Via Media Podcast, Episode 20 Scripture and the Church Fathers Stefana Dan Laing September 19, 2019 https://www.beesondivinity.com/the-institute-of-anglican-studies/podcast/2019/scripture-and-the-church-fathers Announcer: The Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School welcomes you to Via Media, a podcast exploring the religious and theological worlds from an Anglican perspective. Here is your host Gerald McDermott. McDermott: Welcome to Via Media. We’re continuing our series on how to read the Bible, asking different scholars to give us insight into this very important question, today, for Anglicans and for all Christians. Today I’m excited to have, as our guest, Professor Stefana Dan Laing. A colleague of mine, here, at Beeson Divinity School who teaches in the area of spiritual formation, but is a patristic scholar. Now, Professor Laing is the author of Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church; published by Baker in 2017. She has done most of her work in patristics. So, Stefana, welcome to Via Media. Laing: Thanks for inviting me. McDermott: Stefana, let me start by asking: how did you get interested in the Fathers? Laing: Well, I’d say that my interest came very gradually as I became conscious of and acquainted with the Fathers from my high school years, and into college. I was an Ancient History and Medieval Studies double major at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia where my family lived because my parents were working as cross-cultural church planters among Romanians in Sydney. Many of these Romanians were Orthodox; Romanian Orthodox. So, in the course of studying at school, studying the Romanian empire from Augustus to Constantine, and then further on into the Byzantine world, I came into contact with what I would say is the world of the Fathers. I didn’t come to it from a theological standpoint, of course, but from a historical and sociological and cultural and literary standpoint. I remember reading and writing about Pachomius and Egyptian monasticism, some on the martyrs, some on Origen, and Eusebius – probably some of that connected with the study of Egyptian papyri or something that was preserved from Egypt. That’s really how I came to the Fathers. I have heard others give testimony of coming to the Fathers when they come to seminary, because they’re interested in Theology and they’re evangelicals coming to study theology, they’re confronted by the Fathers, and their world just radically changes. That’s not how it was for me, it was just a more gradual thing. Also, as part of my Romanian church experience, I became a little better acquainted with Orthodoxy and its themes. Sometimes we worship together- McDermott: Capital “O” – Orthodox. Laing: Yes, yes. Capital “O.” I also became interested in early Christian art and artistic representations of Christian themes. I did a research project on the Passion and the cross represented in art, early Christian art. I read some selections from the Fathers on theological meanings. I just came across these sort of in my research and in my digging. So, I became more acquainted with these patristic names. Then, of course, I went to seminary and I learned about a whole lot more under our mutual friend, Craig Blaising, who was my doctoral supervisor. And who actually introduced the Fathers to many evangelical students through his work in doctrine and biblical hermeneutics. McDermott: Which areas in this ... I’m sure you’d call it an ocean of the Fathers- Laing: Yes. McDermott: Which it truly is, isn’t it? Laing: Yes. McDermott: Which particular themes, which particular writers ... now, you’ve published in this area ... Which areas or writers in particular have you worked on the most? Laing: Well, when I was in seminary doing my doctoral work we read a lot of the theologians, of course, a lot of the doctrinal works, the Ante-Nicenes, Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius. I ended up kind of going back to historiography, which I had studied in college, and that really was a great love for me. I pursued hagiography, which is spiritual biography; some martyrology, Christian spirituality and historiography through Eusebius and Theodoret, who was the topic of my dissertation. And a few other historians of the third through sixth centuries. In fact, for my book that you mentioned, Retrieving History, I pursued these latter themes almost exclusively. Along with a little bit of historical apologetics, because I thought evangelicals would like to know something about that. But I was looking at the ways that Christians defined themselves through different kinds of historical narratives over the second through fifth centuries. So, texts before Constantine and after Constantine. McDermott: How can Theodoret help us? Laing: Well, Theodoret is a certain kind of exegete. He stands in a certain tradition. This is the tradition of the school of Antioch. So, Theodoret is not just reading and writing about the scriptures as a theologian. He is a Bishop. He has written apologetics. He is a spiritual advisor. He’s connected to a huge network of desert monks in Syria. And he’s reading the scripture in the tradition of Antioch, which is mainly a historical, grammatical, tradition. He places great stock in the word, the actual words, of the scripture. But he also has an understanding of inspiration to where the spirit is the one who is speaking. Sometimes he uses a word or little phrase, “crying out,” so in a particular passage he’ll say: “here, the spirit cries out,” one thing or another – a certain prophesy. So, I worked a lot in the Psalms in Theodoret’s commentary on the Psalms and he kind of lays out his program of interpretation there. I like the way that he interprets. I like the way that he doesn’t just use the