finitum non capax infiniti

Ronald Heine’s new book Reading the Old Testament With the Ancient Church is an insight into the way many of the early church fathers dealt with the Hebrew Scriptures.

He begins with a brief introduction that traces views towards the Hebrew Scriptures from the Reformation to the Modern era. This is then contrasted with the way the Hebrew Scriptures were dealt with in the early church, which is the focus of the first chapter. What is interesting is that no where in the early church fathers is the New Testament put on the same level as the Hebrew Scriptures. The way in which the early church fathers read the Hebrew Scriptures was decidedly Christotelic. Heine writes, “There can be no question that the Old Testament was the Scripture of the earliest Christians and that they read it in terms of Christ. This was completely natural for them because they did not consider themselves to be distinct from the Jews. They believed that Jesus was the fulfillment of the promises made to the fathers in the Old Testament; therefore, their beliefs about him were completely compatible with their Jewish faith” (33).

It is interesting to think about what the early church fathers had to base their readings of the Hebrew Scriptures upon. They had the example of the NT authors and the words of Luke 24.27: “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” These were two central foundations of the interpretations of the early church fathers. Because they knew that the Hebrew Scriptures were fulfilled in Christ, they did not hesitate to look for Christ in them. As Heine writes, “They looked at Christ through the Old Testament and they looked at the Old Testament through Christ. The two were inseparable in the minds of the church fathers” (194).

Heine guides the reader through an introduction to the way in which the church fathers understood and used the Hebrew Scriptures. He then turns to four topics which the church father’s approached in the Hebrew Scriptures and devotes a chapter to each, showing how the church fathers understood these topics. The topics are the struggle of the OT law (chapter 2), the exodus re-imagined (chapter 3), the gospel in the prophets (chapter 4), and praying the psalms (chapter 5). He then finishes off his study with a chapter devoted to how the church fathers immersed themselves in the text and lived out of the text.

I found Heine’s book very helpful because it provided a summary of ways in which the Hebrew Scriptures were used in the first few centuries of the church. One would have to read thousands and thousands of pages to find this out firsthand. Heine does provide very well documented footnotes for further study on a particular topic. He also brings in Jewish interpretation during the same time period, which was very interesting to me. He shows how certain debates were shaped by the different texts of the LXX (read, for instance, by Justin) and the MT (read, for instance, by Trypho). I also appreciated the book because it gives you a glimpse into the dramatically different way the Hebrew Scriptures were read in the first few centuries of the church than it is read today. This brings many interesting and fun questions to my mind centering around hermeneutics (especially the grammatical-historical model). But I’ll save those reflections for another day.

If you are interested in the Hebrew Scriptures and how ancient people interpreted them, this book is a brilliant introduction and overview. It will not only challenge you academically because of the drastically different hermeneutics employed, but also spiritually because of the depth of immersion the church fathers had in the Hebrew Scriptures and the piety in which they sought to live out of the text.

“Scripture defined their lives. The intellectual task of knowing Scripture, however, neither began nor ended as an intellectual task. It began in the passionate desire to know Christ and reached its end in being formed in his image. This was not a self-centered circle. To be formed in the image of Christ meant for them to live among their fellow humans in justice, truthfulness, fidelity, and love” (190).