Senses and Perceptions of Things Divine

I well remember the moment (or do I? how reliable are senses and memories anyway?) at the turn of the century when we started seeing books devoted to exploring the role of the senses in Christian experience. Since then we have had books on smell and scent, on sight and visual culture, on hearing and listening, and other things besides. 

This year two more will be introduced into this category, their authors no strangers to long-time readers of this wee blog. The first is an edited international scholarly collection, Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception, eds. Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk (Oxford University Press, 6 March 2022), 272pp. About this book the publisher tells us this:

Sensory language is commonly used to describe human encounters with the divine. Scripture, for example, employs perceptual language like 'taste and see that the Lord is good', 'hear the word of the Lord', and promises that 'the pure in heart will see God'. Such statements seem to point to certain features of human cognition that make perception-like contact with divine things possible. But how precisely should these statements be construed? Can the elusive notion of 'spiritual perception' survive rigorous theological and philosophical scrutiny and receive a constructive articulation?

Perceiving Things Divine seeks to make philosophical and theological sense of spiritual perception. Reflecting the results of the second phase of the Spiritual Perception Project, this volume argues for the possibility of spiritual perception. It also seeks to make progress towards a constructive account of the different aspects of spiritual perception while exploring its intersection with various theological and philosophical themes, such as biblical interpretation, aesthetics, liturgy, race, ecology, eschatology, and the hiddenness of God. The interdisciplinary scope of the volume draws on the resources of value theory, philosophy of perception, epistemology, philosophy of art, psychology, systematic theology, and theological aesthetics.

The volume also draws attention to how spiritual perception may be affected by such distortions as pornographic sensibility and racial prejudice. Since perceiving spiritually involves the whole person, the volume proposes that spiritual perception could be purified by ascetic discipline, healed by contemplative practices, trained in the process of spiritual direction and the pursuit of virtue, transformed by the immersion in the sacramental life, and healed by opening the self to the operation of divine grace.

You will note here an impressive cast of contributors, including Sarah Coakley and Catherine Pickstock (who was going to be my doctoral director at Cambridge when I was admitted in 1999 before turning them down).  

The next book is Hearing the Scriptures: Liturgical Exegesis of the Old Testament in Byzantine Orthodox Hymnography by Eugen J. Pentiuc (Oxford UP, 2021), 456pp. 

About this book we are told:

Throughout the ages, interpreters of the Christian scriptures have been wonderfully creative in seeking to understand and bring out the wonders of these ancient writings. That creativity has often been overlooked by recent scholarship, concentrated as it is in the so-called critical period. In this study, Eugen J. Pentiuc illuminates the remarkable way in which the Byzantine hymnographers (liturgists) expressed their understanding of the Old Testament in their compositions, an interpretive process that he terms "liturgical exegesis."

In authorship and methodology, patristic exegesis and liturgical exegesis are closely related. Patristic exegesis, however, is primarily linear and sequential, proceeding verse by verse, while liturgical exegesis offers a more imaginative and eclectic mode of interpretation, ranging over various parts of the Bible. In this respect, says Pentiuc, liturgical exegesis resembles cubist art. To illuminate the multi-faceted creativity of liturgical exegesis, Pentiuc has chosen the vast and rich hymnography of Byzantine Orthodox Holy Week as a case study, offering a detailed lexical, biblical, and theological analysis of selected hymns. His analysis reveals the many different and imaginative ways in which creative liturgists incorporated and interpreted scriptural material in these hymns.

By drawing attention to the way in which the bible is used by Byzantine hymnographers in the living Orthodox tradition, Hearing the Scriptures makes a ground-breaking contribution to the history of the reception of the scriptures.

Scripture and Emotion in Maximus the Confessor

It has been very interesting to me over even the short course of this blog to watch the steady increase of attention paid to Maximus the Confessor, whom I studied for a semester in a doctoral course. You can find on this blog many other books devoted to him I have noted, reviewed, or whose authors I have interviewed. 

In January of this year we had another: Andrew J. Summerson's Divine Scripture and Human Emotion in Maximus the Confessor: Exegesis of the Human Heart (Brill, 2021), 160pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

In Exegesis of the Human Heart Andrew J. Summerson explores how Maximus the Confessor uses biblical interpretation to develop an account of human passibility, from fallen human passions to perfected human emotions among the divinized. 

This book features Maximus’s role as a creative interpreter of tradition. Maximus inherits Christian thinking on emotion, which revises Stoic and Platonic thought according to biblical categories. Through a close reading of Quaestiones ad Thalassium and a wide selection of Maximus’s works, Andrew J. Summerson shows that Maximus understands human emotion in an exegetical milieu and that Maximus places human emotion at the heart of his soteriology. Christ redeems passibility so the divinized can enjoy perfected emotional activity in the ever-moving repose of eternal life.

