One Catholic Church?

James Davison Hunter says that, “…Christianity in North America…is a weak culture; weak insofar as it is fragmented in it’s core beliefs and organization, without a coherent collective identity and mission, and often divided within itself, often with unabated hostility.”

My question: “what’s the solution?”

Defending Christendom

There’s a lot in Peter Leithart’s interview with Jason Hood at the Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology’s website, so I won’t try to summarize it all.  Leithart is, as he says, “an advocate of Christendom” who believes that Christians are to tell rulers that they must “kiss the Son” (Psalm 2) and obey the risen Lord of the universe, Jesus Christ.

Here are a couple of excerpts, but I’d really suggest that you take 15 minutes or so to read the whole thing if this topic interests you:

Political theology is not some specialized branch of theology, but a dimension of all theology.  Politics is not simply about passing this legislation or electing that candidate.  Politics addresses questions about the distribution of power, and more broadly questions about the shape and future of a group.  Theology cannot help but address those questions, and do it all the time.  The Bible certainly deals with political questions like this.

So, even when I am not doing political theology, I am doing political theology.  Let me given a couple of examples of what I mean.  Ecclesiology has been a major focus of my work, and, as I see it, that bumps directly up against political questions.  The intimate connection between ecclesiology and politics has been obscured in modernity because the church has been marginalized and has allowed itself to be transformed into a sociologically invisible and politically innocuous religious group.  Scripture, by contrast, treats the church as a political entity in itself, each individual congregation as an outpost of the heavenly empire of a heavenly Emperor.   That means that the church and its claims about Jesus, sin, and salvation are political claims, necessarily.

Secondly,

7.  Some political theologians note that Daniel simultaneously models service, critique, and a message of divine judgment.  Are all three of these to be implemented by believers?  Are they postures we should always exhibit, or are they more appropriate at some times than others?

PL:  I do think that the mix of these three postures varies depending on the political circumstances, and depending on the person involved.   And Scripture indicates that men and women can work faithfully even under the worst of rulers – think of Obadiah during the days of Ahab.  In thinking through this, my thoughts again gravitate to ecclesiological issues.  Daniel was able to serve, but also maintain a critical distance, because he was a member of another community, of Israel.  It seems that Christians today have difficulty maintaining that complex stance, or doing that complicated dance, because we don’t have an alternative home.  When Christians enter political life deeply conscious of the fact that they are members of the church, Christians first and foremost, that gives them a place to stand when they critique and when they serve.

I noticed significant overlap between the eccelesiology of Leithart and that of James Davison Hunter in To Change the World.  Both long for a church that is a true alternate community and that forms its members so that they can engage with society in a way that pleases God.  A big difference, of course, is Leithart’s postmillenial confidence that the kingdom will triumph in history, while Hunter has more of a two kingdoms view.

To see a bit of where Leithart is coming from eschatologically, check out his sketch of “the long view.”  The consideration of just war and total war that he discusses can be found here.

Hat tip: Justin Taylor

Women in the Reformation

Justin Holcomb, writing at The Resurgence blog, writes short descriptions of the lives of several women that God used in the 16th century.  Here was one that I found particularly interesting:

Olimpia Fulvia Morata was an Italian scholar born in Ferrera as the oldest child of a humanist scholar, who, after being forced to flee his city to northern Italy, lectured on the teachings of Calvin and Luther. Olimpia flourished in her studies, especially in Latin and Greek, exhibiting impeccable scholarship. She wrote Latin dialogues, Greek poems, and letters to both scholars (in Latin) and less educated women (in Italian). In her “Dialogue between Theophilia and Philotima,” she encouraged those who feared that their gross sins obstructed their way to God:

Don’t be afraid … No odor of sinners can be so foul that its force cannot be broken and weakened by the sweetest odor that flows from the death of Christ, which alone God can perfume. Therefore seek Christ.