text as a jumping off point to make a theological point or an allegorical point. For him the text and what it says is integrally connected to the higher spiritual meaning. The text is not just a jumping off point, or kind of used as a token – you just pull symbols out of it and then play around with them and interpret a text that way. I like what Theodoret does. I have a little text that I want to share from him where he kind of talks about his program that he’s pursuing. He says, in his Psalms commentary, in the preface, that he has read other commentaries on the Psalms and it’s easy to find these, because almost every church father wrote a commentary on the Psalms. And he says, “Some I found taking refuge in allegory with considerable relish.” So, he’s talking about sort of the opposing school, which is Alexandria. “While others make the inspired composition resemble historical narratives of a certain type with the result that the commentary represents a case rather for Jews than the household of the faith.” So, there’s a kind of very extreme literal interpretation that starts to divest the text of any Christian meaning, of any Christological meaning. So, he says that what ... the best course to pursue is a middle course between them, and that’s what he’s going to do. I appreciate that about Theodoret, that he pursues this middle course. Especially when exegesis was so contested between these two ... I don’t want to call them exactly “rival schools” because there was a lot of overlap between them. But I appreciate his attempt at balance in exegesis. I think that’s something to appreciate in him. McDermott: As I said, we’re doing a series on how to read the Bible. And, you know, Stefana, that we Anglicans consider our method to be to read the Bible at the feet of the Fathers and learn from the Fathers how to read the Bible. You’ve already been telling us about Theodoret’s method of reading the Bible. How about some of the other Fathers? Or, to include Theodoret in the list, how has being in the Fathers all these years changed your way of reading the Bible? What have they taught you about reading the Bible? Laing: One of the main things that I would start with, before I even get into exegesis. One of the main things is the importance of immersion in the text; of just knowing what the Bible says. Just of reading it and memorizing it, which was so important at the time in populations with low literacy levels, or places where they didn’t have a personal copy of the Bible. So, their access was limited. Just knowing and reading and memorizing the Bible; being immersed in it. You’re going to have a hard time making your way through the Fathers if you don’t know the Bible pretty well. Another lesson is the importance of reading passages, or reading books of the Bible with the entire canon in view. So, no matter what book I read, even if it’s the Book of Numbers. I read it with the entire canon in view. I know what’s to come later in the Old Testament and the Prophets. I know what’s to come with Christ and the gospel. So, you have this intertestamental kind of approach. I think that this is best in reading the Bible, because you’re already open to, and you anticipate connections that come between the Old and New Testament. I think context and doctrine as important as hermeneutical controls. So, they kind of set parameters on our interpretations. Sometimes in the Church Father’s sermons or their doctrinal works, these kinds of contexts are assumed. So, in their mind they know what Isaiah said and then what John is going to say, but they’re preaching out of Hebrews. So, sometimes they’re going around ... they’re sort of bouncing around the canon and you will have a hard time following them if you don’t know, oh, now he’s making an allusion to here or there. Because sometimes they don’t just quote the verse exactly, but they make an allusion. I think that is a very fruitful reading. I think it is a very rich and rewarding kind of reading. This complex interplay that they have between the testaments. The thing is that they leave it up to the reader to recognize what the allusion is, and to appreciate it. McDermott: Did they assume that their readers were more biblically literate than, say, the average Christian today? Laing: Yes. I think they assumed that their readers knew the Bible more, probably a lot more by heart, than the average readers today. I think our modern day biblical illiteracy and maybe decreasing literacy as a whole in the culture, is going to work against this kind of thing that we see in the Fathers. McDermott: Now, isn’t it ironic? We are awash in copies of the Bible. I mean, most Christians have probably five to ten copies of the Bible. Laing: Right. McDermott: Different translations. And yet we aren’t as biblically literate as these folks back in the patristic era. Probably very few had a whole copy of a Bible. And they got all of their knowledge of the Bible ... Well, so how did they learn the Bible so well? Laing: Yea, that’s a good question. They were probably getting it at church. They maybe heard it being read. There was an office in the church that was the office of the reader. They would hear probably large portions being read. In the early documents that we have from Justin Martyr, where he describes how a worship service goes, he said that there were readings, portions from the Old Testament, portions from the New Testament, that pastor or the presider, the president, of the congregation would read and give a talk on it. So, they were hearing it read. Maybe they got it through catechesis. They had to memorize some of the scripture before they were baptized. McDermott: Can you think of one or more problems in biblical interpretation that the Fathers have helped you with, Stefana? Laing: I can’t