THE INTERPRETIVE METHODS OF THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
The interpretation of the patristic period of the early Christian centuries tended to fall into three main schools: the Alexandrian, the Antiochian, and the Western.
Alexandrian
The first great teacher of the Alexandrian school was Titus Flavius Clement. Clement adopted the allegorical method of Philo and propounded the principle that all Scripture must be understood allegorically. “For many reasons,” he argued, “the Scriptures hide the sense … wherefore the holy mysteries of the prophecies are veiled in parables” (Miscellanies 6.15). Elsewhere, he taught, “Almost the whole of Scripture is expressed in enigmas” (Stromata 6124.5–6). The motto of the Alexandrian School was, “Unless you believe, you will not understand” (a mistranslation and misapplication of Isa. 7:9 in the Septuagint).
Clement’s disciple Origen (ca. A.D. 185–253/54), was probably the greatest theologian of his day. He is more to be honored for his prodigious work in the area of textual criticism than for his work in biblical interpretation. Origen also followed Philo’s allegorical method, but he gave it a biblical basis and declared that Scripture had a threefold sense: the corporeal or fleshly, the psychical, and the spiritual. He outlines these senses in On First Principles, the first technical treatise on Christian hermeneutical theory:
Indeed, it seems to us that the correct method of approaching the Scriptures and grasping their sense is the following, taking it from the texts themselves. In the Proverbs of Solomon we find this kind of directive concerning divine doctrines in Scripture: “And you, write down those things threefold in your counsel and wisdom that you may reply with words of truth to those who ask you [so the Septuagint and Latin of Prov. 22:20–21]. This means, one should inscribe on one’s soul the intentions of the holy literature in a threefold manner; the simpler person might be edified by the flesh of Scripture, as it were (flesh is our designation for the obvious understanding), the somewhat more advanced by its soul, as it were; but the person who is perfect and approaches the apostle’s description: “Among the perfect we impart wisdom although it is not a wisdom of this age.…” [1 Cor. 2:6–7], by the spiritual law which contains “a shadow of the good things to come” [Heb. 10:1]. For just as the human being consists of body, soul, and spirit, so does Scripture which God has arranged to be given for the salvation of humankind. (4.2.4)
All biblical texts, according to Origen, have a spiritual sense, but not all have a literal sense as well. The fact that there were so many stumbling blocks with a strictly literal rendering of the Old Testament forced Origen into reading the text for a deeper understanding. The method Origen used for his biblical hermeneutics was that of anagōgē (“ascent”), the ascent of the soul upward from the level of the flesh to the realm of the spirit.
Origen’s successors built on the foundations he had laid. When Origen was driven from Alexandria by persecution, he made his home in Caesarea, in Israel. The most distinguished in this new school at Caesarea was Gregory Thaumaturgus, followed by Pamphilus and Eusebius. So devoted was Eusebius of Caesarea to Pamphilus that he is also known as Eusebius Pamphilus. Eusebius of Caesarea went so far as to claim that Moses and the prophets did not speak to their day at all. Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–94) wrote Life of Moses, which illustrates the anagogical or mystical understanding of biblical texts in probably its purest form.
It seems quite possible that lists of allegorical equivalents existed for many teachers and preachers who belonged to the Alexandrian school. Such allegorical keys existed in Philo’s works, and now the Greek Papyrus Inventory 3718 of the University of Michigan, dated by paleographers to the seventh century A.D., has been uncovered and seems to confirm further the existence of such lists. From this document we learn, for example, that John 2:1 (“On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee”) has the following allegorical values: “the day” is Christ; “the third” is faith; “a wedding” is the calling of the Gentiles; and “Cana” is the church. Proverbs 10:1 (“A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother”) is allegorized as follows: “a wise son” is Paul; the “father” is the Savior; the “foolish son” is Judas; and the “mother” is the church. Surely this document, though later than most evidences for the Alexandrian school, belongs to the same tradition.
