Out of Egypt Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation

1The Church Fathers and Biblical TheologyGerald BrayDefining our TermsWhere do the church fathers stand in relation to biblical theology? In onesense, this is an extremely easy question to answer, because if we define the''church fathers'' as those Christian writers who expounded the faith in the centurieswhen the dominant Greco-Roman culture was still pagan, then it is clearthat they all believed that the Judeo-Christian Scriptures were the only acceptablesource of Christian theology, and in that sense they could all be called ''biblicaltheologians'' virtually without exception. The difficulty comes when weturn to consider the meaning of the term ''biblical theology''. If we believe that''biblical theology'' is the attempt to grasp Scripture in its totality, according toits own categories and inner dynamic, can the claim of the Fathers to have been''biblical theologians'' be allowed to stand, even if we have to make some reservationswhen it comes to the phrase ''according to its own categories''.Problems with the assertion that patristic theology was simply ''biblical theology''inevitably arise when we try to impose modern understandings of whatbiblical theology is (or ought to be) on the ancient texts. Even allowing for thefact that modern interpreters are by no means always agreed about how theterm ''biblical theology'' ought to be defined,1 it is clear that there are somethings which are now included in it which would not have occurred to theFathers. Likewise, there are other things, including some of the basicSee J. Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology, for a recent discussion of this problem.Barr does not discuss the church fathers as such, but it is clear that he would not recognizethem as ''biblical theologians'' because their methods of reading Scripturewere very different from what modern biblical scholars would accept as justifiableforms of interpretation. At the risk of oversimplifying Barr''s approach, it can be saidthat his basic objection to the Fathers'' reading of Scripture would be that they didnot read the Bible ''according to its own categories'', but rather according to a schemewhich they imported from elsewhere - mainly from different types of late Hellenisticphilosophy.24 Gerald Braypresuppositions of modern theological thought, which make establishing agenuine relationship between what the Fathers thought of as ''biblical theology''and what we now understand by that term somewhat problematic.Modern scholars think of ''biblical theology'' primarily in analytical terms.They start with what they regard as the theology of Paul, or of the wisdom literature(or whatever), and then they try to situate this in relation to the rest ofthe canonical scriptural tradition. To take only the most familiar instance,modern scholars all believe that it is possible to discern peculiarly Paulinethemes in his writings and to present a generally coherent picture of them,though by no means all of them would claim that Paul''s theology is either comprehensiveor entirely consistent. They may assert that he developed his ideasover time, and even that he tailored his arguments to fit his different audiences,with the result that discrepancies can be detected when one compares differentwritings. Furthermore, many of them divide the Pauline corpus into ''authentic''and ''deutero-Pauline'' writings, using theological content as one of the criteriafor deciding which is which. What is true of Paul is even more true whenhis writings are set alongside the rest of the Bible. Broadly speaking, mostmodern students of biblical theology are prepared to believe that it developedover time, and that the later a document was written, the more sophisticatedthe theology it contains is likely to be. Loose ends and contradictions are analmost inevitable consequence of this pattern of development, so that we mustnot expect ''biblical theology'' to offer us the kind of coherent picture that systematictheology demands.The analytical principles and practices associated with this modernHealy, Mary is the author of 'Out of Egypt Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation', published 2004 under ISBN 9780310234159 and ISBN 0310234158.