Hat tip: Justin Taylor

Calvin to Cranmer on Church Unity

Thomas Cranmer desired a general council of the Protestant churches to unite them in confession and form a western, Protestant Church. Oh that it would have happened! God in his providence did not see fit for that to occur. But here is Calvin’s response to Cranmer on the subject:

I know moreover, that your purpose is not confined to England alone; but, at the same moment, you consult the benefit of all the world. The generous disposition and uncommon piety of his Majesty, the king, are justly to be admired, as he is please to favor this holy purpose of holding such a council, and offers a place for its session in his kingdom. I wish it might be effected, that learned and stable men, from the principal churches, might assemble in some place, and, after discussing with care each article of faith, deliver to posterity, from their general opinion of them all, the clear doctrines of the Scriptures. It is to be numbered among the evils of our day, that the churches are so divided one from another, that there is scarcely any friendly intercourse strengthened between us; much less does that holy communion of the members of Christ flourish, which all profess with the mouth, but few sincerely regard in the heart. But if the principal teachers conduct themselves more coldly than they ought, it is principally the fault of the princes who, involved in their secular concerns, neglect the prosperity and purity of the church; or each one, contented with his own security, is indifferent to the welfare of others. Thus it comes to pass, that the members being divided, the body of the church lies disabled.
Respecting myself, if it should appear that I could render any service, I should with pleasure cross ten seas, if necessary, to accomplish that object. Even if the benefit of the kingdom of England only was to be consulted, it would furnish a reason sufficiently powerful with me. But as in the council proposed, the object is to obtain the firm and united agreement of learned men to the sound rule of Scripture, by which churches now divided may be united with each other, I think it would be a crime in me to spare any labor or trouble to effect it. But I expect my slender ability to accomplish this will furnish me with sufficient excuse. If I aid that object by my prayers, which will be undertaken by others, I shall discharge my part of the business. Melancthon is so far from me, that our letters cannot be exchanged in a short time. Bullinger has perhaps answered you before this. I wish my ability was equal to the ardency of my desires. But what I at first declined, as unable to accomplish, I perceive the very necessity of the business now compels me to attempt. I not only exhort you, but I conjure you, to proceed, until something shall be effected, if not every thing you could wish.

Perhaps we will see more unity built from the confusion of our day, although it now seems doubtful.

Book Review of Daniel Hyde’s “Welcome to a Reformed Church”

Hyde, Daniel R.. Welcome to a Reformed Church: A Guide for Pilgrims. Orlando, Fla.: Reformation Trust Pub., 2010. Print.

Reformation Trust provided this copy for a honest review on my part, so here it is:

Rev. Hyde offers readers a primer on the history and doctrine of the Reformed Church, focusing mainly on the 3 Forms of Unity (Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, and Canons of Dordt).

The Good:

Although an Evangelical Baptist, I am indebted to the 3 forms more than any other confession, catechism, or doctrinal formulation. I welcome with joy this brief book which introduces many to a heritage that is little-known in the broader American Evangelical Church.

Rev. Hyde takes great care to represent Reformed theology as a religion of the heart and mind. Hyde states,

“God has established an inseparable connection between truth and godliness. If truth remains in our heads but does not proceed to dwell in our hearts and find expression in our conduct, then we are no different, James says, than the devils (James 2:18-19).”

 Many have criticized Reformed theology as being arrogant and cerebral. While there are some who may unfortunately represent the Reformed heritage in such a way, this certainly is unrepresentative of the whole. Hyde commends Scottish Presbyterian John “Rabbi” Duncan’s quote, “I’m first a Christian, next a Catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth a Paedobaptist and finally a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse the order.” Hyde reminds us that we are first Christians, and secondly catholics. Catholic in the sense that we affirm solidarity with the church behind us, the church around us, and the church ahead of us.

Hyde also reminds us that Reformed theology highlights the importance of Sanctification. While many may first think of God’s sovereignty and Justification as key Reformed doctrines, the Reformers cared just as much about holy living. Hyde notes:

“Our Reformed fathers focused heavily on holy living. The volume of teachings they devoted to sanctification in their confessions and catechisms is striking. The Heidelberg Catechism devotes forty-four of its 129 questions and answers, more than one-third of its material, to sanctification, while the Westminster Larger Catechism devotes an impressive eighty-two of 196 questions and answers (42 percent) to this subject. By this emphasis, the Reformed churches declared that Calvinism is no mere religion of “head knowledge,” and we cannot live as if it makes us the “frozen chosen,” as we are sometimes derisively known. It is a religion of head and heart.”

The last emphasis that I found helpful was Hyde’s treatment of the Church and the centrality of the means of grace through Word and Sacraments. He reminds us that,

“It is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then, that creates the people of God. The gospel not only saves us from our sins and the wrath of God, it places us in vital union with Jesus Christ and other Christians. Thus, the church is the fruit of the gospel; it is not our own creation, but a creation of the triune God of grace.”

