Patristic Exegesis as Ecclesial and Sacramental

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Patristic Exegesis as Ecclesial

and Sacramental

William C. Weinrich

Recently, a well-known television evangelist held aloft in his

hand the Bible from which he was preaching. �This,� he

proclaimed with a loud voice, �is the eternal, ever-living word

of God, which shall never pass away, shall never be destroyed,

and shall never be conquered.� This was foundational material

for his message, that because the Bible was the �eternal, ever-

living word of God,� the counsel and direction it gives is certain

for those who choose to follow it. What counsel and direction

does it give? It provides direction for the victorious life

characterized by prosperity, happiness, contentment, and, yes,

the reception of all that one needs and desires�what one

needing being roughly coterminous with what one desires. Why

is it that this preacher, who holds such an exalted estimation of

the Bible, does not see the Bible as possessing as its sole, all-

encompassing message the death and resurrection of Jesus for

the life of the world?

Perhaps the stage setting in which this preaching took place

offers a clue. The stage was set up as though a comfortable

living-room; the couches were spacious, allowing the people

sitting there to adopt an informal, lounging posture, appropriate

for casual conversation. The space was decorated with winding

staircase, huge glass mirrors, and sizeable flora, all

unmistakably suggesting comfort, ease, and prosperity. The

dress code corresponded, slacks and casual sweaters being the

attire of the day.

Despite asseverations to the contrary, style and substance do

tend to follow one another. Might I suggest that the same is true

of Bible study and interpretation. If the home Bible study

becomes the interpretive context for reading and understanding

the Bible, we should not be surprised if idiosyncratic and

strange doctrines are derived from the text. The cozy question,

�What does the Bible mean to you?� is a sure-fire method for

ensuring that the message of the Scriptures according to its own

intrinsic and given meaning will ultimately be lost.

Concordia Theological Quarterly

64 (January 2000) no. 1:39-60

�2000 Concordia Theological Seminary

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One may see �It�s Trendy to Love Jesus Now,� The Fort Wayne Journal

Gazette, January 16, 1999, 4A.

The context in which the Bible is read and expounded is not

unimportant to its interpretation. That raises an interesting

question. Why is it that in the context of the church�s worship

and liturgy, and most especially in the context of the church�s

sacramental action, the Bible is read at all? This may seem to be

a self-evident question. Yet, often those practices that seem most

evident are those which hide considerable significance. Do we

read the Bible in the context of the church�s worship because

this text is the traditional text, the text of our history presenting

to us the interpretative symbols of our particular community?

Or, do we read the Bible because this text is thought to be the

inspired, inerrant text whose words to us are reliable and can be

trusted as we strive to fulfill its precepts and to believe its

words?

The early church was not unacquainted with questions such

as these and had an answer to them. The Scriptures are read in

the church because the Scriptures are the church�s book. For the

Scriptures to be read outside the church or apart from the

church is for them to be decontextualized. That is, read apart

from the church, the Scriptures are abstracted from and placed

apart from those realities to which they in fact refer.

To put this in a somewhat provocative manner, the biblical

text is not in any absolute sense its own context. For it to be

considered, as it were, alone and unto itself, is for it ultimately

to become a hidden and undecipherable book, open to various

meanings as it finds�as it must�new contexts for its

interpretation. If it is true, as a recent article claims, that Jesus

has become a �growth industry� because �he lends himself so

agreeably to �90s values� and �comes dressed up in the clothes

of our own culture,� we would be wholly naive to think that the

Bible itself is immune from similar metamorphoses. If Jesus is

especially popular because people want �an easily translatable

God,� one which is tradition free, context free, and generic,

is not surprising that in our time, when the Bible is a money-

making best seller, the people reading it are non-committal

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Patristic Exegesis as Ecclesial and Sacramental

concerning the church and illiterate concerning its doctrinal

substance.