think of a specific problem that they’ve helped me with. I can think of some other problems, but ... I’ll just say that they’ve enriched my understanding of scripture passages with this inter-canonical hermeneutic. Sometimes it’s surprising what the Fathers connect from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Sometimes when reading their commentaries or sermons, they will fixate on a word, and they’ll build an entire point around it. Sometimes it’s a point that seems to follow well from the text and sometimes it’s a point that puzzles me. Then I think, I wonder where they got that? Why have they fixated on that term? Then if it’s a Greek writer I’ll look it up in the Septuagint just to see if that explains their interpretative path. Or, maybe I’ll look it up in the Vulgate if it’s a western writer, just to see what word is there. Sometimes because of their historical context they interpreted passages in a way in which maybe we wouldn’t interpret it. They would go in a direction which maybe we wouldn’t go into. But I find it thought provoking and I think ultimately enriching. I don’t always agree with them. But it challenges me. McDermott: Mm hmm (Affirmative). Is there a common pattern in the way they interpret the Bible? Laing: Yeah. McDermott: What scholars call a biblical hermeneutic that seems to be common to so many of them? Laing: Yeah, definitely. I’d say there are at least four features of their interpretational strategies, and these are interrelated. But I think these four our primary and I think we’ll say some more as we go along. First of all, the Fathers have a very elevated understanding, a high view, and I know some of these terms are anachronistic, so I will just say that right up front. (laughs) But I will say that they have what we call a high view of scripture. The scripture is inspired and crafted by the Holy Spirit. I think we could say they have a verbal plenary view of scripture. I even think that it leans a little bit in the direction of dictation view. McDermott: Really? Laing: That’s what I think. McDermott: Hmm. Laing: So, dictation theory is a view where the human author is just kind of a tool of the Holy Spirit to write the text. So, really, it’s the Holy Spirit just using the human author, sort of in spite of any kind of individuality of the author to just write the Word. When I say that some of the Church Fathers kind of lean towards the dictation view, there’s kind of a classic text that they like to use that I’m going to give as an example: Theodoret. Sometimes as Theodoret is talking about authorship in the Psalms he states that there are different opinions about authorship in the Psalms, but it’s not a big deal to him, because he says, all who wrote in the Psalms are under the influence of the divine spirit. “All composed under the influence of the divine spirit.” So, they’re all divinely inspired composers, as the Bible indicates. And quoting Psalm 45, Theodoret gives a classic patristic understanding of biblical inspiration. So, here’s a quote from him, “It is the role of an inspired composer to make his tongue available to the grace of the Spirit. As Psalm 45 says, ‘My tongue is like the pen of a fluent scribe.’” So, the Holy Spirit is just using his tongue as a pen. I think that gets at it. That’s why I think they kind of lean that way. But they believe that the text, the words of scripture, are actually the Word, the logos, inscribed – as if the letters are like the flesh, you know, of the Logos. So, enfleshed in letters, we might say, just as the eternal Word, the Logos, was incarnated as a human being. That’s the first thing: a high view of scripture. Second, they believed that the Holy Spirit intentionally placed deeper meanings within the text and so you expect that there are multiple layers of meaning in the text. You already come anticipating this and looking for it. Origen, especially, lays this out. So, for example, he talked about the cross as a plow and the scripture as a field, and the higher spiritual meaning is the treasure hidden in the field, and it’s placed there by the Spirit. But you can only find it if you plow the field of the scripture through the cross. Do you like that? McDermott: I like that. What does that do to what many evangelicals learned in seminaries in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that there’s only one meaning of a particular text and that meaning corresponds to what the original author had in mind? And that we should never stray from the original author’s meaning or intent? Laing: Yes, well, it challenges ... See, now, when you say “the original author” you’re talking about the human author that was inspired by the Spirit, right? So, I think that the Fathers’ perspective challenges that. But it doesn’t totally contradict that, because for them the author is the Spirit. Like I say, they kind of tend towards this dictation view. I won’t say it is dictation, but I’d say they lean in that direction. It’s the Holy Spirit who has written this. That’s the author. McDermott: Right. And what you’re saying when you’re talking about layers of meaning, is that there might be different meanings beyond what the human author had in mind. I think of when Paul is commenting on the Deuteronomy text, “don’t muzzle the ox when he’s treading out the grain,” and Paul says, well, that means, pay your pastor. Laing: (laughs) McDermott: And it doesn’t strike one that that’s what Moses had in mind. Laing: Sure. I think that all of that is something to think about. You know? Which author are we talking about and are we talking about a main meaning and that’s the only meaning? Or, are there meanings that are inspired by the Spirit who is sovereign. I mean, no matter which theory of inspiration you are looking at it still hinges on