The Bad:

The New Birth in a Wicked World: Cyprian’s “Letter to Donatus”

I recently read Justin Taylor’s brief interview with Michael Haykin from Southern Seminary.  Haykin, whose book on the Church Fathers is forthcoming, recommended Cyprian’s “Letter to Donatus.” I finally read it in full today and found it quite remarkable.  According to short introduction to the document, Cyprian had promised Donatus to write to him about spiritual matters.  Cyprian expresses his doubt that he is up to the task, but offers “things, not clever but weighty, words, not decked up to charm a popular audience with cultivated rhetoric, but simple and fitted by their unvarnished truthfulness for the proclamation of the divine mercy.”  He follows with beautiful description of his marvel at the new birth:

While I was still lying in darkness and gloomy night, wavering hither and there, tossed about on the foam of this boastful age, and uncertain of my wandering steps, knowing nothing of my real life, and remote from truth and light, I used to regard it as a difficult matter, and especially as difficult in respect of my character at that time, that a man should be capable of being born again — a truth which the divine mercy had announced for my salvation—and that a man quickened to a new life in the layer of saving water should be able to put off what he had previously been; and, although retaining all his bodily structure, should be himself changed in heart and soul. How, said I, is such a conversion possible, that there should be a sudden and rapid divestment of all which, either innate in us has hardened in the corruption of our material nature, or acquired by us has become inveterate by long accustomed use? These things have become deeply and radically engrained within us. When does he learn thrift who has been used to liberal banquets and sumptuous feasts? And he who has been glittering in gold and purple, and has been celebrated for his costly attire, when does he reduce himself to ordinary and simple clothing? One who has felt the charm of the fasces and of civic honours shrinks from becoming a mere private and inglorious citizen. The man who is attended by crowds of clients, and dignified by the numerous association of an officious train, regards it as a punishment when he is alone. It is inevitable, as it ever has been, that the love of wine should entice, pride inflate, anger inflame, covetousness disquiet, cruelty stimulate, ambition delight, lust hasten to ruin, with allurements that will not let go their hold.

Reformation Day 2010

I liked Peter Leithart’s quotation and explication of Martin Bucer’s words.   This was his short post:

Bucer wrote, “Because by faith we embrace this righteousness and benevolence of God, it shines in us, and thus he imparts himself, so that also we, too, are driven by some zeal for righteousness.”

He’s got just about everything you’d want there: Righteousness comes by faith; righteousness embraced by faith is not outside us but also “shines in us”; but this shining of God’s righteousness in us is God Himself imparted to us, not some grace-stuff or habitus; and when we embrace the righteousness of God and receive God the Righteous One Himself, we are impelled to live in and for righteousness.  One could hardly do better.

Leithart also wrote a Reformation Day column for First Things, considering the meaning of the Protestant teaching of the “priesthood of all believers.”  Leithart opposes Luther’s understanding of this doctrine with our modern state of affairs in which “the priesthood of the faithful in both its Protestant and Catholic forms has been corroded by fusion with modern individualism.”  Luther saw it differently:

Priestly ministry was ministry within and to the church. To be a priest means to be a priest for someone. “The fact that we are all priests and kings means that each of us Christians may go before God and intercede for the other,” he wrote in a preface to the Psalter. “If I notice that you have no faith or a weak faith, I can ask God to give you a strong faith.” Timothy George captures Luther’s viewpoint in one sentence: “Every Christian is someone else’s priest, and we are all priests to one another” (emphasis added).

But for Luther, the priesthood of believers was not an excuse to abandon the church, but rather described the shape of life in communion with the body of Christ and the family of faith. It was not a call to individualism, but summoned individuals to serve God, others, and the common good of the church. It did not free the believer from obedience to authority or leave him free to do as he thought best….

In the hands of some Protestants, “priesthood of believers” became an anti-ecclesial slogan, a “get out of church free” card. Understood in its original biblical and Reformation sense, the priesthood of believers is quite the opposite. It is not a solvent of ecclesial Christianity but an affirmation of churchly piety and the foundation of a thoroughly catholic church practice. Five hundred years after the event, this Reformation slogan may be even more relevant than it was when Luther first shouted it out from Wittenberg.

