Late Middle Ages (13th-15th Centuries)

I envision the late middle ages commencing with the life and work of Thomas Aquinas and concluding with the life and work of Marin Luther. It is beyond the scope of this blog to adequately summarize and analyze the works and influence of Aquinas and his relationship to Augustine. I can say that Scholasticism eventuated in a novel and formal separation between hermeneutics and homiletics as the former increasingly became the purview of the academy and was thus increasingly approached as a science rather than as a spiritual discipline. As for the Bible, “Before the twelfth century, the Bible had been a monastic text; now it became a professional text for clergy and their teachers” (Chris Ocker, in McKim, 20).

This unfortunate development combined with the development of natural theology, spelled disaster for the Scholastic movement, and to some extent for the church. Without going into the details, the influence of Aristotle upon Aquinas led him to advance the already extant idea of the division between nature and grace such that, by means of general grace, the natural world and philosophy became valid sources of revelation right alongside the Word of God and theology. “Aquinas recognized that salvation was dependent upon revelation, but he also fixed the relationship of theology to natural philosophy” (Goldsworthy, 112). So, this idea was not new with him, but it became entrenched through his work.

One of the implications of this teaching was what Aquinas called the analogia entis (analogy of being) by which he and the Scholastics argued that the Creator and his creation, particularly humanity, are bound in an ontological union so that the knowledge of God, in some senses, does not require revelation. Because of the effects of sin, this knowledge must be aided by grace but, for Aquinas, human beings remain fundamentally united with God. This does not mean that we have no need of salvation through Christ, but it does mean that human thought has the potential of being a valid source for revelation (see Goldsworthy, 101-119).

In this way, the Catholic Church came to believe in, and promote, a “twofold way of grace and nature in virtue of revelation on the one side and of a ‘profound structural similarity between nature and supernature’ on the other, i.e., through the operation of a twofold alliance, the one set up by the participation of the creature in being and the other by the restitution effected in the reconciliation in Jesus Christ” (Jacques de Senarclens in Goldsworthy, 113).

This teaching formed an ideal launching pad for the Renaissance and the humanism that was endemic to it. The belief that humanity was not hopelessly fallen but instead capable of being conduits of revelation gave rise to a spirit that may have seemed liberating and joy-producing, but was in fact a form of idolatry and rebellion (see Goldsworthy, 101-119). And this spirit did in fact relegate the Bible to a secondary place in western culture such as had not been seen since the days of Constantine. The veneer was there but the core was rotting.

Yet God is faithful, and along the way he sent many servants to seek his face, love his Word, and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ with joy, boldness, and good effect. Among them were the early Mendicant Friars, John Wycliffe, John Huss, and Girolamo Sirvonarola each of whom was used of God, in one way or another, to “punch holes in the darkness” of this era (Larsen, 128; see also, 95-139; Brown, 3-31).

Delighting in the Word of God: Reading the Word

The Bible assumes that God is, and it teaches that God created all things to reveal his glory to all creation. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2).

Further, the Bible displays and declares that God has spoken in order to reveal his character, his thoughts, his affections, his actions, and his purposes and plans for creation. “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:5).

It is glorious enough that God created in order to reveal himself, but it is glorious beyond compare that God has spoken in order to make himself known to humankind, the pinnacle of his creation. Since our Creator has spoken to us, our greatest privilege and obligation in life is to listen to what he has said. Listening begins by hearing the words of God read and preached on their own terms, and it deepens by picking up a Bible and reading those words for ourselves day by day. As we do, we reap many rewards, including the following three things.

First, reading the Bible day by day is a practical way of putting God first and loving him most. Above all things, the Lord calls on people to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, for when he takes his proper place in our lives, all other people and things take their proper places as well. There is no better way to display that his command is our desire than listening to what he has to say day by day.

Second, reading the Bible day by day is a simple way of getting to know our heavenly Father. Since the words of God reveal the character, thinking, feelings, actions, purposes, promises, and plans of God, they help us not only to learn things about him but to actually know him. In other words, reading the words of God is not simply a matter of learning facts about God, rather, it is about developing an intimate knowledge of God.

Third, reading the Bible day by day is the best way to grow in our knowledge of the gospel that we might receive the grace of God in Christ and walk in the ways of Christ. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Beloved, the rewards of reading the Bible day by day are great, and plans for doing so abound (see www.navigators.org). I urge you, then, to choose a plan and read the words of God that you might come to know God, love God, and walk in his ways.

