Articles

Patristic Exegesis

A Brief Reconsideration of the term "Pre-critical" or If not "Pre-Critical" Exegesis, Then What?
by Dr. Mary Ford

It is common in scholarly biblical circles to refer to patristic exegesis as "pre-critical," a description indicating that the Fathers were interpreting before the tools and methods of modern biblical scholarship had been developed. (For many, this word has similar connotations to "prehistoric.") One who has studied the Fathers carefully can readily see, as Fr. Breck explains in his Scripture in Tradition, that the term "pre-critical" is not accurate. As Fr. Breck points out, the Fathers do employ rational analysis of texts similar to that used by modern biblical critics.(1)  They also use some biblical critical tools (at least in their basic forms).

St. Basil the Great, for example, spent thirteen chapters, almost half of his great work On the Holy Spirit, discussing prepositions and their meaning in Scripture. St. Dionysius of Alexandria discussed stylistic differences between the Revelation of John and his Gospel when trying to determine the author of the former. St. John Chrysostom discusses wedding customs in his remarks on St. John's Gospel, chapter 2, about why the wine was brought to the governor of the feast. Both Chrysostom and Jerome look carefully at how the word "till" (or "until") is used throughout Scripture in their discussion of Matt. 1:25. And there are many, many other examples of careful attention paid to word study, literary style, historical context, and other major concerns of biblical criticism. Thus, critical analysis, along with the thought processes it involves, was not unknown to the Fathers -- they were not "pre-critical."   

The real difference between the Fathers and those who refer to them as "pre-critical" is not the knowledge or use of these kinds of critical tools, but the underlying focus or foundation of the two groups of exegetes. For the modern biblical scholar, these critical tools and methods are so foundational that all exegetes are defined in terms of their use, or lack of use, of them. By contrast, for the Fathers what is foundational is noetic knowledge -- real experiential knowledge of God. They know from personal experience that people have a nous -- and that therefore, this noetic knowledge is possible.  

The nous, sometimes called the "intellect" in English (to distinguish it from the mind), is the "highest faculty in man." It is the faculty through which it is possible for man to know God and "the inner essences or principles of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception. ...it understands divine truth by means of immediate experience, intuition or 'simple cognition' (the term used by St. Isaac the Syrian)."(2)  It is also called "the eye of the heart," or the "innermost aspect of the heart," and is quite distinct from the reason, or mind (dianoia). It is spoken of as a "power" of the soul, but is also sometimes identified with the whole soul.(3)  

From what has been said above, it should be clear that calling the Fathers' exegesis "pre-critical" (besides sounding pejorative) is inaccurate for another reason.  While the Fathers knew about and used critical analysis, it was never primary, never the main focus for them as it is for most contemporary biblical scholars. To say that the exegesis of the Fathers is "pre-critical" seems to imply that they are missing a crucial, even fundamental, element in their exegesis. However, they are not only not missing it, but just as importantly, within their methodology, it is always ancillary -- a secondary, useful tool, rather than the foundation or even "the content" of exegesis, as it is for so many today.  

Thus, I propose that patristic exegesis could much more accurately be called "metanoetic" instead of "pre-critical." "Meta" has the sense of "after" and "along with": the Church Fathers interpret Scripture "after" having direct noetic experience of God, and "along with" that experience. This is the key element that makes their exegesis so profound and powerful -- that makes it so worthy of being carefully studied even today, so many centuries after they have written (although for the Orthodox, the Church continues to raise up new Fathers -- such as Fr. Sophrony Sakarov of blessed memory). Their exegesis is not just more theoretical analysis. It is based on reality -- rooted in Truth which is personal for ultimately Christ is Truth (John 14:6).  

Indeed, what actually makes someone a Church Father, or a patristic author, is often overlooked. Holiness of life, direct experiential knowledge is essential, but even this is not enough. One must also have the gift of being able to articulate effectively what one has gained by using that spiritual knowledge "along with" critical analysis and other tools available through education -- through the "dianoia, " the mind.(4)  

Shouldn't the Fathers' exegesis be described in terms of what characterizes it in a fundamental way rather than by how it differs from another group of exegetes? And what is fundamental to the Fathers is not any particular method, or lack of method -- they used anything and everything that could be helpful, including critical analysis, as said above. But what is fundamental is this fact -- this reality -- of noetic knowledge.  