Finally, the Desiring God blog re-posted David Mathis’ reflection on the first of Luther’s 95 Theses (“When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”) and his last words (“We are beggars! This is true.”).

I’m grateful for the Reformers, saddened by the numerous ongoing divisions in the church that have multiplied since the Reformation, and confident that Christ will someday “present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27 ESV).

Book review: “Eccentric Culture,” by Rémi Brague

Eccentric Culture is a brief book (less than 200 pages), but dense and challenging.  It also has a fairly simple thesis: European culture is essentially Roman.  Rather than a combination of Jewish and Greek culture alone, with the Romans merely passing these elements on (I posted about Brague’s critique of that attitude here), European culture displays the Roman attitude of “secondarity.”  Secondarity is the Roman recognition that the best culture came from outside themselves, from the Greeks.  Thus, the Romans knew that there was an ideal to strive for (Greek culture) and a danger into which they could fall (barbarism).  In a similar way, he believes, Christians recognized their secondarity to the Jews.

He doesn’t give a lot of examples of the Roman appropriation of Greek culture, probably because it’s well-established that the Romans saw the Greeks as having a superior literary culture.  I wish that he had included more to establish his particular interpretation of it, but I imagine that if I were better versed in classical studies I wouldn’t need the examples.  He goes into more depth on what he calls “religious Romanity,” the parallel between Romans’ and Christians’ relations to the Greeks and Jews.  Here is one passage that explains the Romanity of Christianity, which touches on many of the important themes of the book:

In this way, it was religious secondarity that prevented all culture inherited from Christianity, as is the case with Europe, from considering itself as its own source.  The refusal of Marcionism is thus, perhaps, the founding event of the history of Europe as a civilization, in that it furnished the matrix of the European relationship to the past and anchored it at the highest possible level.  It may be then Saint Irenaeus, from his polemics against Marcionism [named for the heretic Marcion who sought to eliminate the Old Testament and edit the New in the second century] and his affirmation of the identity of the God of the Old Testament with that of the New, is not only one of the Fathers of the Church, but also one of the Fathers of Europe.  Conversely, the withdrawal of Europe into its own culture, understood as being only one culture among others, would be something like cultural Marcionism.

In the religious domain as in the cultural domain, Europe had the same relation to what preceded it: it did not tear itself from the past, nor did it reject it.  Europe did not pretend, as to profane culture, to have absorbed in itself everything that Hellenism contained or, in religion, everything that the Old Testament contained –  in such a way that one could throw away the empty shell.  At the most, what Christianity claims to possess (the term is not even right) is the key permitting the interpretation of that to which the Old Covenant tended.  It claims that the recapitulation of past history is given in the event of the Christ, the plenitude of the divinity (Colossians 2:9).  But the exploration of the riches that are contained there, and their refractions in the sainthood of the Church, is an infinite task, which requires nothing less than all of history to come. (111)

This passage gives you a good idea of Brague’s concept of secondarity.  He contrasts it with Byzantine and Islamic approaches to Greek culture.  The Byzantines believed that Greek culture was theirs and Muslims often translated and then discarded the original texts (thus, his reference to “throw[ing] away the empty shell” in the above passage).  Neither of these cultures, Brague believes, could have the dynamism of European culture, which constantly found renewal through the method of looking to a past that it saw as outside itself.  This allowed for many European renaissances, renewed interests in the past (if you’re familiar with the early modern Italian Renaissance, Brague’s paradigm fits with the humanists’ attitude of reawakening ancient values in an barbaric age).  Brague also notes the importance of the classical educational tradition, in that educated people needed to learn Greek and Latin to encounter the classics.  Thus, European culture avoided resting on its laurels.  This is where the term “eccentric culture” comes in: European culture has an “eccentric identity,” finding its center outside itself.  Thus, European culture does not have a defined “content” that can be listed; rather “the content of Europe” is an attitude: “to be a container, open to the universal.” (146)  Thus he even disputes the term “Eurocentric,” saying that Europe is not centered on itself, but outside itself.

In the last chapter, Brague asks if Europe still displays this “Romanity.”  He believes that modern European culture runs the risk of “cultural Marcionism,” a cutting off and denial of the outside.  Writing in the early 1990s, Brague believed that Europe was retreating into itself, content to say that European culture was only for Europeans rather than relevant for the world and rather than inviting non-Europeans to adopt the European attitude that finds the center outside one’s own culture.

