The awesomeness of Andrew Louth ...

... consists, for me, in his ability to elucidate the canonical approach of Brevard Childs, and perhaps that of Karl Barth, as evidenced in my post on Barth's biblical exegesis. Interpretation of the Bible is all about the subject matter, and that has huge hermeneutical implications (see my The Bible and the Historian). I still have only access to Louth via my reading of Childs and the wonderful posts of Sister Macrina. Here is her latest goody which has just sent me reeling in ecstasy:

At [the heart of the patristic understanding of "mysticism" is] the understanding of Christ as the divine mysterion: an idea central to the epistles of the Apostle Paul. This secret is a secret that has been told; but despite that it remains a secret, because what has been declared cannot be simply grasped , since it is God’s secret, and God is beyond any human comprehension. The secret of the Gospel is the hidden meaning of the Scriptures: for Christians the whole of what they call the ‘Old Testament’ finds its true meaning in Christ. God’s plan for humankind to which the Scriptures bear witness is made plain in the Incarnation. And this is the most common context, as we have seen, for the use of the word mystikos: it refers therefore to the hidden meaning of the Scriptures, the true meaning that is revealed in Christ, a meaning that remains mysterious, for it is no simple message, but the life in Christ that is endless in its implications. Christians, however, share in the life of Christ pre-eminently through the sacraments - mysteria in Greek - and the word mystikos is used therefore in relation to the sacraments as a way of designating the hidden reality, encountered and shared through the sacraments. The final use of the word mystikos refers to the hidden reality of the life of baptized Christians: a reality which is, as St Paul put it, ‘hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3: 3). (205)

Bibliography for the figural reading of scripture

This is Christopher Seitz's recommended reading, printed on p. ix of his outstanding book, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture.

I've only read the article by Childs, which is exciting as ever, but I intend to work through the rest in due course. Any thoughts on the others?

J. Barr, "Allegory and Typology," in Old and New in Interpretation (Harper & Row, 1966), 103-48.
B.S. Childs, "Allegory and Typology within Biblical Interpretation" (unpublished paper delivered at the University of St Andrews, April 2000).
H. Crouzel, "The Interpretation of Scripture," in Origen (ET; T&T Clark, 1989).
R. Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (The Faith Press, 1961).
___, Broken Lights and Mended Lives (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986).
A. Louth, Discerning the Mystery (Oxford, 1983).
T.E. Pollard, "The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy," BJRL 41 (1958-9), 414-29.
M. Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (T&T Clark, 1994).
K. Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method (de Gruyter, 1986).
J.W. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third Century (SCM, 1985)
___, "Allegory," in Encyclodpedia of Early Christianity (2d ed.; Garland, 1998)
Frances Young, "Exegetical Method and Scriptural Proof: The Bible in Doctrinal Debate," Studia Patristica 29 (1989) 291-304.
___, "Allegory and the Ethics of Reading," in The Open Text. New Directions for Biblical Studies? (F. Watson, ed.; SPCK, 1993)
___, "Typology," in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Michael D. Goulder (S.E. Porter, P. Joyce, D.E. Orton, eds.; E.J. Brill, 1994) 29-48.
___, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

I note that R. N. Longnecker's Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Paternoster Press, 1992) isn't on the list. I randomly bought the book at the age of 19 (?) from a Doulos ship and still haven't got round to reading it. I hear he's critical of patristic interpretation ... Is that why he's excluded from this list?

Free audio books of key Christian thinkers (ancient ones)!

Sister Macrina, of the interesting patristic blog A Vow of Conversation (for a brief overview see here) has linked to an awesome audio resource: public domain audio books for people with Catholic tastes. Volumes of St John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Sienna, Thomas a Kempis, Origen, St. Athanasius, St. Ignatius of Antioch, Tertullian, Pope St. Gregory the Great ... The list goes on!

Such things are ideal for people like me who want to get their teeth into some raw material but don't have the time or energy to read books not related to their immediate concerns. For simple audio books I find I can listen while jogging in the mornings, but it's not quite the same as samba. If you happen to have a wife who insists on spending copious amounts of time on the beach, then they can also be a great way for giving your eyes a break, allowing you to take in information in a comfortable position (i.e. lying on your back instead of leaning on one arm or holding the book in the air, while being blinded by the sunlight and trying to ignore unwelcome sand stuck in various crevices), and while away the time.

I don't like beaches.

Ooh, a patristics carnival!

Up until now I've only ever been linked to, if at all, on biblical studies Carnivals (see Getz for the most recent contribution). I was delighted, however, to see that there is such a thing as a patristics carnival and that the extremely industrious blogger at The God Fearin' Forum has taken time to read my recent postings.

So thanks to Tim A. Troutman for his time and especially for the really quite exhaustive work he's done on all things patristic within the blogosphere. He divides the relevant blogging activiy into the following helpful subcategories:

Hall of Fame: My hand-picked recommendations.

Introduction to & Biographies of the Fathers. New to the fathers? This is the place to start.

General Patristics. Posts surrounded by asterisks are especially worth viewing and should have broad appeal.

General Patristics. Posts surrounded by asterisks are especially worth viewing and should have broad appeal.

Book Review: Books of interest regarding the early Church & patristic literature.

Apocryphal Corner

Patristic Obituaries

That really is a phenomenal and benefical amount of work.