Right Answer, Wrong Working
Early Christian readings of Scripture
Did you ever have that experience in high school math class, where you got the right answer, but there was red pen all over your working, and you had a whole lot of marks deducted? I can't say that I have a distinct memory of that happening, but I am sure that it did. The whole point of marking like that is to say, "yes, this is the correct answer, but the way you arrived at it is not logical, not grounded in the facts you began with."
I was reading something recently (I won't mention what) which exemplifies how a lot of Christians, protestants in particular, hold the same theory about fundamental doctrines, the traditional creeds, and early church exegesis. In sum, this author was saying, "yes, the early church came up with the right answers (about Jesus' incarnation, and human and divine natures), but they got there the wrong way - they misread the Bible to do so".
In my experience, this view is widespread, both at a lay and a clergy level, and widely among academics too. The early church was bad at exegesis, had wild theories about how to read the Bible, came up with lots of fanciful things. But somehow they managed to miraculously 'land' on the correct answers about key doctrinal issues. So, now, we blessed 21st century readers of the Bible finally have everything right.
I've always felt uneasy about this, ever since it became apparent to me. Here's my key problem: if you don't read the Scriptures the way they did, and you start to take away each supporting plank on which they built their theological consensus (I have in mind Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon in particular), at what point do you have to say, "actually, there is no basis for their theological conclusions"? It's more than fine to dispute any particular reading of any particular text, but if you disputed all their readings of all the relevant texts, doesn't intellectual integrity demand that you also say, "well, the Creeds don't actually express the doctrinal truths of the Bible after all"?
That, by the way, isn't my position. I think it's the logical outcome of a superficial engagement with early Christian interpretation. It was/is a key motivation that lead me to do research work in 4th century theological interpretation of Scripture. Essentially the question behind the question, which motivated my whole doctorate - how did 4th century theologians read the Bible in order to get to the answers they got to, and should we go along with them.
My short answer to the latter question is yes. Early Christian readers of Scripture are (i) not as dumb as they are made out to be, (ii) doing sophisticated literary reading with the best tools of their day and age, (iii) arriving at answers that we should agree with, (iv) very often using interpretive methods we ought to agree with. Sure, that's not true of every theologian, or every writer on every particular text, but we should be much more favourable rather than sceptical.
It is unsustainable to say that, 'wholesale', the early Christians read the Bible badly and we should jettison all their exegesis. Just like it's unsustainable to say that "apostles in the New Testament made a bunch of exegetical moves that were bad readings of the Old Testament, but they're allowed to because they're apostles writing inspired texts". There actually has to be hermeneutical continuity between the NT, the early church, and the ages down to us. Otherwise we have a wholly novel version of Christianity with no historic continuity (which, to be honest, some strands of Christianity are).
tl, dr? Early Church theologians aren't all wacky.
I'm extremely curious to know how you'd resolve the perceived conflict between modern "correct" exegetical work and the "wrong"(?) working of the early folks. What parts would you consider sustainable vs. unsustainable and why? What parts of modern exegetical "rules" do you think make good sense with early church exegesis and which do you think are most at odds?
This topic has definitely been one of my niggling mindworms over the past few years. I've got a fairly stringent list of "good" and "bad" exegetical practices that are going to be considered acceptable or unacceptable by my theological peers. But if I compare the biblical authors' own exegetical practices to mine, they are regularly doing things that I would find concerning and/or unjustified. But that then suggests that my own practices don't necessarily line up with what scripture teaches, and probably need examination.
I think I'm willing to grant the biblical authors *some* level of divine inspiration for what look to me like exegetical leaps, but I'm (probably unfairly) much less lenient with later writers. Granted, I don't have extensive experience early church writings. However, from the smattering I have read there seems to be some significant synthesis with Greek philosophical thought, and I tend to see that leading to some interpretative drift (but I'm also a protestant so obviously I'm going to complain about allegorical interpretations). I think the eventual influence (takeover?) of Greek philosophy later in e.g. Aquinas is concerning - Aristotle is cool and all, but I'm not going to take appeals to "the philosopher" terribly seriously on theological & philosophical subjects.
I'm not sure how I feel about some of the results of the "modern" approach though. For example, recent conversations rehashing trinitarian doctrines of various import (eternal generation, the filioque, subordinationism, etc.) seem just on the edge of concerning. On the one hand, if we're going to be all #solascriptura about things we ought to be able to defend them directly(ish) from scripture. On the other hand, as you point out, there's a danger that dismissing the exegetical reasoning and conclusions of the early church will lead to a fatal discontinuity with historic church creedal positions.
(Another example where my theological intuitions might be off: Maximus's defense of _apatheia_ makes me cringe a little. Is it justified cringe, or am I just projecting my feelings about modern stoic-wannabes? I dunno - if someone gave me a modern equivalent I'd probably write lots of grumpy comments in the margins.)
Anyway, I'd love to hear more of your insights on how to balance old and new ways of practice. Thanks as always for the thought-provoking post!