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ON EARLY CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS One of the Liveliest Issues In ON EARLY CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS One of the liveliest issues in contemporary theological discussion has to do with the exegesis of the earlier Fathers—more accurately, of the earlier Christian writers. The bulk of significant contributions stems from French and Belgian pens; the shock of the controversy is felt most keenly by Alex­ andrian exegetes, notably Clement and Origen; the field of discussion is the doctrine of scriptural senses; and in practice the point of heaviest concentra­ tion is patristic theory and practice of the so-called spiritual sense of Scrip­ ture—the typology or allegorism of Christian antiquity. However, the ultimate significance of this specific contribution will be missed, unless one sets it in a broader frame of reference. The cataclysmic events of a decade and more have served to sharpen in many minds the fingering suspicion of a cleavage between Christian thought and Christian life, between theology and spirituality. The realization has had its repercus­ sions in several fields of research, more obviously perhaps in the intensifica­ tion of the liturgical renascence, in the movement towards a more vital contact with patristic thought, and in an effort to explore and exploit the possibilities inherent in a more profound penetration of the bonds that link the Old Testament with the New. It is remarkable how intimately the problem of spiritual interpretation is associated with much of the contemporary endeavor to endow liturgy, patristics, and exegesis with actuality. The intimacy is readily illustrated. On the one hand, the liturgy is a perpetual commentary on the mysteries of Christ by Old Testament texts; on the other, since the Bible is little un­ derstood today in consequence of our having lost the sense of the spiritual or liturgical interpretation, Louis Bouyer has undertaken to discover the genuine meaning of spiritual exegesis and to distinguish it from its parasitic forms.1 In the realm of hermeneutics it is his preoccupation with the Chris­ tian significance of history that occasions Richard Kehoe's suggestion that the spiritual sense of Scripture is not to be equated with, restricted to, the typical sense;2 that it is precisely in consequence of such equation that the 1 Louis Bouyer, "Liturgie et ex6gese spirituelle," La Maison-Dim, VII (1946), 27-50; cf. pp. 30-31: "Spiritual exegesis, which is supposed by the whole liturgy, is an exegesis dominated by two principles. The first principle is that the Bible is the Word of Go$, not a dead word imprisoned in the past, but a living word addressed immediately to the man of today taking part in the celebration of the liturgy. The second principle is that the Old Testament is illuminated by the New, just as the New only discloses its profundity once it is illumined by the Old. We must be still more specific: the bond between the two is determined by allegory, in the precise sense given to that term by antiquity." 2 Richard Kehoe, "The Spiritual Sense of Scripture," Blackfriars, XXVII (1946), 78 EARLY CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS 79 spiritual sense has not been exploited to capacity. Finally, the problem that is crucial in the contemporary concern with patristic exegesis is thus visual­ ized by Jean Danielou: "to recapture whatever fruitfulness the spiritual hermeneutic of the Fathers had for giving the Old Testament the true meaning which is its very own and which alone can make it a source of nourishment for our souls, while transforming this interpretation by all that the biblical science of the last century can bring to bear upon it."3 With what justification these efforts are projected, or with what measure of success, is not to our immediate purpose. The point made is that the cur­ rent search for the spiritual sense of Scripture—in its application to the liturgy, in research on the Fathers, or as a problem in hermeneutics—is ap­ parently, even for its warmest protagonists, but one aspect, if ever so fun­ damental, of a wider, a total re-orientation of Christian life. It must be situated within the framework of the Mystery of Christ. The skeletal body has been constructed with rare felicity by Danielou in an illuminating article on the symbolism of the baptismal rites: The Christian faith has but one object: the mystery of Christ dead and risen. But this one only mystery subsists under different modes. It is prefigured in the Old Testament; it is realized historically in the life of Christ on earth; it is con­ tained by way of mystery in the sacraments; it is lived mystically in souls; it is accomplished socially in the Church; it is consummated eschatologically in the kingdom of heaven. Thus the Christian has at his disposal, for the expression of that single reality, several registers, a symbolism of several dimensions. All Chris­ tian culture consists in grasping the bonds of union that exist