What exegetes can learn from Origen

In contrast to what most people seem to think, the most fundamental category for Brevard Childs' Canonical Approach to Scripture was not a pristine, self-contained collection of writings called the "Bible." It was in fact the so-called "community of faith," the community to whom God has, does, and will reveal himself. Given this reality, the history of the development of the texts and traditions this community "treasured" (a loaded word ...) - the so-called "canonical process" - is just as important as the history of the texts' reception, the completed Bible's so-called Wirkungsgeschichte (German for "history of effects," or perhaps better in Childs' view: the "history of the coercion of the text"). Within this schema, the exegete will want to ask after the text's "function" within the "community of faith." The text is not an absolute entity, a resource of fixed propositions to be extracted and pieced together once and for all. It is rather a "vehicle" that fulfills a special role within the community, which itself fits within the broader eschatological plan of God's redemption.

Given this reality, what can exegetes in the 21st century learn from Origen? I only have time to post Childs' three conclusions, taken from his unpublished paper, "Allegory and Typology within Biblical Interpretation" (presented at St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, 2000):

1) First, Origen raised the basic issue of addressing the function of Scripture for the church which is to be a living and continuous vehicle of divine revelation.

2) Origen struggled to do justice both to the particularity of the literal sense of the text and also to its fuller, spiritual role as a divine pedagogy in hearing testimony to the salvific work of Jesus Christ to the church and world.

3) Origen raised the question as to the faithful role of the interpreter in the exercise of creative response in receiving and transmitting the truth of the Sacred Scriptures to a community of faith and practice.

He adds a quote by Frances Young, who he believes refelcts Origen's concerns, when she wrights:

Without a form of allegory that at least allows for analogy, the biblical text can only be an object of archaeological interest.

(p. 3 Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture)

Update: Check out this fun post from Bishop Alan. I particularly like the latin ditty from Nicolas of Lyra!

How could Augustine do that?

I've often wondered at the validity of Augustine's hermeneutical axiom that if a passage can be variously interpreted, the interpretation which encourages love of God and neighbour should be preferred.

Is that good exegesis? Can one just take an ethic of love as the norm for interpretation of these ancient texts? It sounds like a nice idea, but surely true interpretation involves hearing the text in and of itself, regardless of our ethical presuppositions?

I recently saw Augustines' move within the context of moves made by other church fathers and something went "click" in my head (as the Germans say). Irenaeus, for example, in his battle with the varying scriptural interpretations of the Gnostics, appealed to God's one redemptive purpose uniting both testaments as a context for interpretation. Origen spoke of multiple levels of meaning in Scripture in which the reader is led from external form to internal, spiritual sense, all as part of the divine pedagogy.

What unites these approaches is the conviction that the Scriptures are a witness to a unified theological reality. Though diverse in form, they are united by a single function, the kerygmatic, deictic one of "witnessing," pointing, or referring to this reality, the divine referent. Given ecclesial interpretation is an existential matter of profound importance, rather than an exercise in "dispassionate" curiosity about a dead religion, it makes sense that interpretation start from the position of the reality testified to. The movement is then circular, as we move from referent to text and back again, each pole enriching the other. That this is not necessarily a form of fideism (though in practice it often is) is testified to by the fact that it is only through the literal sense that spiritual was achieved. Just as the church confesses the risen Christ in the text of Jewish Scripture, the New is always testified to in terms of the old.

So coming back to Augustine, the validity of his hermeneutic should not be judged according to a theory of historical referentiality whereby a text only means what it's author intended, or what the literary framework constrains it to mean. This would arguably impose an alien category onto the text itself. Rather, Augustine should be judged by his ability to do justice to both the nature of the text and its true referent. If the texts really are prophetic, and if God really is a God of love, then I may have to rethink my views.

P.S. Check out Brant Pitre for a great quote from Origen on interpretation.