No Going Back: Considering the Future of Theological Interpretation
Origen of Alexandria (c.185–c.243 CE) is the most influential allegorical reader of Scripture in the early church tradition. He read the entirety of the Christian Scriptures—Old and New Testaments—as containing the reality of Jesus Christ, which is fully revealed in the Gospels. Even in the most problematic of Old Testaments texts, like the conquest narratives of Joshua, Origen read with a conviction that Christ was embedded, at times hidden and at other times revealed, in the very fabric of the Bible. When the plain sense of the text—what we refer to as the literal or historical meaning—was not harmonious with the Gospel of Christ, Origen would look only to “higher,” spiritual levels of meaning. So, for example, when Origen writes his commentary on Joshua he equates Joshua with Jesus. He immediately “spiritualizes” a morally problematic text.[1] As Barney mentioned in his last post, over the past few centuries there has been a shift in biblical studies toward understanding the historical nature of the text. This shift has resulted in a rejection by...
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