How then did the early church consider the Scriptures and the

reading and interpretation of them? Let us first make the

general observation that in their comment on the Scriptures the

fathers were not primarily interested in the historical or

grammatical significance of the text. To be sure, the fathers were

often thoroughly acquainted with the grammatical and literary

critical methods taught in the secular, pagan schools. This is

clear from the rhetorical sophistication of Melito of Sardis and

the complexity of Cappadocian textual argument. Nonetheless,

although grammatical and literary methods could be used, and

often were used, they did not determine the message of the text.

Indeed, it is possible that the fathers did not think such methods

even necessary to understand the message of the Scriptures.

They often argue issues of grammar and literary criticism to

counter arguments of heretics and other false interpreters. But

the foundation upon which the fathers stood to read and to

interpret the Scriptures lies elsewhere.

To put the point simply, but completely, the foundation upon

which early Christian interpretation rested was Christ. Robert

Wilken has compared the comments of Theodore of Mopsuestia

on the prophesy of Isaiah 2 with those of Jerome, Cyril of

Alexandria, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Isaiah prophesied

concerning the return of the people to Jerusalem:

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of

the Lord shall be established as the highest of the

mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the

nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and

say: �Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the

house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us His ways

and that we may walk in His paths� (Isaiah 2:2-3).

Theodore, perhaps the most consistent of Antiochene

exegetes, insists on giving only a grammatical, historical

interpretation to the text of Isaiah, and for that reason refuses to

give to it any messianic interpretation. Theodore writes: �I do

not know how one could be brought to say that [these things

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Robert Wilken, �In novissimis diebus: Biblical Promises, Jewish Hopes, and

Early Christian Exegesis,� in Remembering the Christian Past (Grand Rapids:

Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 95-119. This quote of Theodore, from his

Commentary on Micah, is on page 105.

Wilken, �In novissimis diebus ,� 116.

spoken by the prophet about the return from Babylon] are a

type of the events that took place at the time of the Lord Christ.

For it is clear that every type has a correspondence to the thing

of which it is type.�

Theodore was working from a particular definition of what

constituted a type, and he did not see the required

�correspondences� to conclude that the Old Testament

prophecy concerning the return from Babylon had the events of

Christ in mind. Literary assumptions and convictions

determined biblical interpretation. For their understanding of

the prophecy of Isaiah, on the other hand, Jerome, Cyril, and

Theodoret, took as key the indication of time that begins chapter

2: �It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the

house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the

mountains.� They discerned in this indication of time the

economy of divine activity which made any reference in the

Isaianic text to the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple

impossible and made reference rather to Christ and to His

church necessary, for in them the last days had come. In his

comments, Theodoret cites the quotation of Joel 2:28-32 in Acts

2:17 and following and notes that, unlike Joel, Luke began the

passage with the words �in the last days.� Secondly, Theodoret

cites Hebrews 1:1, �In many and various ways God spoke to our

ancestors by the prophets, but in these last days God has spoken

to us by His Son.�

In the coming of Christ and of the Holy

Spirit, that is, in the establishment of the apostolic church, the

�last days� had come. Any reference to the �last days� in the

Old Testament must necessarily refer to Christ and to His

church.

What determined the interpretation of the Scriptures,

therefore, was not a particular literary theory, nor the

definitions of tropes, hyperbole, types, and the like, nor any

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Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Phil. 8:2. One may see The Epistles of Saint Clement

of Rome and Saint Ignatius of Antioch, translated by James A. Kleist

(Westminster, Maryland: Newman Bookshop; London: Longmans, Green,

and Co., 1961), 85-89.

theory of semantics and communication. What determined

interpretation was a particular set of historical events�the

salvific events of the life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of

Jesus. When Ignatius of Antioch was in dispute with certain

Judaizing Christians in Philadelphia, he answered their claim

that they would not believe something to be in the gospel if it

could not be found in the �ancient texts� by responding, �To me

the ancient texts are Jesus Christ, the sacred archives are His

cross and His death and His resurrection and the faith which is

through Him.�

The history of Jesus Christ determined what

was to be perceived in the Old Testament; prophecy did not

determine what the fulfillment would be, but that which was

intended by God as His final and consummating purpose, the

fulfillment, determined what was given by the Spirit to the

prophets to say and to do.