the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s inspiration or superintendence, the Spirit is still sovereign over the inspiration of the scripture. The other thing about what the Church Father’s expect and teach about the scripture has to do with the reader. They also place great importance on the doctrine of illumination. When we talk about the doctrine of illumination that is also the work of the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit working in the believer, in the regenerate believer, to understand the scripture. The same Holy Spirit that has inspired the human writers to write the scriptures is the one who also works in us to understand those scriptures. Part of how you get meaning from the text depends on you. It’s not just waiting for the Holy Spirit to teach you, or tell you, or unlock the mystery for you – but these meanings are unlocked by the reader ... of course still under the sovereignty of the Spirit ... according to her or his own level of spiritual preparedness to access and understand the truth of the text. It places an onus, then, on the reader to seek it out. You know? To come anticipating the treasure in the field. So, that’s the second point, the deeper meanings within the text and multiple of meaning. My third point is, and this seems like a no-brainer to us today but that’s because we have a complete canon that we carry around in our hands, the Fathers read the scripture as a unity of Old and New Testament. And it was a reading that was endangered in the first few centuries by Gnostic readings and by Marcionite attempts to make their own canon, which pretty much stripped the whole Old Testament and some things out of the New Testament as well. Marcion and Gnostics and some others looked askance at the Old Testament, looked askance at the Old Testament God, said the Old Testament God was not the same as the New Testament God. I think that one reason why we have so many patristic commentaries on the Old Testament ... books that you hardly ever hear sermons out of now, like Origen writing homilies on Leviticus and on Numbers. (laughs) I think one reason why there’s so much on the Old Testament from the Fathers is because they had a little bit of an apologetic purpose, too. I mean, they had a hermeneutical and a sort of ministerial purpose, too, and a pedagogical purpose. They had an apologetic purpose to defend a unity of the Christian canon and to defend the unity of God in the canon. McDermott: That message is needed today, it seems to me. There are so many preachers and popular theologians who are saying explicitly that the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New Testament. Laing: Yeah, the Church Fathers would vehemently disagree. They fought against that view. McDermott: Right. Laing: For centuries. McDermott: Maybe we need to read the Fathers more? Laing: I think we do. McDermott: Maybe Anglicans are on to something about reading the Fathers. Laing: (laughs) There’s a fourth point. It’s the Christological reading of the Bible. The Christological reading is primary for the Fathers. On this we’re relying on the foundation laid especially by Origen in the early centuries. McDermott: Isn’t that related to the rule of faith? I mean, so many of the Fathers talk about the Rule of Faith. Can you tell us what this Rule of Faith is and how the Fathers used it? Laing: Well, the Rule of Faith, or sometimes called the Rule of Truth, appears in ... as far as I know, three of the early Fathers. It appears in Tertullian, Iranaeus, and Origen. It was kind of a compendium of Christian belief. It was a little bit of a pre creedal creed. (laughs) What it said was basically, in a nutshell, this is the compendium of the truth of our faith, all of these things are what we hold in common as Christians. This is what Christianity is. This is what Christianity involves. We assent to all of these elements. If your scriptural interpretation somehow contradicts one of these elements, then it’s not valid. So, you can’t take the Bible and interpret it however you want to. See? This is what Iranaeus was saying against the Gnostics, that there’s a picture of a king, like a mosaic, and they will take it all apart and put it back together again however they want to. It’s a completely different picture. Well, they have no norm for interpreting, is what Iranaeus was saying. So, this is what the Rule of Truth was about. McDermott: Well, you have a lot to teach us about the Fathers. I’m thinking about the evangelical churches today, Stefana. Do evangelicals particularly, perhaps even more than other kinds of Christians ... you talked about the eastern Orthodox, your parents were raised in Romania ... But do evangelicals, and let’s say American evangelicals particularly need to read the Fathers? Laing: I think it’s good for evangelicals to read the Fathers because it challenges us on the nature of scripture, our understanding of inspiration and illumination, and just in our relationship to God through the scriptures. Even though sometimes our theology, the way that we describe it, what we espouse, might sound like it’s very similar to the Fathers, sometimes in our practice we’re very distracted by cultural norms and cultural influences and we don’t actually practice what we preach. So, we might defend the Bible vehemently against detractors or those who want to take it out of culture, but then, as you said, we don’t read it. We don’t read it. We don’t know it as we should. Maybe we have a little bit too passive view of how revelation is supposed to come to us. We’re frustrated when we just stand in front of a closed Bible or open to Genesis 1 and say, okay, God, resolve the problems in my life right now. Origen is great, because he talked about a long term acquaintance with the scripture; reading