The Rise of Scripture

My friend Bill Mills, whom I have often interviewed on here over the years, just alerted me to the new publication of a well-known and long-time Orthodox biblical scholar, Paul Nadiim Tarazi, The Rise of Scripture (OCABS, 2017), 482pp.

I'm waiting to hear from Tarazi about doing an interview with him about this new book. In the meantime, here is what the publisher tells us:

Those who experience the Bible as a living text understand that Scripture possesses a life and power all its own. Written by human hands, texts become sacred when they resonate with ultimate truths encountered in the direst of human circumstances. Paul Nadim Tarazi’s The Rise of Scripture offers a cogent argument for the particulars of how it is the Bible as we have it became Scripture. Avoiding futile speculation over Israelite textual and ethnic origins, Tarazi lays bare the Bible’s strategic defense against hellenistic urban hegemony over the fertile clay and desert environs of western Asia. With the help of biblical Hebrew—a “concocted language,” according to Tarazi—scribes wrote and shaped oral and textual materials into a manifesto of cultural resistance in response to the ethnocentric arrogance of the alien occupation. The successful accomplishment of such a defense relied upon a kind of leveling of the playing field, in which the writers of the Bible came to throw all their own false idols into the fire, resulting in the production of the most scathing collective self-examination in human history. It is the thesis of this book that the reading and teaching of Scripture brings human beings together in the barren wilderness of authentic human existence in obedience to, and under the care of the ultimate Shepherd, the God of Scripture.

New Works on Irenaeus of Lyons

Irenaeus of Lyons has long remained one of the most interesting and important figures of very early Christian history, and the twentieth century began a return to the study of his thinking. A good bit of this return and renewed study has been led by the Orthodox scholar John Behr, who has previously published a number of studies on Irenaeus of Lyons, including, in 2003, Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity as well as the earlier work, a translation of On the Apostolic Preaching (SVS Press, 1997).

Now this year he has brought out Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement (Oxford UP, 2017), 280pp.

About this new study we are told by the publisher:

Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement examines the ways in which Irenaeus and Clement understood what it means to be human. By exploring these writings from within their own theological perspectives, John Behr also offers a theological critique of the prevailing approach to the asceticism of Late Antiquity. Writing before monasticism became the dominant paradigm of Christian asceticism, Irenaeus and Clement afford fascinating glimpses of alternative approaches. For Irenaeus, asceticism is the expression of man living the life of God in all dimensions of the body, that which is most characteristically human and in the image of God. Human existence as a physical being includes sexuality as a permanent part of the framework within which males and females grow towards God. In contrast, Clement depicts asceticism as man's attempt at a godlike life to protect the rational element, that which is distinctively human and in the image of God, from any possible disturbance and threat, or from the vulnerability of dependency, especially of a physical or sexual nature. Here human sexuality is strictly limited by the finality of procreation and abandoned in the resurrection. By paying careful attention to these two writers, Behr offers challenging material for the continuing task of understanding ourselves as human beings.

Also released this year is a study by James Bushur, Irenaeus of Lyons and the Mosaic of Christ: Preaching Scripture in the Era of Martyrdom (Routledge, 2017), 220pp.

About this book we are told:

Recent theological scholarship has shown increasing interest in patristic exegesis. The way early Christians read scripture has attracted not only historians, but also systematic and exegetical scholars. However, the Christian reading of scripture before Origen has been neglected or, more often, dominated by Gnostic perspectives. This study uses the writings of Irenaeus to argue that there was a rich Christian engagement with scripture long before Origen and the supposed conflict between Antioch and Alexandria.

This is a focused examination of specific exegetical themes that undergird Irenaeus’ argument against his opponents. However, whereas many works interpret Irenaeus only as he relates to certain Gnostic teachings, this book recognizes the broader context of the second century and explores the profound questions facing early Christians in an era of martyrdom. It shows that Irenaeus is interested, not simply in expounding the original intent of individual texts, but in demonstrating how individual texts fit into the one catholic narrative of salvation. This in turn, he hopes, will cause his audience to see their place as individuals in the same narrative.

Using insightful close reading of Irenaeus, allied with a firm grounding in the context in which he wrote, this book will be vital reading for scholars of the early Church as well as those with interests in patristics and the development of Christian exegesis.

