I was thinking about how we might be able to look at patristic exegesis for ourselves today, particularly in deploying spiritual exegesis without it becoming simply arbitrary – and how, even when arbitrary, there can be some guardrails to ensure spiritual exegesis and its application are nonetheless helpful in the quest for theological and spiritual truth and participation in the life of God.
I have brainstormed six headings for this little investigation:
Regula fidei
Caritas
Ad litteram
Moralia/Theologia/Symbola – Consideratio and some contemplatio
Typologia
Allegoria
Regula Fidei
Any exegesis we make should be in line with the rule of faith, the canon of the faith, the regula fidei – encapsulated in the creeds today. This approach emerges from St. Athanasius of Alexandria in his Orations Against the Arians, where he argues that Arian exegesis of Proverbs 8 must be false because it undermines the rule of faith. In essence, he is following the logic of Irenaeus’ use of the rule of faith in its application not just to specific doctrines and dogmas but to the exegesis of the sacred text itself.
Now, this may seem to be putting the cart before the horse. After all, as the Articles of Religion state, the three creeds are proved by most excellent warrant of Scripture, not the other way around, right? Well, be that as it may, it is also the case that our earliest regulae fidei are themselves concurrent with discussions of what counts as Scripture, and it is fairly clear that the two questions coinhere. That is to say, if something goes contrary to the regula fidei, it can’t be Scripture, and vice versa.
Furthermore, if we take it as given that the creeds are proved by Scripture (and therefore true), a sound interpretation of Scripture will not run counter to the creeds
This principle of the rule of faith comes first because we are heirs to Scripture and members—embodied, living organs—of a wider body than just ourselves and our tools. Whatever else we do, it is done as part of the living community of the faithful.
Caritas
This principle is from Augustine, Confessions and On Christian Teaching (De Doctrina). The principle is that if our interpretation of a disputed/ambiguous passage promotes love and charity with our neighbour, then it cannot be “wrong” in a particular sense, for it is, at least, promoting the greatest Christian virtue.
The inverse is also true—if a reading of Scripture promotes un-love, then it is false.
Now, this position can be misused today, which is why it has to work in tandem with the rule of faith. Our culture today is confused about what counts as love—at times, simply saying, “Doing x is morally wrong,” can be considered un-love. At other times, speak truth in a crude way is considered “Love.” To my mind, neither of these is correct. The moral teaching of Scripture and tradition is not loving or unloving based upon how it makes people feel.
The very possibility of someone misusing Augustine’s teaching in this way is disturbing, to be sure, but also quite real.
Ad Litteram
The next principle is doing the work of reading the text, not simply ad litteram but also ad grammatica. That is to say, reading the texts in their historical-grammatical context. What is the genre? What does the story mean in terms of its historical meaning?
The great allegorists of the patristic era were engaged in this kind of reading as the foundation for their spiritual interpretations. Origen spends a lot of time looking at grammar and semantics to establish the meaning of the text. Bede finds lessons in the historical sense of Scripture. Gregory of Nyssa establishes the historical account of the Life of Moses before the allegory. Augustine shows us in his sermons as well as exhorting us in On Christian Teaching that we should establish the basic, historical meaning of the text first.
This means using the tools available to us—Augustine used Jerome’s On Hebrew Names, for example. The tools today are more abundant, but the task is essentially the same. It also means taking history seriously. While Origen is famous for those moments when he denies the historicity of the biblical story, those moments are rare. He almost always affirms the reality of the story in Scripture, the event as the sure foundation of the allegory.
Moralia/Theologia/Symbola – Consideratio and some contemplation
With these three tasks done, we can actually do a lot of teaching without having to move along into typology and allegory. These stages are what Evagrius would consider the lower levels of theoria or contemplatio, and what the last of the fathers, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, calls consideratio.
At this level, we are doing what most preachers do. What are the moral, theological, and symbolic meanings of this text? What does it show us about how to live? What does it teach us about who God is and what God has done? What symbolic resonances does it have with other parts of Scripture and the world around us?
This is the kind of preaching that St. John Chrysostom is most famous for, but all of the ancient preachers did it, whether they were also allegorists/typologists, or not. With this knowledge, we are raising our vision above just a bunch of historical data and facts to the grand overarching reality of the God who acts then and now, speaks then and now, is actus purus and here with us today. Sometimes we can miss doing this, thinking that a bunch of historical facts and grammatical data are exegesis.