it, meditating on it, singing it, using it in worship, repeating it, giving it out, preaching it, and it’s an acquaintance with the scripture that is over a long period of time. You let yourself be immersed in it, and let it penetrate your mind and your decisions, your desires. The Fathers like to talk about the passions, kind of our sinful desires – some might call them “the vices,” but reading the scripture, especially at these different levels of meaning can address those sins in us, those tendencies in us, it can help us strive for a life of virtue and just in a different way, maybe, than we think of today. Where maybe we’ll look for a book ... Five Steps to Improving Your Spiritual Life ... when we could just look at the scripture and say, well, this time through when I read it, I understood this much. I’m going to read it again and I will understand some more. Then when I read it again I’ll understand some more. Origen sometimes talks about the scripture as a well. It’s a deep well. There is water there. You have to keep on coming to the well. You have to keep coming to it, and digging down to draw up the water, and keeping drinking it. It’s almost like the Psalm 1, the tree, the blessed man who is like a tree by these streams of water, the streams continuously are watering the tree. That’s how we have to be with the scripture. We have to pursue it. I think the Fathers illustrate that in their love of the scripture. Not just for its own sake, but because of what they believe about it. It’s the Logos in flesh. It’s the very Word of God and the Word of the Spirit, speaking to us. It’s like there’s something at any level for everybody who comes to the scripture – if you’re a new believer, or you’re a more mature believer, or you’ve been a saint with the Lord for a long time. McDermott: I’m sure some of our listeners are thinking, “How can I get started reading the Fathers?” Where would you send them? Laing: Yeah. So, I’d say as a principle: start small and familiar. (laughs) Start small. You said it’s like an ocean. Yes, their writings are a vast ocean. What a wonderful thing that we can say, though, because these texts are so old. How providential that so much has been preserved. I think part of that is the work of the Spirit, too. I’d say start kind of in short doses. Start with narratives, stories of the martyrs. Letters, the letters of Ignatius. Biographies, familiar themes. I think that this kind of material kind of gets us into the world, into the context of the Fathers and it opens up an immediate and personal window into the people and their commitments, their commitments to Christ and to the Church community, and they’re just amazing examples. Second, I’d say reading Augustine’s Confessions. That’s a great place to start. I read it almost every year. I’m always grateful for an excuse to read that. So, it’s written about the turn of the 5th century. It’s a conversion story, a testimony. It’s full of scripture. It shows how Augustine is immersed ... it illustrates a lot of things that we’re talking about. It’s written as a prayerful dialogue with God. It feels very open and vulnerable. It feels raw at times, painfully honest. His theology comes through. It’s not like it’s just the story of his life and there’s not theology. He can’t help himself. And his deep recognition of what Christ has done for him. The ransom that was paid. He’s very honest in talking about this crippling slavery that his sin had him in. Not surprisingly he emphasizes, heavily, God’s grace and mercy and his love. The Life of Antony is a bit of a different kind of story. This is by Athanasius. It was a widely popular Alexandrian times bestseller in both the east and the west. It influenced Augustine in his conversion story about a decade or so after its publication. A lot of the Desert Fathers, or this desert literature that you’ll see, theology is not the main point of it. But it gives us kind of a wide open best practices exemplar for, in this case, how to be a holy man, or how to be a holy woman. The first thing that he says is love Jesus, know the Bible. Lots of memory work here. Don’t be concerned with flashy stuff, working miracles. Don’t give yourself airs of wise words, but be humble if you want to be influential and beat the devil. McDermott: Now, this is Antony? Laing: This is Antony. Absolutely. One thing I appreciate about Athanasius who we look at as a theologian, you know? He wrote On the Incarnation and ... but in this one he’s talking about the struggle against the devil. He said it’s very real, but the devil shouldn’t be feared and the devil can be driven back by the sign of the cross, by the name of Jesus, and by scripture. But you have to know it. I don’t think anybody but Jerome probably took his library out into the desert, so Antony might not even be literate, but he knows the scripture. He advises his disciples, “Use the scripture against the devil.” There are other biographies about women: Paula, Macrina, Melania. There are lots of diversity here in these biographies, men and women, city versus desert. There are from Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Rome, North Africa. There’s a wide spread there. I think there’s something in there for everybody. McDermott: So, lots to choose from. Laing: I think so. McDermott: Well, thank you so much, Stefana. Thank you for listening, again, to Via Media. Announcer: You've been listening to Via Media with host Gerald McDermott, the director of The Institute of Anglican Study Studies at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The Institute of Anglican Studies trains men and women for Anglican ministry, and seeks to educate the public in the riches of the Anglican tradition. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Via Media.