Living by Faith: The Varied Outcomes of Faith

From Hebrews 11:3-31, the author has drawn our attention to creation, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and Rahab. And though he could continue drawing our attention to one biblical figure after another, he’s dealing with certain constraints and so he simply writes this in verse 32: “And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets...”

Why the author mentions these specific people, I’m not really sure and I’m not sure it really matters. Rather, I think his desire is simply to say this, and please allow me to embellish. “Beloved, I could go on and bring to your attention many people who trusted in the faithfulness of God and found him to be faithful. By the grace of God, these people received and believed the commandments and promises of the Lord, and they discovered along the way that he does everything he says he’s going to do. They were not superheroes, rather, they were men and women just like you and me, and the thing that sets them apart is their faith in the faithfulness of God. It’s not so much that they were great but that they trusted in a God who is great. Indeed, these people are commended by God himself because they trusted in God and nothing else.”

Now, as we carefully consider the lives of the people that the author goes on to describe beginning in verse 33, we discover something strange and glorious: the outcome of their faith on this earth, the practical results of their way of life, were not always the same. In fact, they were radically different. Some of these people achieved great things and won great victories by faith to the glory of Christ. Others of them suffered great things and lost great battles by faith to the glory of Christ. Some of them conquered by faith, and some of them were conquered by faith. But all of them brought glory to God because all of them listened to the Lord and did what he commanded them to do, by his grace and power, even though they didn’t experience the same earthly results. They were successful in this life because they trusted in the Lord no matter what the cost or consequence, not because things always went well for them.

In the next two posts in this series, I’ll say a few things about both groups of people, but for now I want to encourage you to seriously contemplate this before the Lord: living by faith will not produce the same outcome for every person because God’s will is not the same for every person. Indeed, the heart of living by faith is loving the Lord, listening to his words and will, and then following in his ways whether in victory or defeat, triumph or tragedy, celebration or mourning.

Hermeneutics and Homiletics: Early Middle Ages (5th-13th Centuries)

I envision the era of the early middle ages commencing with the life and works of Augustine, and concluding with the life and works of Thomas Aquinas who was the leading light among the Scholastics. Indeed, after Augustine, there is little novel work until Aquinas, if there is any at all, for through his writings, and especially On Christian Doctrine, his hermeneutical method grew in prominence until it became the norm. This does not mean that every exegete in the early middle ages unthinkingly embraced Augustine, but it does mean that whatever smatterings of alternatives there were failed to gain a foothold.

In some ways, this was a good thing but it eventuated in a subtle and growing division between exegesis and spirituality so that the former was envisioned as proper to the literal sense of Scripture and the latter as proper to the spiritual senses of Scripture. “It follows that so long as this conception of Bible studies holds good, we shall have many commentaries containing little exegesis” (Smalley, 2). And for this era, this is indeed the case.

In fact, after the death of Remigius of Auxerre, about 908, there is no important commentary, and a dearth of even compilations, for about a century and a quarter. Holy abbots, as their biographers tell us, were still devoted to lectio divina, and we have unverifiable references to their study of Hebrew; they left very little written exegesis. The cathedral schools, which were improving their organization at this time, did as little for biblical studies as the monastic. It is a dramatic pause in the history of Bible studies and we should miss its significance if we explained it away as the demoralizing effect of war and Viking invasion. They certainly made scholarship difficult; but the real reason was a shift of interest. The Cluniac and other tenth-century religious reformers emphasized the liturgy at the expense of study (Smalley, 44-45).

This was a tragic development, but God is faithful. Among other lesser movements, the early twelfth century Victorines, led by Hugh, Richard, and Andrew of Saint Victor in France, revived the discussion of hermeneutics and insisted that though the Bible does contain a literal sense and an allegorical (or spiritual) sense, the former is more important than, and is the foundation of, the latter. “Hugh patiently explains that the literal sense is not the word, but what it means; it may have a figurative meaning; and this belongs to the literal sense. To despise the literal sense is to despise the whole of sacred literature” (Smalley, 93). Hugh’s “great service to exegesis was to lay more stress on the literal interpretation relatively to the spiritual, and to develop the sources for it” (Smalley, 102).