As much as I like history – whether we’re thinking Mesopotamia or the Roman Empire, I enjoy learning this stuff – stopping with the historical data and not seeing God in it is to miss the whole point of sacred Scritpure. God speaks to the exegete and the congregation through Scripture, and the preacher discerns his voice in this way.
To do this well is a form of contemplatio, that inner seeing of the mind, or theoria, that the mystics promote. It is also St. Bernard’s consideratio, the idea that you look around you at the world and other humans and discern your right relationship to them (as opposed to using them as a ladder to God, which Bernard would think of as a level of contemplatio). All of this is good and beautiful and true, and we should never reject it.
We begin the ascent of Mt. Sinai.
Typologia
Typology is seeing something in the Old Testament fulfilled in the new, usually Christ. The technical terminology is used in 2 Peter of Noah’s Ark as a typology of baptism. This approach is used by Jesus himself of the bronze snake Moses raised up in the Desert. When used responsibly, typology sees Christ as the key to all the mysteries of the Old Testament but also acknowledges that sometimes a piece of wood is just a piece of wood.
This type of exegesis is popular with Presbyterians to this day. In the ancient church, it is prominent in the On Pascha by Melito of Sardis and informs a vast swathe of the hymns of St. Ephrem the Syrian, such as the Hymns on Paradise and the Hymns on the Incarnation, as well as finding manifestation in the hymns of St. Romanos who is a Greek recipient of St. Ephrem’s tradition.
Typology is a legitimate form of spiritual exegesis that Our Lord and the Apostles used. It helps bring together the full narrative of Scripture, intersecting with the person of Christ.
Allegoria
The finding and making of allegory (allegoresis) is the most controversial level of spiritual exegesis, although some find typology equally so. It was practised by Christians who were also what we often call “mystics” today – Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Bede. These “mystics” were also all similarly “ascetics.” This union of the mystical and the ascetical strikes me as significant.
Anyway, with the guardrails of the above all in place, I believe that even a modern preacher can start to prayerfully find allegories in Scripture, so long as the main goals of all exegesis and all preaching are kept in mind.
All of these have two goals:
1. Caritas
2. Divine participation
Caritas
Caritas is both method and goal in exegesis, as it is likewise in the contemplative tradition. I’ve already spoken of Augustine in this regard. In The Cloud of Unknowing, a 13th-century work strongly influenced by the Carthusians, there is a statement that if someone does not come away from contemplation or what we today might call “mystical experience” with a greater love for fellow human beings, that person has not truly encountered God in any meaningful way.
So also with the interpretation and application and preaching of Sacred Scripture. The goal is to fulfil the great commandments, to love God above all else, and our neighbour as ourselves. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Divine Participation
For the Fathers, from the Apostolic Fathers to Bede and even Bernard (to keep the old Cistercian view alive!), salvation is not merely getting out of Hell free. It’s not simply “going to heaven.” The redeemed life itself is not simply the life of a bad person whose spot in future glory is secured. That is to say, it’s not simply transactional: God accepts my faith and puts me into a right relationship with him.
Rather, God accepts my faith (which He himself has given), puts me into a right relationship with him, and transforms me through this relationship, since a right relationship with God means participating in divine life. This divine participation means growth in holiness and love for God and for neighbour. It means finding the disciplines easier as time goes on. And it is always preceded by God’s grace, surrounded by God’s grace, resting on God’s grace. God’s unmerited favour towards us empowers us to be united with him and filled with him.
This is the purpose of understanding Scripture for the individual Christian – to know God more and more. This is why St. Gregory of Nyssa saw the Life of Moses as an allegory of the whole Christian life – to empower Christians to climb Mt. Sinai and find God there in the cloud of unknowing. This is why Origen likened the church to the bride in Song of Songs. We are drawn to our divine love and find wholeness in his embrace. This is what Scripture is for – it is for empowering us to live the with-God life, transfigured by our encounter with Christ.
Christ, after all, is the God Word, and thus the words about Him have real power in our lives. We need good expositors to open them up and help us find Him.
This spiritual approach to scripture is likened by St. Maximus the Confessor, in his Ecclesiastical Mystagogy, to a different mountain from Sinai. For Maximus, it is Mt. Tabor, the mount of Transfiguration that is the goal of understanding Scripture. The bare words are taken away, and the divine reality of Christ shines forth from behind them.
Classically Christian 