Old habits are hard to break. For years as an Anglican Christian, and a conservative, I battled with academics in the Anglican world whose primary agenda seemed to me (at the time) to be the destruction of Scripture. Their historical method generally resulted in students being told that this that and the other thing didn’t happen. This was most disturbing, particularly for those who chose to extend their scepticism to the very resurrection of Christ.
It was in such a context that I took up the defense of Scripture. But, of course, it is always the case that if you set yourself in a position of reaction, whatever it is that you are reacting against has already set the parameters of the argument – in some cases distorting all of the fundamental issues.
As years went by I became more and more familiar with the early Church Fathers and later with the use of Scripture in Orthodox liturgical settings. It was pointed out to me, when I was a graduate student at Duke, that Liberal Historical Critical Studies and Fundamentalist Literalism, were actually two sides of the same coin. Both agreed on the triumph of the historical. Both sought the meaning of the text within its historical original. History was their agreed upon battleground. To enter that battleground is already, from my later Orthodox perspective, to have surrendered the Truth as received by the Church. They are both profoundly wrong.
Learning to read the Old Testament with the mind of the Fathers, is learning to read the Old Testament not so much as historical prelude to Christ, but as Scripture, received as inspired, but seen as largely typological and always interpreted through Christ. God is as He is revealed in Christ and always has been. Thus, the NT reveals the Old and the right way for it to be read.
I offer a quote from St. Irenaeus:
If anyone, therefore, reads the scriptures this way, he will find in them the Word concerning Christ, and a foreshadowing of the new calling. For Christ is the “treasure which was hidden in the field” [Mat. 13:44] [a treasure] hidden in the scriptures, for he was indicated by means of types and parables, which could not be understood by human beings prior to the consummation of those things which had been predicted, that is, the advent of the Lord. And therefore it was said to Daniel the prophet, “Shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the consummation, until many learn and knowledge abounds. For, when the dispersion shall be accomplihsed, they shall know all these things” [Dan. 12:4, 7]. And Jeremiah also says, “In the last days they shall understand these things ” [Jer. 23:20]. For every prophecy, before its fulfillment, is nothing but an enigma and amibiguity to human beings; but when the time has arrived, and the prediction has come to pass, then it has an exact exposition [exegesis]. And for this reason, when at this present time the Law is read by the Jews, it is like a myth, for they do not possess the explanation [exegesis] of all things which pertain to the human advent of the Son of God: but when it is read by Christians, it is a treasure, hid in a field, but brought to light by the Cross of Christ, and explained, both enriching the understanding of humans, and showing forth the wisdom of God, and making known his dispensations with regard to human beings, and prefiguring the kingdom of Christ, and preaching in anticipation the good news of the inheritance of the holy Jerusalem, and proclaiming beforehand that the one who loves God shall advance so far as even to see God, and hear his Word, and be glorified, from hearing his speech, to such an extent, that others will not be able to behod his glorious countenance [cf. 2 Cor. 3:7], as was said by Daniel, “Those who understand shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and many of the righteous as the stars for ever and ever” [Dan. 12:3]. In this manner, then, I have show it to be, if anyone read the scriptures.
What so many moderns find difficult is leaving behind the presumptions of either modernist Biblical Criticism or fundamentalist literalism. They are deeply married to a historical paradigm. Whereas, the paradigm of the Church is Christ Himself. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is not judged by history but is the truth of history.
There are many passages in the OT that if read literally would lead us to believe in a God far removed from the one revealed to us in Christ. This is a false reading. But many are more married to their literal historical method (of whichever form) than to Christ. Unless the OT is literal, they reason, then everything else is not true.
This is not the beginning place of the Church. Truth was only ever vindicated for us in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and that alone is our Alpha and Omega. It troubles some to begin “in the middle” though Christ resurrected is not the middle but also the beginning and the ending, if we know how to read in an Apostolic manner. Many coming to Orthodoxy think it offers another historical proof of the faith, since it is the first foundation of Christ and has an impeccable historical pedigree. This is simply fundamentalism looking for another straw to erect in its support and not a true conversion to Orthodoxy.
Christ is risen from the dead and His resurrection becomes the center of all things. Only through His resurrection may the Old Testament be read. It’s historical claims (though many are quite strong) are not the issue. Christ is the only issue and the only Truth that matters. This is frightening to fundamentalists, for any loosening of their grip on historical literalism feels like failure and capitulation to modernism. But before either fundamentalist or modernist existed, the Church existed, and has always known how to read the Scriptures. Thus it behooves us not to look for Orthodoxy to support some other structure as the nature of Truth, but as witness to that which we have accepted as the Truth. Let the dead bury the dead. Read the Scriptures with the living.
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