between the Bible and liturgy, between the Gospel and eschatology, between the mystical life and the liturgy. The application of this method to Scripture is called spiritual exegesis. Applied to the liturgy, it is called mystagogy; this latter consists in reading in the rites the mystery of Christ and contemplating beneath the symbols the invisible 246-51; cf. p. 249: "If the Spiritual Sense is quite simply to be identified with the Typical Sense, it is wholly comprised in certain brilliant moments of biblical history; it is limited to these particular effects, however numerous they may be, of certain things standing out from the surface of the Literal meaning like isolated monuments, or studding the pages of Scripture like precious stones. Whereas it is rather as focal points in the history that they should be seen, for they gather up, bring to a sort of liturgical expression, a meaning that is at work in the whole movement of the Scriptures; and it is only in the strength of that whole movement that they themselves are significant." It is Fr. Kehoe's contention that the realities in which the spiritual sense is contained are not to be sought exclusively in the typical figures: "... the words of Scripture themselves go to form, or even alone provide a Res Biblica" (p. 250). 8 Jean Danielou, "Revue des revues: autour de Pex6gese spirituelle," Dieu vivant, VIII (1947), 124. 80 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES reality. Its great masters have been a Cyril of Jerusalem or an Ambrose in an­ tiquity; nearer our own time, a Cabasilas or an Olier... .4 The present bulletin will deal with several of the more significant articles (or sections of books) which have penetrated patristic exegesis within the past few years.5 We shall (1) present substantially the content of these in­ vestigations, and (2) attempt a tentative evaluation. i This survey will find a convenient springboard in an article that is not merely relevant but fundamental to the consideration of patristic exegesis, i.e., Henri de Lubac's historical study of the word "allegory" in exegetical usage.6 The investigation in question is launched with a quotation from Danielou: "What is proper to the Alexandrians is not typology but allego- rism."7 To Danielou, typology is specifically Christian, the common posses­ sion of all schools, sound and valid still for us; allegory is a legacy from Philo, a cultural fact at best, today outdated. De Lubac finds the distinc­ tion, as understood by Danielou, clear and exact, and helpful in discrimi­ nating between the permanent and the perishable in the spiritual exegesis 4 Jean Danielou, "Le Symbolisme des rites baptismaux," Dieu vivant, I (1945), 17. The article has been translated into German: "Die Symbolik des Taufritus," Liturgie und Monchtum, Laacher Hefte, III (1949), 45-68. It may be noted that the spiritual interpreta­ tion of Scripture is one of the means whereby Dieu vivant, through the collaboration of men of different confessions, proposes to realize its aim—the reviviscence of religious thought, the fathoming of Christ's doctrine, so as to permit us to struggle effectively in these apoca­ lyptic days against the Evil within us and without. Cf. "Liminaire," Dieu vivant, I (1945), 5-13; especially the plaint on p. 8: "... does not contemporary criticism, even when it is the work of Christian scholars, sometimes lose sight of the fact that, though there are sacred writers, the principal author of Scripture is still the Holy Spirit? Cut off from the totality of the symbolic and spiritual interpretation which a Bloy or a Claudel have re­ stored to honor by resurrecting the tradition of an Origen or an Augustine, the Bible ap­ pears most frequently as no more than a dogmatic or moral treatise, when it is something far more living, far more elevated: the reflection of the invisible world and, as Bloy has written, the 'very story of God.' " 5 Of definite import for this bulletin are several of the Introductions in the collection, Sources chretiennes (Paris: Editions du Cerf; Lyon: Editions de l'Abeille, 1942 ff.): I (on Gregory of Nyssa, by Jean Danielou), VII and XVI (on Origen, by Henri de Lubac), XIV (on Hippolytus, by Gustave Bardy), and XIX (on Hilary, by Jean Paul Brisson). A con­ venient summary of their respective contents may be found in "Current Theology: Sources chritiennes," THEOLOGICAL STUDIES, IX (1948), 252-55, 262-66, 278-82, 275-76, 287-89. 6 Henri de Lubac, " 'Typologie' et 'altegorisme,' " Recherches de science religieuse, XXXIV (1947), 180-226. 7 Jean Danielou, "Travers6e de la mer rouge et bapteme aux premiers siecles," Recherches de science religieuset XXXIII (1946), 416. EARLY CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS 81 of the Fathers. But he believes it has the disadvantage of being formulated from the very outset in a terminology neither scriptural nor truly tradi­ tional, with the consequent risk of confusing instead of clarifying the his­ torical problem in regard of this exegesis.
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