It is true, then, that patristic exegesis was first and foremost

Christological. When Christ opened the minds of the apostles to

understand the Scriptures and said that His sufferings and

resurrection and the apostolic preaching of repentance and the

forgiveness of sins to the nations were the content of the

Scriptures (Luke 24:44-49), He simply catechized them to do

what then they did, preach Christ on the basis of the Scriptures

because they testify of Him. This apostolic preaching is nowhere

more significantly and canonically stated than in the four

Gospels, which are nothing other than the record of the life,

death, and resurrection of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old

Testament writings and of the institutions of Israel concerning

which they speak. The four Gospels are the exposition of the

Old Testament in terms of its messianic fulfillment. Not to read

the Old Testament documents in terms of their Christological

meaning is to rob them of their teleological and eschatological

intention.

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Lutheran Worship (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1982), 188.

Allow me to illustrate. The prophet Zechariah speaks of the

�day of the Lord� in terms of the symbolism and rites of the

Festival of Tabernacles: �On that day living waters shall flow

out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of

them to the western sea� (Zechariah 14:8). When the Evangelist

John reports that Jesus, in Jerusalem during the Festival of

Tabernacles, cries out, �If anyone thirsts, let him come to me,

and let him who believes in me drink, as the Scripture says, �Out

of His belly shall flow rivers of living water,�� he lays the basis

for the later report that when the soldiers thrust the spear into

the side of Jesus water and blood came flowing out. If, as John

would have it, the prophecy of the living waters that were to

flow out from Jerusalem on the �day of the Lord� finds its

fulfillment in the passion of Jesus, where is the �new Jerusalem�

of which the New Testament speaks to be located? Clearly the

�new Jerusalem� exists there where the death of the Lord is

located, in the preaching of the crucified, in the baptism into His

death, and in the body and blood given and shed. In �the last

days� things Old Testament become themselves re-

contextualized. In this case, the �new Jerusalem� is no longer to

be regarded as part of geographical Israel, and therefore bound

up in struggles of near eastern geo-political strife. The �new

Jerusalem� is the home of spiritual Israel, the church, in which

the crucified continues to be proffered in preaching and the

sacraments. It is, therefore, wholly commensurate with this

Christological and ecclesial understanding that at the beginning

of the eucharistic service the hymn, �What shall I render to the

Lord for all His benefits to me?� is sung. This introductory

hymn concludes with these words: �I will pay my vows to the

Lord now in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the

Lord�s house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem.�

To be in the

liturgy of the church is to be in the �new Jerusalem.� Not

coincidentally, therefore, Saint Paul speaks of Israel having been

baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and having

eaten and drunk the supernatural food and drink and then

refers these narratives to us �upon whom the consummation of

the age has come� (1 Corinthians 10:11).

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Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Smyrn. 8:2. One may see The Epistles of Saint

Clement of Rome and Saint Ignatius of Antioch, 90-95.

For example, Isaiah 5:26; 11:10,12; 18:3; 49:22; 62:10.

Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Eph. 13. One may see The Epistles of Saint Clement

of Rome and Saint Ignatius of Antioch, 60-68.

It is precisely this conviction, that in Christ and His church the

�end of the age� has come, that governs patristic exegesis and

makes it Christological and ecclesial. A few examples will

illustrate. In his letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius of Antioch

(died about

. 110) presents an anti-docetic creedal form

which ends like this: �in reality (`)kgpv}i) He was nailed in the

flesh under Pontius Pilate and Herod . . . in order that He might

raise up a standard for the ages through the resurrection for His

saints and faithful, whether among the Jews or among the

Gentiles, in the one body of His church.�

The raising of the

standard refers to certain Old Testament prophecies, which

speak of God raising an ensign/standard in the last days to

which His people in diaspora, and also the Gentiles, would

gather.