Antioch vs. Alexandria, Round #19824307

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Christian East, or patristic and exegetical history, has invariably and frequently encountered the famed, if not hackneyed, Antioch-Alexandria "divide" when it comes to hermeneutics and exegesis as well as Christology. Any nostrum that is repeated as often as this one deserves to come in for fresh re-examination, and it appears we have it in a recent study by Richard Perhai, Antiochene Theoria in the Writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus (Fortress, 2015).

About this book the publisher tells us:

Biblical scholars have often contrasted the exegesis of the early church fathers from the eastern region and “school” of Syrian Antioch against that of the school of Alexandria. The Antiochenes have often been described as strictly historical-literal exegetes in contrast to the allegorical exegesis of the Alexandrians. Patristic scholars now challenge those stereotypes, some even arguing that few differences existed between the two groups.

This work agrees that both schools were concerned with a literal and spiritual reading. But, it also tries to show, through analysis of Theodore and Theodoret’s exegesis and use of the term theoria, that how they integrated the literal-theological readings often remained quite distinct from the Alexandrians. For the Antiochenes, the term theoria did not mean allegory, but instead stood for a range of perceptions—prophetic, christological, and contemporary. It is in these insights that we find the deep wisdom to help modern readers interpret Scripture theologically.

Christians Reading and Criticizing the Quran

One of the interesting developments in the last three decades has been that of evangelicals "discovering" the Christian East. There are a number of books--of varying quality, accuracy, and therefore reliability--from evangelicals documenting these discoveries, including James R. Payton's Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition, which I reviewed elsewhere (largely favorably) several years ago.

Daniel Clendenin has also written several books along these lines, including Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective. Peter Gilquist, of course, was a part of one of the first large groups of evangelicals to move en masse into Orthodoxy, as he recounts in his Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith. Gilquist's book really needs to be read alongside the recent book of my friend, Oliver Herbel, as I noted in my review of it and interview with him: Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church.

Now a new book comes along, asking how "Bible-believing" Christians are to read and understand competing truth-claims in the Quran. And the author, quite sensibly, realizes that in a book being published in 2015, evangelical Christians should not be beginning from scratch when it comes to Quaranic exegesis and dealing with competing claims. Rather, there is a 1400-year history of Eastern Christians engaging Islam, and that history and those engagements remain hugely valuable today: J. Scott Bridger, Christian Exegesis of the Qur'an: A Critical Analysis of the Apologetic Use of the Qur'an in Select Medieval and Contemporary Arabic Texts (Pickwick, 2015), 200pp.

About this book we are told:

Can Christians read biblical meaning into quranic texts? Does this violate the intent of those passages? What about making positive reference to the Quran in the context of an evangelistic presentation or defense of biblical doctrines? Does this imply that Christians accept the Muslim scripture as inspired? What about Christians who reside in the world of Islam and write their theology in the language of the Quran-Arabic? Is it legitimate for them to use the Quran in their explanations of the Christian faith? This book explores these questions and offers a biblically, theologically, and historically informed response. For years evangelical Christians seeking answers to questions like these have turned to the history of Protestant Christian interaction with Muslim peoples. Few are aware of the cultural, intellectual, and theological achievements of Middle Eastern Christians who have resided in the world of Islam for fourteen centuries. Their works are a treasure-trove of riches for those investigating contemporary theological and missiological questions such as the apologetic use of the Quran.

The Harp of Prophecy

The University of Notre Dame Press sent me their fall catalogue last week, and in it are several books of note, including this collection edited by Paul Kolbet and one of the leading patristics scholars of our time (and secretary of the North American Orthodox-Catholic dialogue), Brian Daley: The Harp of Prophecy: Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms (UND Press, November 2014),344pp.

About this collection, which includes at least one Orthodox author, we are told:

The Psalms generated more biblical commentary from early Christians than any other book of the Hebrew and Christian canon. While advances have been made in our understanding of the early Christian preoccupation with this book and the traditions employed to interpret it, no study on the Psalms traditions exists that can serve as a solid academic point of entry into the field. This collection of essays by distinguished patristic and biblical scholars fills this lacuna. It not only introduces readers to the main primary sources but also addresses the unavoidable interpretive issues present in the secondary literature. The essays in The Harp of Prophecy represent some of the very best scholarly approaches to the study of early Christian exegesis, bringing new interpretations to bear on the work of influential early Christian authorities such as Athanasius,  Augustine, and Basil of Caesarea. Subjects that receive detailed study include the dynamics of early Christian political power, gender expressions, and the ancient conversation between Christian, Jewish, and Greek philosophical traditions. The essays and bibliographic materials enable readers to locate and read the early Christian sources for themselves and also serve to introduce the various interdisciplinary methods and perspectives that are currently brought to bear on early Christian psalm exegesis. Students and scholars of theology and biblical studies will be led in new directions of thought and interpretation by these innovative studies.