Willing to Believe (Part 2)

In Chapters one and two of Willing to Believe we looked at the opposing views of Pelagius and Augustine. Pelagius believed that we are capable of obedience while Augustine said we were not. It all seemed to center around this issue of original sin and it’s affects on humanity.

Book review, “How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind,” by Thomas Oden

Through his work as editor of Intervarsity Press’ forays into making ancient Christian commentary more accessible to modern people, Thomas Oden became much more aware of early African Christians’ contributions to the faith.  He became convinced that early African Christianity was the “seedbed” for European Christianity, reversing the popular idea of Christianity as a Western faith that has just come to Africa recently.  This book, then, is a call for intensified research into ancient African Christianity especially by African scholars.  He believes that it will provide a more solid base for African Christian identity than is often claimed by African Christians now.

He believes that Africa shaped the Christian mind in several ways:

• the library of Alexandria provided the genesis of the idea of the university
• influential ancient Biblical exegetes like Origen and Cyril of Alexandria
• some of the great contributors in the development of orthodox doctrine, like Tertullian, Athanasius, and Augustine
• the churchwide councils built on African church practices of assembling bishops
• monasticism spread from Africa
• the first Christian Neoplatonists and rhetoricians, like Lactantius, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine, came from Africa

Oden describes each of these briefly in Chapter 3, and believes that each (along with many other ways that Africa influenced Christianity) needs further research.  My first thought was that much of what he discussed was accomplished in the Greco-Roman context, but Oden argues that many of the African Christians, even if Greco-Roman in name, were shaped by the indigenous cultures of the Nile and Medjerda river valleys.  He rejects the differentiation between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa that many Africans and non-Africans make, and writes that early African Christianity can provide a common identity for African Christians and can be a source of healthy self-respect in that it refutes the Eurocentric idea that anything worthwhile in African culture came from Europe.

The Reformation and State Power

Peter Leithart quotes historians Luther Peterson and R. Po-Chia Hsia’s contentions that the desire for confessional uniformity (whether Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist) in the 16th and 17th centuries helps to explain “he transformation of medieval feudal monarchies into modern states, in particular how the new states changed their inhabitants into disciplined, obedience and united subjects” (Peterson).

His first paragraph of quotation and summary from Hsia puts confessional conformity in context:

“The process of political centralization, discernible in the fifteenth century – the adoption of Roman Law, the rise of an academic jurist class, the growth of bureaucracies, and the reduction of local, particularist privileges – received a tremendous boost after 1550.  Conformity required coercion.  Church and state formed an inextricable matrix of power for enforcing discipline and confessionalism.  The history of confessionalization in early modern Germany is, in many ways,the history of the territorial state.”  Confessionalization was largely sponsored by the state, which “usually played a more crucial role than the clergy in determining the course of confessionalization. . . . Having become the head of their territorial churches, princes understood the imposition of confessional conformity both as an extension of their secular authority and as the implementation of God’s work.”

At the same time, this was not an instantaneous process.  As Leithart notes (presumably from Hsia’s work), “Even in 1624, in the region around Osnabruck, most of the clergy could not be easily categorized as Lutheran or Catholic.”

The Barbarian Conversion

Richard Fletcher [The Barbarian Conversion] notes that ancient Christendom was not monolithic:

In terms of custom and practice there were many churches in sixth- and seventh-century Europe, not One Church. Christendom was many-mansioned.

Fletcher talks about the motif of exile in the monastic expansion. Christians, following the writing of Augustine, saw themselves as exiles and pilgrims and then the monastics took this exile literally. They often left their homeland and people to found monastic missions amongst others. Fletcher says:

Pilgrimage, in the sense of ascetic renunciation of homeland and kinsfolk, is of special importance in our understanding of the phenomenon of conversion in the early Middle Ages. Pilgrimage merged insensibly into mission. The monasteries that were founded by the exiled holy men had something of the character of mission stations. It was not that they were established primarily among pagans; indeed, they could not have been, dependent as they were on wealthy patrons, necessarily Christian…for their endowments…But their monastic communities were situated on the margins of Christendom, and had what might be called “diffusive potential” among nearby laity who were Christian only in the most nominal of senses.

