Book Description
...the study of Chrysostom's exegetical work has a manifold importance of its own. The History of Doctrine cannot be rightly understood apart from the History of Interpretation. If the two are not to be confused, neither are they to be divorced. But the main value which a knowledge of this period of the history of Exegesis possesses lies in a different direction. It would not be difficult to point out many ways in which the crisis through which the Church and the World were passing in Chrysostom's time resembles the anxieties of our own generation. The comparison which I would suggest is not disproved because we thankfully acknowledge that the outlook now is rich in hopes which could hardly be felt then.To take but the one point which immediately concerns us,-the views about the Bible which the great teachers of Antioch held were not the same as those which had approved themselves a century before. There had been progress, but there had been no revolution. Newer methods of interpretation were transforming, not destroying, the older system. The responsibility of accurately investigating the actual words of Scripture was keenly felt, but the spiritual side of God's Revelation through the typical literature of Israel and of the Christian Church was not overlooked. The claims of criticism, so far as they could be understood then, and the claims of devotion were reconciled. And further, this higher and more accurate teaching was not reserved only for the initiated few. The honesty of the scholar passed at once into the fearless generosity of the preacher. Popular expositions were the immediate outcome of the highest critical knowledge of the time. And yet, as the fall of the Antiochene School shews, there was the accompanying danger, the twofold danger of treating as ascertained truths the conclusions of an individual teacher, and of regarding a dogmatic formula as something more than the partial expression of a larger truth.To point out in detail the significance of this history for our own times is unnecessary. But I would ask leave to emphasise a thought, the importance of which must grow clearer, the longer anyone learns, and tries to teach, Theology. The Bible is not an isolated phenomenon. Were it so, its difficulties might be thought insuperable. Long ago Origen taught that the Bible itself is in a true sense an Incarnation of the Divine Word. In proportion as we believe that the historical Incarnation of the Son of God is the central point of human history and of all life, we feel it natural that God should clothe a revelation of Himself in the fleshly garment of human language and human literature. 'Factum est propter nos sub sole lumen quod fecit solem. Noli contemnere nubem carnis: nube tegitur, non ut obscuretur, sed ut temperetur'