St Athanasius:
Anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. Thus united to them in the fellowship of life, he will both understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven.1
St Gregory the Great:
The very obscurity of God’s words is most useful. It exercises the mind and, while the mind tires, it expands; having thus been exercised, it will grasp what it would not have grasped if it had remained idle.2
St Bonaventure:
All of scripture is like a single zither. And the lesser string does not produce the harmony by itself, but in union with others. Likewise, one passage of scripture depends upon another. Indeed, a thousand passages are related to a single passage.3
Gilbert of Stanford:
Like a raging, swift-flowing torrent, Sacred Scripture so fills the depths of human understanding that it is always overflowing its banks. It satisfies those who drink from it, and yet it remains unexhausted. From Scripture there flow forth abundant channels of spiritual meaning, and when some meanings pass away, others arise. No, it cannot be that these meanings pass away, since wisdom is immortal. But what happens rather is that when some have emerged to show their beauty, there are others which take their place. This is not to say that the meanings that pass away are wanting. Rather they remain in evidence and follow close behind in a supportive role.4
St Augustine:
Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts an interpretation on them that does not lead to building up this twofold love of God and our neighbor does not yet understand them as he should. If, on the other hand, anyone draws a meaning from them that may be used for the building up of love, even though they do not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception.5
St. Maximus the Confessor:
The divine word could never be circumscribed by a single individual interpretation, nor does it suffer confinement in a single meaning, on account of its natural infinity.6
Eriugena:
There are many ways, indeed an infinite number, of interpreting the Scriptures...7
Newman:
[Scripture] cannot, as it were, be mapped, or its contents catalogued; but after all our diligence, to the end of our lives and to the end of the Church, it must be an unexplored and unsubdued land, with heights and valleys, forests and streams, on the right and left of our path and close about us, full of concealed wonders and choice treasure.8
Hugh of St Victor:
For the whole Divine Scripture is one Book, and the one Book is Christ, for the whole Divine Scripture speaks of Christ and is fulfilled in Christ. Our purpose in reading Scripture is that, by gaining knowledge of what He did and said and commended, we may be enabled to do what He told us and receive what He has promised.9
Giles of Paris:
This well is deep, it plumbs the abyss... This simple outward shell contains a great variety of food. The letter is to be thought of as the outward shell, the senses as three varieties of food... When you read the historical text, a kind of milky sweetness is imbibed, or rather a draught of simple water... In the typical sense the keen tang of wine can be felt... Whoever drinks this wine of Scripture hunts for Jesus and finds him, reaching him on the wooded heights. When your reading gives you the moral sense, then it is as if your mouth were sucking on a honeycomb.10
St John of the Cross:
After all that the holy doctors have said, and may say, no words of theirs can explain [Scripture]; nor can words do it. And so, in general, all that is said falls far short of the meaning.11
St Gregory the Great, again:
Holy Scripture is offered to our soul like a mirror. In it we can see our interior countenance. There we see our ugliness and our beauty. There we become conscious of our advancement. There, of our total lack of progress.12
St Gregory of Nyssa:
Frequently the narrative, if we stop short at the mere events, does not furnish us with models of the good life. “The letter kills” (for it contains examples of evildoing), “but the Spirit gives life” (for it transposes a meaning that is incongruous and discordant into a more divine sense)...
[To try to teach Scripture without this awareness] seems to me to be like someone’s setting out unprepared grain on the table for human beings to eat, without threshing the stalk or separating the seeds from their husks by winnowing or reducing the grain to fl our or making bread in the proper fashion. So then, just as unprepared produce is food for animals and not for human beings, so too one may say that the divinely inspired words are food for non-rational animals rather than for rational persons unless they have been prepared by a properly subtle6 and discerning inquiry. This applies not only to the words of the Old Covenant but also to the greater part of the Gospel teaching...13
Bonhoeffer:
The biblical doctrine of inspiration removes the Bible from the historical situation... Inspiration means that God commits himself to the word spoken by this human being in all its inadequacies. Inspiration [means] that God turns his word back to himself.14
St John Chrysostom:
Sacred Scripture says nothing idly or by chance; instead, even if it happens to be a syllable or a single jot, it has some treasure concealed in it…
Apply your attention to the utmost, I beseech you, put aside all worldly thoughts, and let us study these words with precision so that nothing may escape us but rather we should proceed to their deepest meaning and be able to light upon the treasure concealed in these brief phrases...
