This is the second and concluding blog in which I am commenting on Robert Hill’s READING THE OLD TESTAMENT IN ANTIOCH. The first blog was titled Reading the Old Testament in Ancient Antioch. I ended the first blog with Hill’s comment:
“The Scriptures, like the Incarnation, come to us as a gesture of divine considerateness, sygkatavasis—a loving gesture with nothing patronizing about it, nothing to suggest ‘condescension’ … The Incarnation, after all, does not represent a patronizing gesture on God’s part towards human beings—only love and concern.” (pp 36-37)
So God speaks to us through people, using words, phrases and ideas that we are capable of understanding. God realizes that His human creatures are not always attuned to spiritual realities and so He adapts His message in the Scriptures to our materialist limits. It is because God loves us that He finds the way to communicate with us even when it means He has to use phrases and methods (such as anthropomorphic appearances) which don’t do full justice to His divinity.
“…that the concreteness (paxetes) of the language is required by the materialism of the listener/reader, that it was particularly necessary in the early stages of revelation history, that in Scripture God uses simple ways of speech to accommodate our limitations, that while the concern in such acts of considerateness is not primarily with the dignity proper to God, we should not remain at the level of banal vocabulary or think of God in human terms, and – eminently—that the prime analogue of divine considerateness is that (other) Incarnation of the Word in the person of Jesus.”(p 39)
God speaking to us through human writers using human images was done in fact to prepare all people for the incarnation of the Word in Jesus. God’s goal is to lift us up to communion with God as Trinity not to get us stuck in literalistic thinking in which we drag God down to crude and banal images of Him as human.
“Chrysostom expresses his own deep appreciation of scriptural koinonia (my note – fellowship, communion). For him the biblical authors are the means by which communication (omolia - my note, discourse or homily) with God occurs, a communication which can be withheld…” (p 36)
The Scriptures are thus the means by which God communicates with us. For this reason the Antiochian Fathers were concerned with making an accurate reading of the text. They tended to shy away from allegorizing every text (something more common in the Alexandrian tradition), but they felt they were called to discover the Holy Spirit’s intended meaning in a text so realized that it was necessary to get beyond the literal reading of the Scriptures at points to be able to see what God was revealing. The “spiritual” reading of a text would be seen as the literal reading of the text if that is how God intended for us to read it. Chrysostom says,
“’There is a great treasure stored up in the Scriptures, concealed beneath the surface,’ he tells his congregation in Homily 45; so there is need of study so that we can learn the force hidden beneath the surface.” (p 153)
So when, where and with who is the proper time to study the Scriptures in order to drink deeply of the living water stored in them? Chrysostom answers,
“Any time must be considered suitable for discourse on spiritual topics. If we have a precise realization of this, we will be able while relaxing at home, both before eating and after eating, to take the Scriptures in our hands and gain benefit from them and provide spiritual nourishment for our soul… This is our salvation, this is spiritual treasure, this security. If we thus strengthen ourselves each day – by reading (anagnosis), by listening, by spiritual discourse (dialexis) – we will be able to remain unconquered, and render the snares of the devil ineffectual.” (p 184)
We render ourselves capable of hearing God’s voice by a frequent and regular reading of God’s Word. The continual reading of God’s Word opens our hearts and minds to recognizing God’s voice and thus allowing God’s Word to implant itself in us and to bear spiritual fruit to the glory of God.
October 29, 2009 at 3:48 am
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