The contributors include: Gary A. Anderson, Paul M. Blowers, Michael Cameron, Ronald R. Cox, Brian E. Daley, S.J., Luke Dysinger, O.S.B., Nonna Verna Harrison, Ronald E. Heine, David G. Hunter, Paul R. Kolbet, Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., and John J. O’Keefe.

Origen and Scripture

As I have noted repeatedly on here, interest in, and even lingering controversy over, Origen remains high. Set for release this summer is a more affordable paperback version of a book Oxford first published in 2012: Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford, 2014), 294pp.

About this book we are told:

Scriptural interpretation was an important form of scholarship for Christians in late antiquity. For no one does this claim ring more true than Origen of Alexandria (185-254), one of the most prolific scholars of Scripture in early Christianity. This book examines his approach to the Bible through a biographical lens: the focus is on his account of the scriptural interpreter, the animating centre of the exegetical enterprise. In pursuing this largely neglected line of inquiry, Peter W. Martens discloses the contours of Origen's sweeping vision of scriptural exegesis as a way of life. For Origen, ideal interpreters were far more than philologists steeped in the skills conveyed by Greco-Roman education. Their profile also included a commitment to Christianity from which they gathered a spectrum of loyalties, guidelines, dispositions, relationships and doctrines that tangibly shaped how they practiced and thought about their biblical scholarship. The study explores the many ways in which Origen thought ideal scriptural interpreters (himself included) embarked upon a way of life, indeed a way of salvation, culminating in the everlasting contemplation of God. This new and integrative thesis takes seriously how the discipline of scriptural interpretation was envisioned by one of its pioneering and most influential practitioners.

The publisher also provides the table of contents:

Preface
Introduction
Part I: The Philologist
1: Mandate: The Interpreter's Education
2: Specialization: The Elements of Philology
Part II: The Philologist and Christianity
3: Scholarship: Divine Provenance
4: Conversion: Sanctified Study
5: Boundaries (Part I): Interpretation Among the Heterodox
6: Boundaries (Part II): Interpretation in the New Israel
7: Conduct: Moral Inquiry
8: Message: Saving Knowledge
9: Horizons: The Beginning and End of the Drama of Salvation
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

St. Basil the Great

In March of next year, in an imprint from Baker Academic devoted to exegetical issues, a new book will be coming out about one of the great Fathers of the Greek East: Stephen M. Hildebrand, Basil of Caesarea (Baker Academic, March 2014), 240pp.

About this book we are told:

Fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea was an erudite Scripture commentator, an architect of Trinitarian theology, a founder of monasticism, and a metropolitan bishop. This introduction to Basil's thought surveys his theological, spiritual, and monastic writings, showing the importance of his work for contemporary theology and spirituality. It brings together various aspects of Basil's thought into a single whole and explores his uniqueness and creativity as a theologian. The volume engages specialized scholarship on Basil but makes his thought accessible to a wider audience. It is the third book in a series on the church fathers edited by Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering.

The author is no stranger to Basil, having previously authored The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Faith.

Hildebrand was, additionally, the translator for On the Holy Spirit: St. Basil the Great, this latter being part of the Popular Patristics series from St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. 

Patristic Exegesis

In a recent collection of articles, Frances Young explores numerous patristic, especially Greek, sources treating exegetical issues: Exegesis and Theology in Early Christianity (Ashgate Variorum Collected Studies, 2012),330pp.

About this book we are told:

This collection of articles first brings together a number of working papers which were significant in the development of Frances Young's understanding of patristic exegesis, studies not included in her ground-breaking book, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (1997), though paving the way for that work. Then comes a selection of papers on theology, church order and methodology, the whole collection constantly returning to themes such as the fundamental connection between theology and exegesis, the significant role of reflection on language, metaphor and symbol, and the creative interaction of early Christianity with its cultural and intellectual environment. These studies demonstrate the author's scholarly approach to patristic material, whereby careful attention is paid to actual texts from the past; but they also reveal the groundwork for her own theological explorations in the very different intellectual environment of the present.

Greek Scriptures and Greek Fathers

Hendrickson Publishers continues to publish numerous reference books of interest to readers of the Septuagint and the Greek Fathers. Among those they have recently sent me include Rodney A. Whitacre, A Patristic Greek Reader.

