This Lent I read Hans Boersma’s Scripture As Real Presence. This book is an exploration of the exegesis of the church Fathers, illuminating both their approach/method and the Scriptures at the same time in several chapters devoted to patristic treatment of specific passages. I’ll give a full review later, but one of the central arguments of the book is that spiritual exegesis is not willy-nilly but, in fact, follows a particular logic. That logic is that Christ is the key to the Scriptures. These reflections are my own, partly inspired by Boersma, partly taken from his book. I’m not sure where one begins and the other ends just now.
For Christians reading the Scriptures who take the authority of Scripture seriously, we have to realise that he is the substance of Old Testament teaching, scandalous as that may be for the historical-critical method. First, he himself says that he is the fulfilment of the Law — and the book of Hebrews go to great lengths to show us types, antitypes, and allegories of what that exactly means.
Second, the Gospels, especially Matthew, demonstrate Jesus fulfilling a variety of Old Testament prophecies, some of which, when read in historical or literary context wouldn’t look like they are pointing to the Messiah, some of which may seem, to modern eyes, like random Bible verses. Christ is everywhere present, permeating Scripture and salvation history as God the Word, present at creation and returning on the Day of the Lord. Moreover, Luke makes it plain that Jesus is the antitype of Moses through multiple intertexts with Deuteronomy.
Third, not only Hebrews, but St Paul and one of the letters of Peter, make use of allegory in reading the Old Testament. The realities they bring forth from the Scriptures are either christological or ecclesiological, somehow related to salvation.
The above is just to say: Scripture itself gives us licence to read the Old Testament according to the spiritual sense.
Martin Luther complained that allegorical readings of Scripture made the Scriptures into a wax nose. However, one of the things that Boersma points out is that for a great many passages of Scripture, various exegetes across the tradition make the same readings, a statement that can be borne out on even grander scale by reading Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis. Sometimes this is because they all read the same source. But sometimes it’s because they were all guided by the same conviction: Christ is the main content of Scripture.
They were also guided by the Rule of Faith, itself relatively consistent through time and space long before we started reciting the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in the liturgy in the later sixth century. Thus, no reading that went against the grain of the basic outlines of the faith was valid.
Guided by a similar practice of prayer, seeking how Christ was present in any given passage, ensuring that the Scriptures were interpreted within the framework of tradition, and driving for readings that built up the faithful, it is no surprise that they often said the same things. They also held in common the practice of what some call ‘intertextual’ reading — that is, one passage of Scripture can be interpreted by another, through their use of the same word or phrase or by referring to the same person or event or something similar.
I would call this ‘intratextual’, because the fathers would have considered this valid on the grounds that ultimately, sacred Scripture is one writing; just as the ancient grammarians reading Homer used Homer to interpret Homer, so likewise the fathers with Scripture (this is a concept I first heard from Lewis Ayres at a research seminar in Edinburgh; his paper title was, ‘The Grammarian and the Rise of Scripture’ — I do not know if it has been published).
They were also aware of polysemy, which I suspect Luther would hate (I could be wrong on that). St Gregory of Nyssa, observes Boersma, knows full well that each passage of Scripture is susceptible to multiple interpretations. Multiple valid interpretations, even. Thus, one chooses, with Augustine, charity, as well as seeking Christ and tradition. Thus, Christ could be met in multiple ways in the same passage.
Boersma does a better job at it than I am here, I can assure you. The book is, in the end, a strong critique of the historical-critical school of biblical scholarship and an argument in favour of the spiritual reading of Scripture. He explicitly says that we don’t have to reclaim all of the teachings of the fathers — just their approach to Scripture and method of exegesis.
It makes sense to me — but I believe in a transcendent God who chooses to make Himself intimately known in manifold ways, Scripture being one, second only to Incarnation.
Classically Christian 