The allegorical system of interpretation is built on a doctrine of correspondences. Simply stated, it claims that for every natural or earthly object or event, there is a corresponding spiritual or heavenly analogue that goes with it. The idea was derived in the main from Plato, who divided the world into two worlds: one was visible and the other emblematic; one was actual and the other invisible. In its broadest application, it asserts that all of life and all of secular history is allegorical and descriptive of spiritual or heavenly things; some restrict its application only to Scripture. However, it must be noted that the Bible nowhere teaches such a doctrine of shadows and images or a doctrine of correspondences. Those doctrines are drawn directly from the secular philosophy of the day; therefore, Scripture must not be blamed for advocating such a view.
The allegorical system of interpretation is built on a doctrine of correspondences, which claims that for every natural or earthly object or event, there is a corresponding spiritual or heavenly analogue that goes with it.
Antiochian
Over against the Alexandrian school was the Antiochian. The actual founder of the Antiochian school was probably Lucian of Samosata, around the end of the third century A.D. Others regard the distinguished presbyter Diodorus as the founder around 290. Whichever it may be, there is no doubt about the two greatest disciples of this school: Theodore of Mopsuestia and John Chrysostom.
The watchword of the Antiochian school was theōria, from a Greek word meaning “to see.” They contended that the spiritual sense was in no way separable from the literal sense, as it was in the Alexandrian school. The exegetes of the Antiochian school were united in their single-minded concern to preserve the integrity of history and the natural sense of a passage. But they were just as concerned about being overly literalistic as about the excesses of allegory and what they called “Judaism.” Both extremes were equally dangerous; only theōria could offer the middle road out of the dangers on both sides.
Whereas the Alexandrians saw at least two distinct meanings juxtaposed in every event, the Antiochians claimed that an event in Scripture had only one meaning—a meaning that, to the trained eye of the “theoretic” exegete, was at once both literal and spiritual, historical and typological. The Antiochians placed great emphasis on the idea that theōria referred primarily to the fact that there was a vision or perception of spiritual truth at the heart of a historical event that the writers of Scripture were recording, and that this linking of the historical event with the spiritual truth was not a double sense or meaning but a single sense as originally intended by the writers of Scripture.
The fathers of Antioch would not have shared the basic assumptions of modern historical criticism that the science or art of exegesis is essentially a historical discipline rather than a theological one. Instead, theōria contended that the historical event itself was the necessary vehicle for that spiritual and theological truth. But unlike allegory, it insisted that the historical event was indispensable as the means God had chosen to bring his eternal truth to expression. Therefore, the aim of exegesis was just as involved with spiritual and doctrinal enlightenment as it was with historical and philological facts.
Western
The third school in the patristic period was called the Western school. It appeared to be more eclectic in its methods of interpretation, for it harbored some elements of the allegorical school of Alexandria but also embodied some principles from the Antiochian. Its most distinctive feature, however, was that it advanced an element that heretofore had not been a major issue: the authority of tradition in interpreting the Bible.
The key representatives of this school are Hilary, Ambrose, and especially Jerome and Augustine. Jerome is famous because of his translation of the Vulgate Bible. Jerome knew Greek and Hebrew, whereas Augustine’s knowledge of the original languages was deficient. Accordingly, Augustine specialized more in systematizing the truths of the Bible than in their exegesis.
Augustine worked out his hermeneutical principles in his De Doctrina Christiana. He stressed there the need for the literal sense as the necessary basis for the allegorical meaning. But Augustine was not hesitant to indulge in a rather free use of the allegorical method. The deciding factor for Augustine, whenever the sense of Scripture was doubtful, was the regula fidei (“rule of faith”), by which he meant the collection of doctrines of the church. It is at this point that the authority of tradition began to play a major part in Augustine’s interpretive skills, for the proper use of the regula fidei pre-supposes that the meaning of the text has already been established sufficiently in order to recognize that the passage being considered does belong to the doctrine being used as a “rule of faith” to measure it; otherwise, the danger of eisegesis is enormous.