Commentators on Ignatius are virtually unanimous in

the view that for Ignatius this standard is the cross of Christ,

and I concur with that view. However, it does not sufficiently

interpret Ignatius� meaning. The creedal form of Ignatius says

that this standard shall be raised �in the one body of His

church.� But where, for Ignatius, is the passion of Christ �in the

one body of His church�? Reading Ignatius, it would be difficult

not to conclude that the passion of Christ in the one body of the

church is the eucharist. Typically, therefore, Ignatius speaks of

the gathering around the eucharist in wholly eschatological

terms:

Be zealous, therefore, to come together more often unto the

eucharist of God and unto glory. For whenever you are

often in one place, the powers of Satan are destroyed, and

the ruination that he causes is done away within the

harmony of your faith. Nothing is better than peace, in

which every warfare in heaven and on earth is overcome.

With this eucharistic center of Ignatian thinking in mind, one

reads other passages differently than one might otherwise. For

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Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Phil. 9:1-2.

example, take this passage from his letter to the church in

Philadelphia, which more extensively than any other expresses

the view of Ignatius concerning the relationship of the Old

Testament to the New Testament:

Indeed the priests were good, but better is the High Priest

who has been entrusted with the Holy of Holies, who alone

has been entrusted with the hidden things of God. He

Himself is the door of the Father, through whom enter

Abraham and Isaak and Jacob and the prophets and the

apostles and the church. All of these things into the unity

of God. The gospel possesses something distinctive,

namely, the presence of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ,

His passion and resurrection. For the beloved prophets

proclaimed in view of Him, but the gospel is the

completion of incorruption. And all things taken together

are good, if you are faithful in agape.

Here Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament priesthood,

the fulfillment of the preaching of the prophets, and also the

fulfillment of the patriarchal history. He is also the door for the

apostlesandthe church. All the canonical history has itsfulfilled

center in Him. But this Christological center is found in what

Ignatius calls the �unity of God� and the �agape.� In my

reading of Ignatius, I find it impossible to interpret �the unity of

God� and the �agape� as anything other than the eucharistic

gathering of the church, an interpretation that the mention of

the �Holy of Holies� in this passage supports. For Ignatius, the

church in its eucharistic assembly is gathered around the

passion of Jesus, which is �our resurrection,� and this is the

�completion of incorruptibility.�

Because the ecclesial and sacramental realities are regarded as

the true and final referents of Old Testament prophetic event

and oracle, it is evident why a typological exegesis occurs so

often in preaching that is explicitly liturgical and sacramental.

The eventful character of the church�s sacramental liturgy sums

up and brings to completion the events of the Old Testament

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Melito of Sardis, Peri Pasha 1. The Greek text and an English translation

are available in On Pascha and Fragments, texts and translations edited by

Stuart George Hall (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1979).

Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, 2, 4.

Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, 36.

covenant. An outstanding instance of this is the paschal homily

of Melito of Sardis (died about

. 190). Melito begins by

explicitly referring to the exodus narrative of the Old Testament,

which clearly has just been read to the gathered Christians: �The

Scripture from the Hebrew Exodus has been read and the words

of the mystery have been plainly stated.�

Immediately, Melito

introduces the interpretative-homiletic device of typology:

Understand (bt/mdsd), therefore, O beloved, how it is new

and old, eternal and temporary, perishable and

imperishable, mortal and immortal, this mystery of the

Pascha . . . . Old is the law but new the Word; temporary

the type but eternal the grace; perishable the sheep,

imperishable the Lord. . . . For the type indeed existed, but

then the reality (`)kg/pdh`) appeared.

After giving a summary of the paschal narrative in the book

of Exodus, Melito compares the Old Testament narrative to the

preliminary sketch of a sculptor:

This is what occurs in the case of a preliminary sketch; it

does not arise as a [finished] work, but [it exists] on behalf

of that thing which is going to be seen on the basis of this

image which is serving as a model. The sketch is made out

of wax or clay or wood on behalf of that which is going to

be. . . . But when that of which it is type has come, that

which bore the image of the future thing is destroyed,

having become useless, the image of it yielding to that

which is really true (sv}{ et/rdh `0kgpdh

). That which once was

precious becomes worthless, when that which is precious

by nature is manifested.

What is this �future thing� which is �precious by nature�?

Melito gives the answer:

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Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, 39-43, here especially 40.

Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, 46.