With this revived articulation of what was essentially Antiochene hermeneutics (though Hugh would not have known or said that), also came a fusion of spirituality and scholarship. Previous to this time, a division had developed between monks who prayed and scholars who studied. Now, along with several other movements (or Orders, as they were called), the Victorines sought to combine robust spirituality with disciplined scholarship. They succeeded in this endeavor so that the following generation, led by the trifecta of Peter Comestor, Peter the Chanter, and Stephen Langton, spent their lives promoting and prospering this “novel” approach (Smalley, 196).

In this way, the Victorine program made practices such as lectio divina acceptable to Paris intellectuals who then pressed their approach into what was essentially an academic lecture course. This was truly novel in history of the west, and eventually gave rise to such leading lights as Anselm and Ralph of Laon who made the first concerted effort toward a systematic theology and provided the inspiration and impetus for Thomas Aquinas’s mammoth Summa Theologica (Smalley, 49, 196).

Movements like the Victorines, then, provided the impetus for the development of universities where the Bible, spirituality, and the natural world were approached in an increasingly intellectual manner. This development, called Scholasticism, was further fueled by historic movements that forced prominent scholars to flee from the east and settle in the west, bringing with them vital, ancient texts that had been all but lost to the west. Among these works were the writings of Aristotle which were banned and burned by the church, but which were eventually enshrined in the official teaching of the church via the writings of Aquinas. In Aristotle, Aquinas saw a model for envisioning the world and organizing truth that was, to his mind, superior to Plato. Aquinas did not reject Augustine (who admired Plato), but he astutely modified Augustine’s approach.

Delighting in the Word of God: Hearing the Word

The ancient charge that God gave to Israel still applies to his people today. The Lord said to them, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). To hear the Lord is to listen to his words and take them to heart that we might love him with everything in us and walk in his ways. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart” (6:5-6).

In one sense, the Lord commanded his people to hear his words because they were, for the most part, illiterate people who could not read them. But in another sense, he commanded them to hear his words because he made people in his image to be part of a living, loving relationship with him. Even as a loving father speaks to his children and makes his heart and desires known, so the Lord speaks to his people and makes his glory, will, and ways known. Even as a loving child will listen, trust, and obey her father, so the people of God are called to lovingly listen, trust, and obey their God.

Then, as God’s people learn to hear his heart and walk in his ways, they’re called to diligently teach those ways to those with whom the Lord has given them influence. “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (6:7). In other words, they’re called to be like their heavenly Father and teach his will and ways to others. They’re called to enter so deeply into his love and wisdom that they live to spread a passion for his glory and purposes.

Since this life-giving process begins with hearing the words of God, his people are to do what they must to remind themselves to listen to him day by day. “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (6:8-9). These instructions are not so much about the particulars as they are about this principle: remind yourself to listen and then listen!

Listen to the words of God by reading them aloud in worship services, in smaller gatherings, at home, and even at work. Listen to the words of God by taking advantage of audio Bibles or Bible apps like You Version. Listen to the words of God by sitting under expository preaching where the Bible is explained, illuminated, and applied to life. But whatever you do, remind yourself to listen and then listen!

As you do, I have one more word of wisdom for you. While it’s good to listen to large portions of the Bible and a variety of expository sermons, its better to listen to less and do more with what you hear. Train yourself to listen well, understand the meaning, and apply what you’ve heard to life. Remember that loving obedience is the goal of regular hearing.

Living by Faith: The Faith of Rahab

Over the last three posts in this series, I’ve summarized Moses’ and Joshua's lives of faith as described in Hebrews 11:23-30 in the form of a “first-person narrative,” that is, I’ve essentially spoken as though I was Moses. Along the way, I’ve taken some creative and interpretive license, but this was not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it was an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible. Today I will continue this form of narration by creatively summarizing a crucial moment in Rahab's live of faith as described in Hebrews 11:31, “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies."

When Joshua finished speaking, he joyfully took his seat and invited his friend Rahab to rise and speak. “Hello, everyone, as Joshua said, my name is Rahab and I just want to speak a few words. When Israel crossed the Jordan by the power of God and under the leadership of Joshua, I heard about what the Lord was about to do in our land and my heart feared him. But it was a strange fear. I did feel in danger and I didn’t want to die, but I also felt in awe of this God who had moved in Egypt and then on the eastern side of Jordan and now in our very midst. Though I find it hard to explain, I can only say that I wanted to know him. Praise be to his name, the Lord saw my heart and he was so kind to me. I don’t mind telling you that at the time I was a prostitute who sold my body for money. I was an object to men and a wretch to myself, but in his loving-kindness the Lord sent his servants to me, I was kind to them, and they spared me.

