Not As The Scribes

Despite the obvious heterogeneity of the early Christian tradition, virtually all of the church fathers agreed on one basic feature of the Christian faith: the interpretation of Scripture is best pursued as a communally ruled and spiritual practice. As such, virtues such as humility and patience were understood as sine qua non for interpretation. Few of the fathers would have foddered to affirm Origen’s belief that to read scripture rightly, one must subject herself to the text (rather than subjecting the text to herself). Only then, might her “mind and feelings … be touched by a divine breath … [by] the language of God.”

For the fathers, submission to the Scripture was learned always only by subordinating one’s thoughts to the beliefs and praxes of the Church and by cultivating a life of spiritual discipline. The sum of the requisite ecclesial commitments necessary for scriptural interpretation were referred to as the ‘the rule of faith’ or ‘the rule of truth.’ Irenaeus’ writing speaks of such a rule as the ground for interpreting Scripture. Contra his opponents, Irenaeus denies that the Church has arbitrarily constructed its own interpretive schema and asserts that the Church’s so called ‘rule of truth’ is correct because it has been furnished by the Bible itself. Clement was no doubt agreeing with the principle put forth by Irenaeus when he wrote, “[the] consequence of not learning the mysteries of ecclesiastical knowledge … [results in] reading superficially … [and] dismiss[ing] the Scriptures.” So also Augustine: “the rule of faith should be consulted as it is found in the more open places of the scriptures and in the authority of the church.”

Aside from ecclesial participation in its communal forms, a life deeply nurtured by certain personal spiritual practices was also viewed as necessary for the right reading of scripture For Augustine, this meant that the interpreter had to be deeply attuned to Christian charity, to the love of God and neighbor, if she was to see the meaning of Scripture. Athanasius’ famous biography of Antony makes similar claims. According to Athanasius, it was Antony’s devotion to God, not his intellectual acuity that enabled him to identify certain heretics’ doctrines as “worse than serpents poison.” It was Origen though who really developed a comprehensive view of the relationship between one’s life and one’s ability to interpret scripture. To Origen’s thinking, God invested the whole of creation with the capacity to occasion suffering so that the Christian would strive more ardently for spiritual fulfillment. Naturally, the interpretation of scripture followed a similar “ascetic logic.” In the words of R.R. Reno and John O’Keefe, Origen believed that,
Reading is difficult because God wants us to suffer the dry deserts of incomprehension as so many days of interpretive fasting. Thus disciplined by the body of scripture, our vision is sanctified and prepared for us to enter in the narrow footpath.

I would now like to suggest that there is much that modern interpreters might learn from the general theses outlined in the forgoing summary. A fuller treatment would require an examination of possible analogies between the ancient and contemporary situation and a preliminary critique of certain species of modern historical-criticism. Here, I will limit my suggestions to constructive comments only.

The fathers’ commitment to ‘the rule of faith’ and their commitment to spiritual discipline are rife with prospects for the rehabilitation and promulgation of such a reading. The material content of ‘the rule of faith’ will admittedly differ amongst ecclesial traditions. But in every case, one thing that the churches must strive to affirm is that Jesus Christ is the final and full revelation of the triune God and that as such Jesus Christ is sovereign over all things—for “He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:1-3). As the king and Lord of creation, God is able to accomplish his will through ordinary means. Naturally, it is not beyond God’s power to ensure that Scripture and God’s self-communication share an adequate measure of cognitive identity. The Bible should therefore be understood not merely as a record of God’s redemptive acts but as itself one of God’s redemptive acts, having its own part to play in redemptive history. Concretely, God’s self-revelatory triune activity in the formation of the Bible consists in the fact that the Holy Spirit has demonstrated the mutual love of the Father and the Son by creating a dwelling place for their love in the Bible wherein the faithful are themselves initiated into the divine life.

The necessity for spiritual formation must also be reintegrated as a central component of reading Scripture rightly. In a word, this means that one must be taught through prayer and devotion to read Scripture in the same spirit in which it is written. This spirit is summed up in the command of our Lord Jesus: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12). As Christians we are called to charity and respect towards others; likewise by extension we are called to listen to the biblical text with charity and respect—to carefully attend to its message on its own terms. By reckoning with the Bible’s own claim to be Holy Scripture, we are prepared to ponder afresh the poet’s maxim, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” To put it this way should not suggest that the Bible is not patient of historical-critical inquiry. Rather, what I am suggesting is that like the fathers, we must aim to enmesh the precision of punctilliar textual analysis with a spiritually-aesthetic awareness of the whole that is made obvious only to the “pure in heart” and “humble in spirit”—we must train ourselves to see with Goethe’s “eye of reverence, the poetic-religious eye, the ancient sense of the cosmos.” For many, the possibility of “seeing” Scripture in this way no doubt appears daunting if not impossible. But let no one despair, for the Lord has told us, “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matt. 21:22).