For the salvation of the Lord and the realities (`0kg/pdh`)

were prefigured in the people, and the decrees of the

gospelwereproclaimedbeforehandbythelaw.Thepeople

then was a type by way of a preliminary sketch, and the

law was the writing of a parable; the gospel is the

recounting and fulfillment of the law, and the church is the

repository of the reality (sg<i `0kgpdh/`i).

As theremainder of the homily indicates, the ChristianPascha

is not only the fulfillment of the Exodus narrative; it is also the

fulfillment of all history. For in explaining the �Pascha,� Melito

recounts the creation, the fall, the spread of sinful destruction

throughout the world, and then he summarizes the �prior

arrangements for [Christ�s] own sufferings� in the patriarchs, in

the prophets, and in the whole people. This recounting of the

biblical narrative has as its purpose that the people might learn

�who is the suffering one, and who shares the suffering of the

suffering one, and why the Lord is present on the earth to clothe

Himself with the suffering one and carry him off to the heights

of heaven.�

Here the �suffering one� is Adam and all

humankind who suffer with him, and the one �who shares the

suffering of the suffering one� is Christ who is come from

heaven in order that the �suffering one,� that is, Adam, might

be exalted to heaven with Christ. This is the meaning of the

Christian Pascha.

In the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons (died about

. 200) we

have an especially trenchant and thoroughgoing hermeneutical

reflection that both elicits and, as well, is grounded in a

narrative biblical theology. Irenaeus was facing a spiritualizing

Gnosticism, which, in its rejection of God as the Creator,

regarded all things of the created order and of the flesh,

including all historical events and all literal words, as external

symbol of that which was, in fact, real, namely the divine

Fullness, or Pleroma. Because no concrete and particular thing

had any intrinsic meaning but was mere image of a higher,

spiritual order, created things had no specific relation to one

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Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I.8.1. An English translation is available in The Ante-

Nicene Fathers, volume 1, The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus,

edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (New York: Christian

Literature Publishing Company, 1885), 315-567.

another. This meant that neither the actual works of God, nor

the scriptural narratives had any meaningful order or sequence.

This did not mean that the Gnostics did not quote the Scriptures;

in fact, they used the Scriptures as much as the orthodox did.

The problem was that the Gnostics, having no regard for the

inherent order of things or the proper relation of one thing to

another, �violently draw away from their proper connection,

words and expressions and parables� to adapt the oracles of

God to their own made-up storyline. They �disregard the order

and connection of the Scriptures and dismember and destroy

the members of the Truth,� transferring passages, dressing them

up in different ways, and making one thing out of another. In a

well-known passage, Irenaeus likens the Gnostic use of

Scripture to a person who, coming upon the pieces of a

shattered statue, attempts to put the statue together again but

arranges the pieces falsely so that they come to depict a fox,

when in fact the original statue was of a king.

However,

should someone know the original statue and again arrange the

pieces, but this time in proper order, the image of the fox would

immediately be disproven as a proper rendering of the pieces.

So it is for that person �who retains unchangeable in his heart

the rule of the Truth which he received by means of baptism.�

This person will recognize the biblical names, expressions, and

stories used by the Gnostics. But restoring each of them to its

proper position and fitting them all into �the body of the Truth,�

he will both lay bare the false understanding of the heretic and

restore to the Scripture its own intrinsic and true meaning.

To comprehend the full significance of Irenaeus� argument,

we must briefly consider what he means by the phrase �the

body of the Truth.� The word �Truth� does not refer primarily

to the truth value of the church�s doctrines or to the truth value

of the statements of Scripture. For Irenaeus the �Truth� is the

actual saving and revealing acts of God from the beginning

work of creation to the incarnation of the Word and the

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One may see Thomas F. Torrance, �Kerygmatic Proclamation of the

Gospel: The Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching of Irenaios of Lyons,� The

Greek Orthodox Theological Review37 (Spring-Winter 1992): 105-121, especially

108-109.

outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The �Truth� is not the spiritual