It seems to me that we could apply this same method to the diffusion of the faith in our day. Establishing tightly-focused communities at the margins of our society, for example in rural areas and urban areas that aren’t glamorous. Communities devoted to Biblical saturation, mission and learning which could aim to gradually convert the surrounding area.

The Political Undercurrents of the Reformation

Peter Leithart passes on an observation from William Cavanaugh’s Theopolitical Imagination: the Reformation took hold in kingdoms where unresolved tensions remained between the monarchy and the papacy.  In France and Spain, the papacy had ceded powers to the kings, and thus the monarchies lacked a critical incentive to support a break with the church.  England, Scandinavian kingdoms, and some of the German states supported the Reformation, as did some French nobles who resisted the French king’s quest to centralize powers.  I had not thought about those differences before.

I’ve found the political context of the Reformation to be  just as interesting as, although less edifying than, the theological disputes.  With the evolution of centralized monarchies in Europe from the 1000s to the 1600s, the Reformation came at a time of transition for the kingdoms of Europe, as power was shifting toward kings and the central state and away from the nobles and papacy.  Some kingdoms, like the Holy Roman Empire, never were able to make that transition.  So the ambitions of kings, princes, and nobles (as well as nobles’ and peasants’ desires to protect their traditional rights) combined with doctrinal issues and discontent with church power and corruption to shake up all of Western Christendom.

Robert Louis Wilken lecture on the Church Fathers and Scripture

Wheaton College, just a bit over an hour from my home, has inaugurated the new Center for Early Christian Studies.  On October 29, Robert Louis Wilken of the University of Virginia gave the inaugural lecture, “Going Deeper into the Bible:  The Church Fathers as Interpreters.”  Although I wasn’t able to go, I listened to the lecture last week.  You can do the same by clicking on the above link for the CECS.

Wilken tried to show how the Church Fathers interpreted Scripture.  David Neff, Editor-in-Chief of the Christianity Today Media Group, attended the lecture and gave a summary of Wilken’s argument and the example that he used about the interpretation of Isaiah 6:

Evangelicals have long taught that the meaning of Scripture is open to every Spirit-led reader, and that biblical interpretation must not be held hostage by church tradition. Isn’t the Bible intelligible without the Fathers?Yes, of course, in a sense it is. But the Fathers help us go more deeply into the Bible, Wilken said. They teach us to read it more slowly and enter it more deeply. He illustrated this by looking at several passages through their eyes, showing the way in which they treated the Bible as a single, coherent book in which difficult passages are illuminated by other passages. Indeed, those other texts raise the questions that lead us deeper.

Thus Isaiah‘s report in chapter 6 that the prophet “saw God” is clearly in tension with passages (such as John 1:18) that suggest no human has seen, or even can see, God. The key, however, is found in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” By mining the notions in that passage, the Fathers were able, not only to explain in what sense some might “see God,” but also to point the way toward the ideal Christian life. Thus to see God is to be united to him through purity of life. Understand, said Wilken, that the Bible is not primarily about the head; it is about the heart.

The example of Isaiah is about halfway through the MP3 of the lecture.  I’d recommend listening to Wilken explain it too.  Neff summarizes Wilken’s points about the way that the Church Fathers read scripture as follows:

1. The New Testament authors clearly applied Old Testament texts in ways that departed seriously from the plain, surface meaning of the text. When Paul cites Psalm 19 in Romans 10 (“their voice is gone out into all the world”), he applies the Psalmist’s statement about the heavens to the preaching of the apostles. This runs against the plain meaning, said Wilken.

2. The books of Scripture do not bear their own significance. They must be united to something greater, which is Christ. Thus Paul interprets the creation of man and woman as a great mystery, which is Christ and the church; and he interprets the water-giving rock in the Sinai desert as Christ.

3. Typically, such creative renderings of the Bible are focused on the Old Testament. That is because the Old Testament text signifies Christ, but the New Testament text does not signify another Christ. It requires no allegory or analogy to reveal the Incarnate Word.

4. The Fathers also understood the interpretation of Scripture to require the reader’s participation in the spiritual reality of the text. Thus it is not enough to say that Christ was crucified. We must also say, “I am crucified with Christ,” and thus also I am raised with Christ.

It was a very worthwhile lecture, so if you’re interested in this topic but haven’t encountered the way that the Church Fathers read the Bible, I’d recommend listening to the whole thing.  There’s a conference coming up in March at the CECS which I’m very excited about.