More recently I have received Gary Alan Chamberlain, The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon (2011), 304pp. About this book the publisher tells us:

For New Testament students and scholars who want to fully exegete the Septuagint, this lexicon will be a welcome addition to their libraries. Used in conjunction with the New Testament (NT) lexicon they already possess, The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon will bridge the gap with additional information that's needed to translate the Septuagint. While those who have learned the Greek of the New Testament possess the grammatical skills necessary to read Septuagint Greek, the vocabulary found in the Septuagint differs sufficiently from both that found in the NT and that found in Classical Greek, so that a specialized lexicon is not just of great help, but essential.

Finally, Maurice Robinson and Mark House have edited a revised and updated edition of their Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek (2012), 506pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek is an invaluable resource for the study of the Greek New Testament. Based on a completely updated and corrected computer database, this new edition provides a detailed grammatical analysis (parsing) of each Greek word in the New Testament- information essential for correct translation and interpretation. A host of additional features make the Analytical Lexicon an essential addition to the library of any biblical student or scholar

The Spirit and Soul of Origen

Elizabeth Ann Divley Lauro, who has written for North America's leading scholarly revue of Eastern Christianity, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, has added to the ever-burgeoning study of the great Origen of Alexandria with her The Soul and Spirit of Scripture within Origen's Exegesis (Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 266pp.


About this book we are told:

Elizabeth Ann Dively Lauro discusses the theologian Origen's employment of three distinct senses of scriptural meaning within his exegetical theory and practice: somatic (bodily, factually historical), psychic (pertaining to the soul, a figurative call to shun vice and grow in virtue), and pneumatic (spiritual, revealing God's plan of salvation through Christ's Incarnation). Lauro first establishes that a correct understanding of the mechanics of Origen's exegesis is vital to an informed reading of his works, then cites Origen's theoretical foundations for each sense. She ultimately demonstrates how the relationship between the two "higher senses" (psychic and pneumatic) is central to Origen's exegetical efforts and facilitates his audience's spiritual transformation. 

Origen the Exegete

As I have noted numerous times before, interest in, and controversy surrounding, Origen of Alexandria remains constant. A new book adds to this: Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford UP, 2012), 352pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us:

Scriptural interpretation was an important form of scholarship for Christians in late antiquity. For no one does this claim ring more true than Origen of Alexandria (185-254), one of the most prolific scholars of Scripture in early Christianity. This book examines his approach to the Bible through a biographical lens: the focus is on his account of the scriptural interpreter, the animating centre of the exegetical enterprise. In pursuing this largely neglected line of inquiry, Peter W. Martens discloses the contours of Origen's sweeping vision of scriptural exegesis as a way of life. For Origen, ideal interpreters were far more than philologists steeped in the skills conveyed by Greco-Roman education. Their profile also included a commitment to Christianity from which they gathered a spectrum of loyalties, guidelines, dispositions, relationships and doctrines that tangibly shaped how they practiced and thought about their biblical scholarship. The study explores the many ways in which Origen thought ideal scriptural interpreters (himself included) embarked upon a way of life, indeed a way of salvation, culminating in the everlasting contemplation of God. This new and integrative thesis takes seriously how the discipline of scriptural interpretation was envisioned by one of its pioneering and most influential practitioners.

Origen and Exegesis

Interest in the great Origen of Alexandria remains very high today, as I have noted in the past. A new book from the Oxford Early Christian Studies series looks in particular at his exegetical work: Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford UP, 2012, 352pp.).

About this book, the publisher tells us:

Scriptural interpretation was an important form of scholarship for Christians in late antiquity. For no one does this claim ring more true than Origen of Alexandria (185-254), one of the most prolific scholars of Scripture in early Christianity. This book examines his approach to the Bible through a biographical lens: the focus is on his account of the scriptural interpreter, the animating centre of the exegetical enterprise. In pursuing this largely neglected line of inquiry, Peter W. Martens discloses the contours of Origen's sweeping vision of scriptural exegesis as a way of life. For Origen, ideal interpreters were far more than philologists steeped in the skills conveyed by Greco-Roman education. Their profile also included a commitment to Christianity from which they gathered a spectrum of loyalties, guidelines, dispositions, relationships and doctrines that tangibly shaped how they practiced and thought about their biblical scholarship. The study explores the many ways in which Origen thought ideal scriptural interpreters (himself included) embarked upon a way of life, indeed a way of salvation, culminating in the everlasting contemplation of God. This new and integrative thesis takes seriously how the discipline of scriptural interpretation was envisioned by one of its pioneering and most influential practitioners.

I look forward to seeing this expertly reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.