Pleroma of the Gnostic imagination; it is that which is real and

concrete and historical and personal, precisely because it is the

work of Him who is known only as our Creator. However, this

�Truth� begins with the creation and moves through the

election of Israel, the patriarchs, the giving of the law, the

proclamation of the prophets, and finally receives its

consummation in the reality of the incarnated Word and the

coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The �Truth,� therefore,

has an intrinsic structure and sequence, an order given by God

Himself in the facticity of His temporal, economic activity,

which, again, reaches from creation to the coming of the Spirit

in the incarnation of the Word and the constitution of the

church. It was this economy, intended by God from the

beginning, that was imprinted by the prophetic Spirit upon the

minds of the prophets so that they foresaw and foretold, albeit

in type and enigma, that the One through whom all was made

would at the last times be made man. Similarly, when the last

times had in truth arrived in the coming of the enfleshed Word

and the Spirit, this economy took shape in the minds of the

apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. For that reason,

the apostolic preachment proclaimed the Christ and the reality

of the church as the consummation of the creative intent of the

God, which He had foreshadowed and foretold in the election

of Israel, the patriarchs, the giving of the law, and the

proclamation of the prophets.

In his Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, Irenaeus begins

by speaking of faith and �Truth.� On the basis of Isaiah 7:9

(LXX), �If you do not have faith, you will not understand,�

Irenaeus argues that faith rests on things that truly exist. �For

we believe in the things that are, as they are, and believing in

things that are, as they are, we keep firm confidence in them.

Since faith is intimately bound up with our salvation, we must

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Irenaeus, Epideixis 3; one may also see Torrance, �Kerygmatic

Preaching,� 106-107. For a translation of the original, one may see Saint

Irenaios. The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, translated from the

Armenian with introduction and notes by J. Armitage Robinson (London,

1920).

Irenaeus, Epideixis, 3.

Irenaeus, Epideixis, 6; also Epideixis 7.

take great care to have a true understanding of the things that

are.�

However, this faith, which is grounded on the things that are,

namely the Truth, is given in the real thing of baptism. The

doctrine handed down from the apostles exhorts us �to

remember that we have received baptism for remission of sins

in the Name of God the Father, and in the Name of Jesus Christ,

the Son of God, who became incarnate and died and was raised,

and in the Holy Spirit of God; and that this baptism is the seal

of eternal life and is rebirth unto God, that we be no more

children of mortal men, but of the eternal and everlasting

God.�

Baptism into the Triune God is the summation and

completion of that economy of works that were begun at

creation and �in the end of times� were ended in the incarnation

of the Word for the abolition of death, the bringing of life to

light, and the effecting of the communion of God with man, and

in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a new manner upon

humanity over all the earth renewing man to God.

We can see

in this reflection of Irenaeus that the creed of the church is not

merely a human production of faith; nor is it the result of a

deduction process of reading the Scriptures. The creed, precisely

in its trinitarian structure and sequence, is a summary of the

�Truth,� which reaches its consummation in baptism. The

movement of the creed from Father, through Son, ending in the

Holy Spirit, is nothing other than the very structure of God�s

economic activity, also proclaimed through the prophets and the

apostles in the narrative of the Scriptures. Both statements are

true: the creed is a summary of the prophet and apostolic

Scriptures, and the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures are the

canonical commentary on the creed. For this reason, the creed

is a certain key for the interpretation of the Scriptures.

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De Incarnatione Dei Verbi, et contra Arianos 1 (from now on, De Incarn. et

c. Ar.). The Scripture passage cited is John 5:26. Other passages which the

Arians were using included Mark 10:18; Matt. 26:32; Mark 13:32; John 10:36;

Galatians 1:1. The text of De Incarnatione Dei Verbi, et contra Arianos may be

found in Migne, Patrologia Graece, 26.984-1028.

De Incarn. et c. Ar . 1. The quote from Paul is 2 Corinthians 8:9.

Moreover, the reality of baptism itself is a hermeneutical reality

for understanding the Scriptures, for it is the reality of the death

and resurrection of the incarnate Word for us, given to us by the

gift of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life. In baptism we

enter �the end of times� and become ourselves that which the

prophets foresaw and foretold.