For my part, on the contrary, I beg you all not to pass heedlessly by the contents of Holy Scripture. I mean, there is nothing in the writings at this point which does not contain a great wealth of thought; after all, since the blessed authors composed under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, on that account they hold concealed within them great treasure because written by the Spirit… You see, there is not even a syllable or even one letter contained in Scripture which does not have great treasure concealed in its depths.15
St Maximus, again:
We need to grow in knowledge so that, having first penetrated the veils of the sayings which cover the Word, we may with a pure mind see—in so far as human beings can—the pure Word, as He exists in Himself, clearly showing us the Father in Himself. Hence a person who seeks God with true devotion should not be dominated by the literal text, lest he unintentionally and unknowingly receives not God but the things that refer to God; that is, lest he feel a dangerous affection for the words of Scripture instead of for the Word. For the Word eludes the intellect which supposes that it has grasped the incorporeal Word by means of His outer garments, like the Egyptian woman who seized hold of Joseph’s garments instead of Joseph himself, or like the ancients who were content merely with the beauty of visible things and mistakenly worshipped the creation instead of the Creator.16
St Gregory of Nyssa, again:
Before us for exposition lies Ecclesiastes, which requires labor in spiritual interpretation quite as great as the benefit to be obtained. The thoughts of Proverbs having already prepared the mind by exercise, thoughts whose obscure words and wise sayings and riddles and complicated twists of argument, as the opening passage of that book describes, then for those who have developed to the more advanced stages of learning there comes the ascent towards this truly sublime and God-inspired work of scripture. If then the exercises in proverbial expression which prepares us for these lessons is so painful and difficult to understand, how great an effort must be envisaged in these lofty thoughts which now lie before us for interpretation?17
Bonhoeffer, again:
I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love; and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us alone with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible…18
Origen:
I want to admonish the disciples of Christ about the goodness of God, lest any of you perhaps be troubled by heretics, if ever a conflict should occur while they tell you that the God of the law is not good, but just, and that the law of Moses does not contain goodness, but justice. Let those who incriminate both God and the law notice how Moses himself and Aaron have previously done what the Gospel subsequently taught. Behold, Moses "loves his enemies and prays for his persecutors." This is precisely what Christ teaches us to do in the Gospels. For listen to how they “fall on their face on the ground" and pray for those who had risen up in an insurrection to kill them.
So then, the power of the gospel is found in the law, and the Gospels are understood as being supported by the foundation of the law; nor do I even give the name “Old Testament” to the law, if I understand it spiritually. The law becomes an “Old Testament” only for those who want to understand it in a fleshly way; and for them it has necessarily become old and aged, because it cannot maintain its strength. But for us, who understand and explain it spiritually and according to the gospel-meaning, it is always new. Indeed, both are “New Testaments” for us, not by the age of time but by the newness of understanding.19
Eriugena, again:
Christ’s tomb is Holy Scripture, in which the mysteries of His divinity and humanity are secured by the weight of the letter, just as the tomb is secured by the stone. But John runs ahead and arrives before Peter— for contemplation, being deeply purified, penetrates more sharply and speedily into the secret power of the divine intent than does action, which still needs purification… Therefore, since it is written, “Unless you believe you will not understand,” faith necessarily enters first into the tomb of Holy Scripture, followed by the intellect, for which faith has prepared the entry.20
Bonhoeffer, once again:
Because Scripture as a whole and in all its parts is to be understood as a witness to Christ, and because difficulties do apparently arise in the concrete demonstration of this assertion—the question arises whether it is permissible to employ allegorical exegesis for obscure scripture passages. In this regard, one can point out the following (1) The proof of the nature of Scripture as testimony derives neither from a literal nor from an allegorical interpretation, but from God alone, who confesses his witness in his own time… (2) The right of the allegorical interpretation consists in acknowledging the possibility that God does not allow his word to be exhausted in its grammatical, logical, unequivocal meaning, but rather that this word has even other perspectives and can serve better understanding… Why should. the word not also have the allegorical meaning?21
And, finally, St. Maximus:
For the written form of the Holy Gospels is but elementary instruction when compared either to the knowledge that is acquired unfailingly by those who are lifted up through the Gospels, and who spiritually remove from themselves the thickness of corporeal thinking, or to the knowledge that will be acquired after the future consummation of the things that are now in motion. For in the same way that the law, when compared to the knowledge hitherto manifested through it, was but elementary instruction for those who through it were being tutored unto Christ, the incarnate Word, and who were being gathered together for the Gospel that would be preached at His first coming—so too, I say, is the Holy Gospel but elementary instruction for those who through it are tutored unto Christ, the spiritual Word, and who are being gathered together for the world to come, which will be revealed at His second coming. Since the same Christ is both flesh and spirit, He becomes the one or the other analogous to the form of knowledge in each, for every word is susceptible of expression through sounds and letters…
For every word given by God to man and written down in this present age is a forerunner of the more perfect Word, which—through that word—is announced to the intellect, spiritually and without writing, and which will be manifested in the age to come, for whereas the written word possesses an indication of the truth in itself, it does not reveal the truth itself, naked and unveiled. I believe, therefore, that if the meaning of the whole of divine Scripture is properly and piously smoothed out, the disagreements perceived on the literal level of the text will be seen to contain nothing contradictory or inconsistent.22
On the Incarnation 57.
Homilies on Ezekiel 1.6.
Collations on the Six Days 19.7.
Quoted in de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis Vol. 3, 75.
On Christian Doctrine 1.36.
Q. Thal. 1.2.8.
Periphyseon 4.749.
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 71.
Noah’s Ark 2.11.
Quoted in de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis Vol 1, p. 3.
Prologue to Spiritual Canticle.
Moralia in Job 2.1.
Preface: Homilies on Song of Songs.
Finkenwalde Lectures on Homiletics (Bethge’s note); see Theological Education at Finkenwalde 1935-1937, 493.
Homily 18 and Homily 20 on Genesis.
Two Hundred Chapters on Theology 2.73.
Homily 1 on Ecclesiastes
Letter to Rüdiger Schleicher (April 8. 1936).
Homily 9 on Numbers 4.2
Homily on John’s Prologue 3.
Finkenwalde Lecture on Contemporizing the New Testament; see Theological Education at Finkenwalde 1935-1937, 428-429.
Amb 21.4, 13-14.
Brilliant
Thank you!