, essential for the good reading of scripture. They have at their core skills learned at the hands of the grammatikos (in Greek) or grammaticus (in Latin).¹⁰ The grammatikos were broadly used in the education of students in their teenage years and laid the foundation for higher rhetorical studies. They provided students not only with techniques and skills for reading, but also with a sense of the appropriate order to be followed in applying the techniques and of the ends of textual interpretation. A student was taught to begin with textual and manuscript criticism, especially important in an age when texts were hand-copied. Then came practice in reading a text aloud. In an age without punctuation, this combination of literary-critical and oral techniques enabled students to attribute passages to the characters speaking in the text.

Next, students learned to identify historical and literary references and to apply appropriate medical, scientific, or philosophical knowledge to understand vocabulary or argumentation. This application of outside knowledge to the text formed the basis for Christian use of philosophical resources to explain key scriptural terms. Thus, for example, when John 1:18 speaks of the “only-begotten,” early Christians would have brought to bear a variety of tools from their culture to explain different senses of “begetting” and to isolate what they should understand when they affirmed that the Son was begotten. In the light of the close interaction between the words of the scriptural text and the panoply of non-Christian resources for thinking, I suggest that we think of scripture in the patristic and medieval period as the fundamental resource for the Christian imagination. This phrase recognizes the existence of a variety of resources for Christian thinkers and the necessity of negotiating between competing attractions, while allowing the plain sense of scripture to govern how extrascriptural resources were used and incorporated.¹¹ It is central to early and medieval theologies of scripture that scripture speaks to all people and in any century. There may well be terms or words that demand some research of us, but the plain sense of the text is intended by God to lead us toward appreciation for God’s mystery and love, however distant we are from the first century.

The final stage of textual analysis as taught by the grammatikos was judgment of a text, evaluating its moral content and drawing its lessons. This was both the capstone and the foundation of grammatical study. From the very beginning of their education Greek and Roman children learned to imitate and absorb moral maxims that they could find illustrated in classical texts. Christians used this reading technique not only when they tried to sum up the ethical teaching of scripture, but also when they came to insist that any particular passage of scripture should be read in the light of the “rule of faith”—a summary of the whole story of scripture. Early theologies of scripture thus also assume that scripture speaks as a whole. Any seeming inconsistencies between the different books may be due to our lack of understanding, or they may even be intended to stimulate our minds to greater effort. But scripture agrees with itself.

Alongside grammatical ...