So far we have remained within the patristic literature of the

second century. However, the rich literature of the fourth and

fifth centuries continues the same interpretive interest. As

representative of the developed patristic argument, the work

entitled �Concerning the Incarnation and Against the Arians,�

often attributed to Marcellus of Ancyra, is a good source. The

Arians were using the passages concerning the poverty of the

Son to argue that He could not be co-essential with God the

Father: �How can He be similar [to the Father] or how is He

from the essence of the Father, when it is written, �As the Father

has life in Himself, so He has given also to the Son to have life

in Himself.�� There is a superiority, the Arians claimed, of the

One giving over the one receiving.

Therefore, such passages in

Scripture that say that God gave something to the Christ

indicate that the Word Himself was in some way promoted and

improved, and that therefore the nature of the Word is alterable

and not divine. However, writes Marcellus, �the entire and

precise significance of Christianity is found in lowly words and

deeds� (o`&r` cd[ `0jqh/adh` snt< Wqhrsh`mhrlnt< d0m snh<i dt0sdkd/rh

qg&l`rh j`h[ oq`&fl`rhm), and he quotes Paul to establish his

hermeneutical and doctrinal principle: �For you know the grace

of our Lord Jesus Christ, how, although He was rich, yet He

became poor for our sakes, so that we by His poverty might

become rich.�

In the light of this Pauline guidance, Marcellus

undertakes to explain the �force of these words� (namely, the

passages of lowliness) �according to our ability.� When Paul

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De Incarn. et c. Ar. 2.

De Incarn. et c. Ar. 3.

De Incarn. et c. Ar. 4.

says that �the Father has raised His Son from the dead�

(Galatians 1:1), we learn also from John that Jesus said, �Destroy

this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,� and that He

said this concerning His body. Therefore, concludes Marcellus,

in passages of lowliness and humility, what is said about the

person of the Word, is said about His body. When it is written

that the Father has given life to His Son, we are to understand

that it is to Christ�s flesh that life has been given.

There follows

a brief reflection on the incarnation:

For the Most High is not exalted (that is, the Son

considered according to His own nature) but the flesh of

the Most High is exalted. . . . The Word of God does not

receive the right to be called �God� by grace, but His flesh

with Himself is called �God� (d0pdnknfg/pg). It did not say

that the Word became God, but that the Word was God. It

says that the Word was eternally God, and that this very

One who is God became flesh, in order that His flesh might

become God the Word.

The incarnation is such that the flesh is not attached to the

Word so that it exists in external relation to the Word, nor is the

flesh merely possessed by the Word. Rather, the incarnation is

such that the flesh is assumed into the Person of the Word, so

that the flesh itself becomes Word. The man, Jesus, is the divine

Word. Therefore, writes Marcellus, �When it is said in Scripture

that the Son has received, or that the Son has been glorified, it

is said because of his humanity and not because of His

divinity.�

However, this Christological reflection does not simply serve

to define the person of Christ, so that, as it were, in the narrative

of Christ�s life, death, resurrection, and exaltation He alone was

being considered. This Christological reflection serves the

interpretative task of perceiving in the Scriptures the narrative

of salvation for us. And this was the huge difference between

the Arian and the orthodox hermeneutic. While the Arians read

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De Incarn. et c. Ar. 5.

De Incarn. et c. Ar. 6

De Incarn. et c. Ar. 12.

the gospel narratives as though they were simply about the Son,

so that the language of lowliness suggested immediately that He

was by nature lowly, the orthodox read the gospel narratives

within a different thematic context, namely, as the narrative of

our salvation through Christ and, perhaps even more

importantly, in Christ. As Marcellus writes: �The immortal God

did not come to save Himself, but to save those who had died;

and He did not suffer on His own behalf, but for us; so that for

this reason did He take on Himself our lowliness and poverty,

in order that He might by grace give to us His richness.�

And now comes the real point:

When He therefore says, �The Lord created me as the

beginning of His ways,� He is speaking concerning the

church which is created in Him. For the Maker of all things

is neither created nor made, but that which is made is

being renewed in Him who is the Maker, as Paul said: �We

are His workmanship, having been created in Christ

Jesus.�

And again, a little later:

Whatsoever the Scripture says that the Son received, it says

concerning His Body, which Body is the first-fruit of the

church. For Christ is the first-fruit. Therefore, when the

first-fruit received the Name which is above every name,

also the lump was raised with Him in power and was

seated with Him, according to what was said: �He raised

us and enthroned us with [Him].�

And where does this �raising� and �enthroning� take place?