The standard illustration of the Western fourfold sense appeared in John Cassian’s Conferences: Jerusalem literally means the city of the Jews; allegorically, it is the church; tropologically, it is the soul; and anagogically, it is our heavenly home.
Unfortunately, Augustine argued for a fourfold sense of Scripture: historical, aetiological (an inquiry into the origins or causes of things), analogical, and allegorical. The set of four terms that eventually won out in the Western school of allegorical.hermeneutics was literal, allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical (mystical or eschatological). The standard illustration of this fourfold sense first appeared around A.D. 420 in John Cassian’s Conferences (14.8): Jerusalem literally means the city of the Jews; allegorically, it is the church (Ps. 46:4–5); tropologically, it is the soul (Ps. 147:1–2, 12); and anagogically, it is our heavenly home (Gal. 4:26). Cassian made it clear that the fourfold sense would not fit every passage of Scripture; attention must always be given first to the literal sense as emphasized by the Antiochian school. But the anagogical and allegorical senses kept alive the central concerns of the Alexandrians for the mystical and spiritual aspects of the text, while the tropological sense allowed Jewish and Christian moralists to uncover moral and ethical teachings from the text.
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages were not the most brilliant of times for the church or for biblical hermeneutics. In fact, many of the clergy, not to mention the laity, remained in ignorance of even what the Bible said. But to the degree that there was an awareness of the Scriptures, the fourfold sense of interpretation continued as it had been set forth by the Western church fathers.
What did increase in importance, however, was the principle that the interpretation of the Bible had to adapt itself to the traditions and doctrines of the church. For example, Hugo of St. Victor (1096?–1141), one of the most learned interpreters of Scripture in this period, declared, “Learn first what you should believe, and then go to the Bible to find it there!” However, even though Hugo lived more than a hundred years before Aquinas, he seems to have grasped one of Thomas Aquinas’s principles that the clue to the meaning of prophecy and metaphor was the writer’s intention, for the literal sense included everything the writer of the sacred text meant to say.
The key figures during the long years between 600 and 1500 were the Victorines from the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris. Hugo, as already mentioned, was probably the greatest of that school, but his disciple Andrew of St. Victor was also rather remarkable in that he furthered this emphasis on the literal meaning by utilizing the Vulgate text for his Christian meaning of the Bible and the Hebrew text for his Jewish explanation.
Another leading light in this period was Stephen Langdon (1150–228), archbishop of Canterbury. It was he who divided the Bible into its present chapters. But he also interpreted the Bible to conform to the doctrines of the church. For him the spiritual meaning was preferred over the literal meaning, since he thought it more helpful for preaching purposes and for the growth of the church.
The major figure of this whole era, however, was Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). He defended the literal sense as the basis for all the other senses of Scripture. But, he argued, the interpreter must realize that the Bible has symbolic meanings as well, since heavenly things cannot be put in earthly terms without using some form of symbolism. Furthermore, the history of Israel was leading up to the New Covenant. Thus the old doctrine of correspondences, which had been so much at the heart of the allegorical sense of Scripture, was still a major factor in exegesis during the Middle Ages.
One other person stands out in this time frame: Nicholas of Lyra (1270–340). As a Jewish convert to Christianity, Nicholas had a thorough knowledge of Hebrew. What made his work distinctive was that he, more than any others since the days of the Antiochian school, gave preference to the literal sense of Scripture. Constantly Nicholas urged that the original languages be consulted, and he complained that the mystical sense was being “allowed to choke the literal.” Only the literal, he insisted, should be used to prove any doctrine. It was his work that influenced Luther and affected the Reformation so profoundly. As the aphorism says, “Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset” (If Lyra had not piped, Luther would not have danced).
Kaiser, W. C., Jr. (2007). A Short History of Interpretation. In W. C. Kaiser, Jr. & M. Silva (Eds.), Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics: The Search for Meaning (W. C. Kaiser, Jr. & M. Silva, Ed.) (264–269). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
