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From Exegesis to Heresy: the Educational Background in the Age of Monophysitism

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From Exegesis to Heresy: the Educational Background in the Age of Monophysitism From Exegesis to Heresy: The Educational Background in the Age of Monophysitism EVANGELOS CHRYSOS / ATHENS with the collaboration of ALEXANDER ALEXAKIS and NIKI TSIRONI To the memory of Father Alois Grillmeier and Professor Johannes Panagopoulos I. From Exegesis to Heresy Exegesis, that literally in Greek means 'a way out', i.e. explanation, is linked with early Christian thought, although its roots lay in rabbinic theology!. The explanation and contemplation of sacred texts was essential to the deeper and fuller understanding of the multiple layers of meaning that each one of them concealed under the surface of narration2• The list of events or names, often encountered in the Old Testament could hardly be meaningless and void of deeper theological meaning3• Within the context of early Christian thought exegesis was adopted in order not only to bring to the fore the deeper meaning of the Old and the New Testament, but also in an attempt to establish a unity between the two. The demonstration of continuity between the two was essential to Christian dogma, since it was upon this unity that the teaching of 1 For the development of Jewish Christian exegesis see the classic study by J. DANIELOU, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, vol. I, London-Philadelphia 1964, 87 ff. 2 Origen, who belonged to the Alexandrian School, was the first to introduce the idea of multiple layers of meaning with reference to the sacred texts. For Origen see A. JAKAB, Ecclesia Alexandrina, vol. I, Bern 2001,141-169. 3 See the general works: B. DE MARGERIE, Introduction a l'histoire de l'exegese, vol. I, Paris 1980; P. GORDAY, Principles of Patristic Exegesis, New York 1983; JOHANNES PANAGOPOULOS, 'H EQf.A.Tjvda tfi~ 'AyLa~ rQUCPfi~ Ot~v 'EXXATjoLa twv natEQWV, Ae~va 1991. IAHC 35 (2003~ 26 Evangelos Chrysos Christ was based. The Old Testament served as a pattern upon which Christian writing was modeled as well as a source of prestige through the invocation of tradition. Henceforth, all the events narrated in the Old Testament were considered as a prefiguration of what was to be included in the New Testament. The consent of the Virgin Mary to the divine will, the assumption of human flesh by Christ, his earthly life and his martyrdom on the cross for the salvation of mankind were all foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament4. The relation between the Old and the New Testament, or to put it in better terms, the justification of the New Testament through the Old, came to be called 'typology'. So, typology could be defined as the elaboration of the connection between typos and antitypos (typos being the Old Testament prefiguration and antitypos its counterpart or fulfillment in the New Testament) through the use of symbolism, an element that is evident in various aspects of Byzantine liturgy, ceremonial and iconography5. The term permeates the thought of early Christian thinkers as recorded in the surviving sources. The theological basis for this process is given by Christ himself in Matthew 5:17, where he says: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. In his gospel Matthew characteristically sacrifices the appearance of historicity for the model of the Old Testament in an attempt to establish that Jesus truly was the Messiah and the fulfillment of the law and that the Old and the New Testaments form part of a single revelation. The exact way in which the relationship was established was determined by the exegetical approach. Before entering in a short account of the exegetical schools that developed in Alexandria and Antioch, we should mention that con­ ventionally the golden age of biblical interpretation is considered to extend up to the 5th century. Nowadays, the study of later texts by modern scholars has seriously shaken this view supporting the continuous development of exegesis, at least up to the end of the Empire. The reason for considering that exegesis came to a halt by the 4 F. YOUNG, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, Cambridge 1997, 192-195 and passim. 5 M. VAN PARYS, Le symbolisme dans la liturgie Byzantine, in: J. RIES (ed.), Le symbolisme dans Ie culte des grands religions, Louvain-Ia-Neuve 1985,265-273. For the use of symbolism in iconography (that draws heavily on typology) see H. MAGUIRE, Earth and Ocean. The Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art, University Park P.A. 1987,5-15. .
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