In his comments on John 17:11 (�Let them be one as we are

one�), Athanasius gives an answer. Because the flesh of Christ

is the constituting reality of the church, those united to it by way

of baptism participate in eternal life �no longer as men but as

proper to the Word� (h1chnh snt} Kn&fnt). This is because in

baptism

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Athanasius, Orat. c. Ar. 3.33. The text of Orationes contra Arianos may be

found in Migne, Patrologia Graece, 26.321-468. An English translation is

available in �Four Discourses against the Arians� in the Nicene and Post-

Nicene Fathers,second series, volume 4,Saint Athanasius:Select Works and Letters,

edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: Christian Literature

Publishing Co., 1892), 411-412.

Leo the Great, Epistle, 31.3, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second

series, volume 12, Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, edited by Philip Schaff and

Henry Wace (Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895), 45.

our origin (fdmd/rdvi) and our infirmity of flesh has been

transferred to the Word . . . so that being born again from

above through water and the Spirit, in Christ we are all

made alive, the flesh no longer being earthly but having

been made Word (knfvpdh/rgi) through the Word of God

who for us became flesh.

In a similar way, Leo the Great maintains that the personal

unity of Christ�s two natures reveals �the mystery of

regeneration,� for �through the self-same Spirit through whom

Christ was conceived and born, we too, who were born through

the desire of the flesh, might be born again from a spiritual

source.�

In baptism the story of the restoration of humankind

in Him who is the Second Adam becomes our story, that is, the

story concerning us. Not that it happens in us again, as it was

with Christ, but that we, being made one with Him, participate

in His story, narrated apostolically, that is, canonically, in the

narratives of the four Gospels.

Ambrose tells us that in the Church at Milan the newly

baptized chanted Psalm 23 as they processed from the baptistry

to the church for their first eucharist. This is what he says to

those who a few days before traversed this way:

How often have you heard Psalm 23 and not understood it!

See how it is applicable to the heavenly sacraments: �The

Lord feeds me and I shall want nothing; He has set me in

a place of pasture; He has brought me upon the water of

refreshment; He has converted my soul. He has led me on

the paths of justice for His own name�s sake. For though I

should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear

no evils, for you are with me. Your rod is power, the staff

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Ambrose, On the Sacraments 5:13. An English translation is available in

Saint Ambrose: Theological and Dogmatic Works, translated by Roy J. Deferrari

(Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 269-328.

suffering, that is, the eternal divinity of Christ, but also

corporeal suffering; the one created, the other redeemed.

You have prepared a table before me against them that

afflict me. You have anointed my head with oil; and my

chalice which inebriates me how goodly it is!�

This is a perfect example of an ecclesial and sacramental

reading of the Scriptures. It is not allegory, a fanciful imposition

of meaning upon an otherwise clear and literal meaning of an

Old Testament text. It is to read that Old Testament text in the

light of its full and consummated intention, that in those acts

that Christ instituted that He might be for us in them, we are the

true referents of the Scripture. They speak of us.

According to the seventh century Gelasian Sacramentary, after

the exorcism those to be baptized receive the four Gospels.

�Stand in silence and listen attentively,� proclaimed the deacon,

as he then read the beginning verses of the four gospels. After

this, the baptizands receive the creed and are told, �With

attentive minds you must learn the creed, and what we hand on

to you just as we received it, you must write on the pages of

your heart rather than on any easily destroyed material.� To

read the Gospels aright is to know the creed, and to know the

creed is to know the content of the Scriptures. Christians knew

this in the early middle ages. It is time that we learn it again