“Believe it or not, the Lord made me to be the great-great-grandmother of David the King of Israel! Can you believe that? The Lord made me—Rahab the prostitute—to be Rahab the distant grandmother of the Lord Jesus Christ, and this because I simply listened to his speech through his servants, did exactly what I was told to do by faith, and then sat back and watched the Lord move in grace and power. 

"O Beloved, the time will come when I will tell you many more stories, but just before you re-engage in your own battle of faith, I want to say that our God is great and gracious, and that all of his promises are true. All that the Lord says he will surely do, so listen to him, believe him, cling to his words, and live by faith. If you will look to him, he will show himself faithful to you, and one day you will join us, the mighty throng who lives to give glory to him who is steadfast in love and faithful to all his words. Thank you, and glory be to God!”

Hermeneutics and Homiletics: The Early Church (1st-5th Centuries), Part 2

As I mentioned in the last post in this series, Origen of Alexandria exercised an extraordinary influence over western exegesis by developing and promoting a Christianized version of the allegorical method of interpretation. While his erudition and production of materials is laudable, his philosophy was and is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, as he grew in influence, a counter-movement arose in Syrian Antioch (north of Jerusalem near the Mediterranean coast) to defend the gospel that it might continue to be proclaimed throughout the earth.

About one century before Origen rose to prominence, Theophilus of Antioch developed a Christianized approach to hermeneutics that would pave the way for a sound response to him. This approach was more influenced by Jewish exegesis, and to a lesser extent Aristotle, than by Philo, Plato, and Hellenistic allegorization.

On the basis of that approach, Diodore of Antioch issued a penetrating critique of, and alternative to, the allegorical method in a key work entitled, What is the Difference Between Contemplation [theoria] and Allegory? In this work, Diodore rejects the excesses of Alexandria but not everything that came out of Alexandria. That is, his work was more corrective than divisive. Then, for example, in his introduction to the Psalms, he distinguished between historia (the historical background), lexis (the literal sense), theoria (the fuller sense that is discerned through careful exegesis, understanding of the lexis, and contemplation), and allegory. He rejected allegory as a valid method of interpretation because in actual practice the proponents thereof tended to divorce the allegorical sense from the literal sense and thus do violence to the text. He did, however, retain the spiritual sense (theoria) because, in agreement with the broad consensus of the church, he argued that there is indeed more to the Scripture than the plain meaning of the words. But this “more” is always inseparably united with the literal sense so that one may build upon the literal but one may not go beyond the literal.

One convenient way of summarizing the difference between these two schools of thought is this: whereas Alexandria looked at Scripture and saw two meanings, Antioch looked at Scripture and saw a double-meaning (Goldsworthy, 98). The former often tends toward flights of fancy, while the latter preserves the vital relationship between type and antitype without making mincemeat of the literal sense (see Bray, 105-107; Dockery, 103-128; Hall, 156-176).

Unfortunately, there were some at Antioch who pushed the literal sense too far and also made mincemeat of the Scripture and Christian theology. Most important among these is perhaps Nestorius whose Christology was rightly rejected as heresy, and whose shadow largely spoiled what otherwise would have been the lasting legacy of Antioch. But God is faithful, and he caused leading lights such as Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine to rise up and correct the excesses of Alexandria as well. Augustine in particular, though he did not go as far as I would have liked in rejecting allegorization, popularized a modified approach to hermeneutics and homiletics that would guide the church for centuries to come.

Following the lead of John Cassian (Dockery, 158), Augustine argued for four senses of Scripture: the literal, the allegorical, the tropological (moral), and the anagogical (eschatological). For him, this meant that there is a fourfold meaning to every text that, on the foundation of the literal, expresses faith, love, and hope. He insisted on the importance of the literal, and though he sometimes strayed from his own principles and sadly misinterpreted this or that text, he was eminently more faithful to the text than Origen. His approach dominated the world of hermeneutics and homiletics throughout the middle ages, so much so that the entire era seems to be a series of footnotes on Augustine.

Reflecting on the era of the early church as a whole, Hall helpfully articulates four lessons we should learn from them: on the whole, (1) they read the Bible holistically as one book in two testaments, (2) they read the Bible Christologically as a singular message rooted in the person of Jesus, (3) they read the Bible in community, and (4) they read the Bible within the context of a life of prayer, worship, and spiritual formation (Hall, 191-200). We would indeed do well to humbly learn of them and follow their lead in these several ways.