And it is important to emphasize this reality especially today, because this is what can enable us to get beyond the foggy impasse of postmodern relativism. If one can have direct knowledge of God, knowledge through communion, through the nous (rather than the mind), then there is a kind of knowledge which is not relative, but has an absolute character. This knowledge can never be fully captured in words or concepts, because it is experiential in nature -- but those with enough experience can judge which words, images, and concepts best fit the experiential realities. That is also why the apophatic dimension of theology and exegesis is so important.(5)  

If the kind of exegesis the Fathers are doing is "metanoetic," then based on that term, we could also create two other useful terms. Many believers may not have powerful, ongoing, direct experience of God (so that they would not have that certainty and depth of insight that the Fathers have), but they may have had some experience or God, or at least be "in favor of” it. The exegesis of people in this category could be said to be "pronoetic," "pro" having the sense of "before" as well as "in favor of."  

Most biblical critics would have to be in yet another category, because they apparently do not know the existence of noetic knowledge, and certainly have no direct experience of it themselves. They rely solely on the mind, on rational analysis, so their exegesis could be called "a-noetic."  

By using these terms, what is crucial is kept in focus, and the Fathers can be appreciated for what they truly have to offer, rather than imagined to lack something deemed crucial by more recent -- and by implication, more supposedly "sophisticated" -- interpreters. The use of these terms should not be seen as a call to reject the often very helpful tools of biblical criticism, much less all secular studies, but a call to a reordering of priorities, and to a reintroduction of a kind of knowledge ignored for too long.  

Let us by all means use every tool and method that can be helpful, in a truly Cappadocian spirit. One of the great Cappadocian Fathers, St. Gregory of Nyssa, sees the proper Christian use of "pagan learning" (the kind of secular studies that are foundational for biblical criticism) in the image of the Israelites "spoiling the Egyptians":  

those participating through virtue in the free life [i.e., Christians] also equip themselves with the wealth of pagan learning by which foreigners to the faith beautify themselves. Our guide in virtue commands someone who “borrows” from wealthy Egyptians to receive such things as moral and natural philosophy, geometry , astronomy, dialectic, and whatever e/se is sought by those outside the Church, since these things will be useful when in time the divine sanctuary of mystery must be beautified with the riches of reason.(6)

It is surely a good thing to beautify our studies and our faith with "the riches of reason." But when biblical critical tools are given primacy, or exclusive validity -- when they are used as the ultimate authorities for determining dogma and truth -- they become merely "broken cisterns. " And no one in this "land of drought and of the shadow of death" can satisfy his thirst from a broken cistern. For that, it is necessary to drink once again from the "fountain of living waters" (Jer. 2:6, 13) as the foundation for both our faith and our studies. The Church Fathers, with their metanoetic exegesis, faithfully show us the way.  


Endnotes

1. John Breck, Scripture in Tradition (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2001), p. 2.
2. From the Glossary in The Philokalia, Vol. 2, by St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), p.384.  
3. Hierotheos S. Vlachos, Orthodox Psychotherapy, trans. Esther Williams (Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1994) , p. 119; and see the whole of Ch. 3 for a more complete discussion.  
4. Ibid., p. 123. Arch. Hierotheos Vlachos, commenting on St. Maximus (Philo. 2, p. 82,97), explains: "In order to be a Father of the Church it is necessary to have not only a clear nous but also expression, that is, trained speech, in order to express these supra-natural realities as far as is possible."  
5. "Apophaticism ...constitutes the fundamental characteristic of the whole theological tradition of the Eastern Church." It is "a way towards mystical union with God, whose nature remains incomprehensible to us." Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1976), pp. 26, 28. See Ch. 2 for a more complete discussion.  
6. The Life of Moses, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson, in The Classics of Western Spirituality series (NY: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 81 (my emphasis). This interpretation was first proposed by Origen, as far as we know.  


A Note of Thanks

I would like to thank Dr. Mary Ford for her kind permission to post this outstanding article on my website.   The article was originally published in the St. Tikhon's Theological Journal.  Here is the bibliographical information: "A brief reconsideration of the term 'pre-critical'" by Mary Ford.  St. Tikhon's Theological Journal, 3, 2005, pp. 11-16.

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.