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Introduction:
Hermeneutics
Derek Poole
Comment
Alan Wilson
From
the Director
David Porter
What
is Hermeneutics?
Brendan W Devitt
The
Bible and the Church
Alwyn Thomson
Hear
the Word of the Lord
David Bruce
Patience:
An attribute of love
Graham Cheesman
The
Bible and Christ
Alwyn Thomson
Understanding
Scripture: Issues of Gender
Fran Porter
The
Bible and the Christian Life
Alwyn Thomson
Take
me to the Theatre
Steve Stockman
Anabaptist
Hermeneutics
Walter Klassen
Reading
the Bible Then and Now
Alwyn Thomson
Cross-Cultural
Communication
Alan Wilson
SAINTS
& SCRIPTURES
The Bible and Christian Life
How many of us would expect a great theologian to make a great preacher? I suspect most of us tend to think of the two roles as quite distinct - perhaps even incompatible.
Yet the great theologians of the early church were usually pastors as well, preaching week by week - and sometimes day by day - to the ordinary Christians of their towns and cities. They preached to bring men and women to salvation, they preached to comfort and strengthen Christians under pressure, they preached to confront and challenge Christian sinfulness, they preached to instruct Christians in holy living. And at the heart of their preaching was the Bible.
So Basil of Caesarea, in the first sermon of his Hexaemeron - a series of sermons on the creation story - began by reminding his listeners of the nature and purpose of the Bible. "Let us listen then to these words of truth written without the help of the 'enticing words of man's wisdom' by the dictation of the Holy Spirit; words destined to produce not the applause of those who hear them, but the salvation of those who are instructed by them."
Many hundreds of sermons from these early centuries survive. In them we repeatedly hear the great theologians of the early church faithfully proclaiming Scripture to the Christian community for their salvation and instruction. For Basil and others the Bible was not a sourcebook for theological dispute, but a gift from God through the Spirit to church. So, to take another example, Gregory the Great, in a sermon on Ezekiel wrote: "By these words of Scripture God makes us alive, because through them he demonstrates to us the spiritual life, and even pours it into our minds by the inspiration of the Spirit, because daily through the gift of grace it has its effect in the minds of the elect."
Even the deepest and most complex theological disputes had at their heart a pastoral concern. "He became human that we might become divine; he revealed himself in a body that we might understand the unseen Father; he endured insults that we might inherit immortality," said Athanasius. "What is not assumed, is not healed," wrote Gregory of Nazianzus. The doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of Christ's two natures were crucial because they concerned how humans could know God and find salvation. The early church's theology - no matter how difficult, complex and obscure it might seem to us - was, in fact, the proclamation of salvation and an act of worship.
Let us hear Basil once more, concluding his second sermon on the creation story:
"May the Father of the true light, Who has adorned day with celestial light, Who has made the fire to shine which illuminates us during the night, Who reserves for us in the peace of a future age a spiritual and everlasting light, enlighten your hearts in the knowledge of truth, keep you from stumbling, and grant that "you may walk honestly as in the day". Thus shall you shine as the sun in the midst of the glory of the saints, and I shall glory in you in the day of Christ, to Whom belong all glory and power for ever and ever. Amen."
This is the third of four short articles by Alwyn Thomson - ECONI's Research Officer - exploring how the early Church read and understood the Bible.
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