{"id":2345,"date":"2012-01-12T14:23:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T21:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=2345"},"modified":"2012-01-12T14:23:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T21:23:32","slug":"the-fathers-on-scripture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2012\/01\/12\/the-fathers-on-scripture\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fathers on Scripture"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m auditing a Themes in Patristic Theology class at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary<\/a> with Dr. John Behr<\/a>.\u00a0 A good portion of the first class was a reading of Melito of Sarids’<\/a> homily On Pascha<\/a>.\u00a0 There is some controversy about whether Melito was anti-Semitic, but as Fr. Behr explained it, the references to “Israel” in this text are really references to us, the hearers, as we approach the table:\u00a0 we<\/em> are the reason Christ died.<\/p>\n

Here are some notes on on the lecture about the Fathers’ approach to scripture:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Scripture is cryptic.\u00a0 “If it were not cryptic, it wouldn’t be scripture.”\u00a0 “You don’t have to work at interpreting a shopping list.”<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Scripture is harmonious.\u00a0 It all speaks about Christ.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Scripture is contemporary — it wasn’t written primarily for the benefit of the original hearers, but primarily for our benefit.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Scripture is inspired, and inspiration is inseparable from how Christ opens the book to us.\u00a0 It requires an “inspired” reading which turns on an ongoing encounter with Christ.\u00a0 Christ is not a “lens” through which we view scripture, but is already present<\/em> in scripture.\u00a0 Scripture is a sort of thesaurus or treasury of Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My sensibility as a theological interpreter who wants to be conversant with Biblical Studies might lead me to place more emphasis on the text’s reception by the original hearing community.\u00a0 But with the Fathers, and Barth, and all good theological interpreters, notice this sense that scripture’s power isn’t so much in its static content as in its life<\/em> as the reader encounters Christ in and through the text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m auditing a Themes in Patristic Theology class at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary with Dr. John Behr.\u00a0 A good portion of the first class was a reading of Melito of Sarids’ homily On Pascha.\u00a0 There is some controversy about whether Melito was anti-Semitic, but as Fr. Behr explained it, the references to “Israel” in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,70,39,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hermeneutics","category-patristics","category-theological-hermeneutics","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-BP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}