Henri DeLubac, the French Jesuit theologian and historian of Christian thought, is best known to Americans through his two books published by Herder and Herder in the 1960s: The Mystery of the Supernatural and Augustinianism and Modern Theology. These books dealt with the supposed Thomistic idea of a “State of Pure Nature.”
In his earlier work, the untranslated Surnatural, DeLubac offered a learned critique, based on a thorough mastery of medieval and early modern sources, of the idea of a “state of pure nature” but his book met with stiff resistance by Thomists. The Dominican Garrigou-Lagrange wrote a scathing attack against it in 1946 and DeLubac came to be regarded as one of the leading exponents of “the new theology,” as it was called by its critics. This debate was followed closely in this country as articles in Thought, Theological Studies, and other journals in the late 1940s testify.
But there is another DeLubac who is much less known to Americans and that is DeLubac the interpreter of the Church’s classical exegetical tradition. Unlike his theological study of the state of pure nature, his two major works on patristic and medieval exegesis, Histoire et Esprit (a study of Origen of Alexandria), and his monumental Exegese Medievale in four volumes have not been translated. Only parts of these works have been translated in a book entitled The Sources of Revelation.
DeLubac was also one of the founders of Sources Chretiennes, a collection of patristic texts with French translations, which began to be published in 1942. One of the purposes of this series, which recently published its 400th volume, was to recover patristic exegetical and spiritual traditions. The first volume was Jean Danielou’s translation of Gregory of Nyssa’s spiritual work, The Life of Moses, and in volume seven DeLubac published an edition and translation of Origen of Alexandria’s Homilies on Genesis.
Although DeLubac’s work on the history of exegesis was not as controversial as his theological writings, some French biblical scholars thought that his sympathetic interpretation of early Christian exegesis undermined the growing acceptance of historical criticism within the Church. As one scholar put it, DeLubac’s work gives the impression that “hermeneutics has made no progress since Origen and St. Augustine.”
In his Exegese Medievale DeLubac showed that in ancient and medieval times the study of theology and the interpretation of the Bible were not two different tasks but two parts of a common enterprise. In his own words “theological science and interpretation of the Scripture were one.” In the early Church all discussion of theological topics, of moral issues and of Christian practice began with the Bible. The recitation of the psalms and meditation on books of the Bible, particularly in the context of the Liturgy or of private prayer, nurtured the spiritual life. Theology was called sacra pagina (the sacred page), and the task of interpreting the Bible was a spiritual and theological undertaking. The Bible was read within the framework of the Church’s teaching and practice.
By the beginning of the third century Christian bishops and scholars had begun to preach regular series of sermons that followed the biblical books verse by verse. Some wrote more scholarly commentaries that examined in greater detail grammatical, literary, and historical questions as well as theological ideas and spiritual teachings found in the texts. In the course of the first eight hundred years of Christian history, Christian teachers produced a library of biblical commentaries and homilies on the Bible.
These early commentaries and homilies on the Bible are an inexhaustible source of Christian spirituality, theology, and wisdom which, in the main, has been lost to the Christian churches. From these writings one can learn the biblical foundations of Christian teaching, e.g., the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity and humanity of Christ, how the Bible informs Christian ethics and serves as a guide to the spiritual life, how Christian tradition understands the relation between the Old Testament and the New, and many other topics. Because these ancient commentaries are largely unknown, contemporary Christian understanding of the Bible has been impoverished.
For biblical scholars in the early and medieval periods, the Bible was a living book of faith and life whose chief subject was the redemption of humankind. As Hugh of St. Victor wrote in the 12th century:
The subject matter of all the Divine Scriptures is the works of man’s restoration. For there are two work in which all that has been done is contained. The first is the work of foundation; the second is the work of restoration. The work of foundation is that whereby those things which were not, came into being. The work of restoration is that whereby those things which had been impaired, were made better. Therefore, the work of foundation is the creation of the world with all its elements. The work of restoration is the Incarnation of the Word with all its sacraments, both those which have gone before from the beginning of time, and those which come after, even to the end of the world.
Over the course of Christian history the classical Christian commentaries, or selections from them, were the staple of all study and interpretation of the Bible. Since the Reformation in the 16th century and the rise of historical critical scholarship in the 18th century, these works have been neglected by biblical scholars, theologians, and readers of the Bible. In part this neglect rests on prejudice, in part on ignorance. It is widely assumed that these commentaries are composed of pious fantasies unrelated to the biblical text, that they abuse the text by unjustified use of allegory, and that they were pre-critical, and so superseded by modern historical-critical studies.
Yet anyone who reads the ancient commentaries realizes at once that they are interesting, insightful, informative, and, we would like to say, “biblical.” That is, these commentators moved in the world of the Bible, understood its idiom, loved its teaching, were filled with awe before its mysteries. In the words of St. Ephrem, commenting on the book of Genesis: “I read the opening of this book and was filled with joy, for its verses and lines spread out their arms to welcome me; the first rushed out and kissed me, and led me on to its companion; and when I reached that verse wherein is written the story of Paradise, it lifted me up and transported me from the bosom of the book to the very bosom of Paradise.” The writings of these ancient biblical commentators are an essential tool for understanding the Scriptures, for they knew something that has largely been forgotten by biblical scholars.
In recent years homilists, preachers, teachers and readers of the Bible have become dissatisfied with the results of historical-critical biblical scholarship. It is not that critical biblical scholarship is without value, but that a strictly historical understanding of the biblical text independent of theological or spiritual concerns has limited usefulness for the Church’s preaching and teaching and for the individual’s growth in faith. The more the Bible has been studied historically and philologically, the more it seems to have become foreign to faith and life. It is taken as axiomatic that the scholarly study of the Bible must exclude references to Christian teaching. The Bible has become a book of the ancient near-East, a book that speaks of the past, whose home is the university not the Church. Much biblical scholarship is simply irrelevant to the lives of Christians.
One way to rediscover the tradition of spiritual and theological interpretation of the Bible is to return to the classical sources, the commentaries and homilies that were written during the early years of the Church’s history. However, most of these commentaries are inaccessible to the general reader, available only in Greek and Latin and Syriac and other early Christian languages. Few have been translated into modern languages, and even fewer into English. Many have come down in fragmentary form. For most readers they are simply unknown. Over the last two decades there has been a notable increase in the number of exegetical writings from the early Church available in English, but they represent only a small part of what lies untranslated in ancient languages.
In an effort to recover the Church’s tradition of biblical interpretation, an ecumenical group of American scholars plans to publish a series of biblical commentaries based on commentaries, homilies, and other works from the Church’s premier teachers of the first eight hundred years of Christian history. In its initial phase, the commentaries will deal with those biblical books that are central to Christian faith and life: Gospel of John, Gospel of Matthew, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Isaiah, Genesis, Psalms, Song of Songs. Once the project is underway the editorial board hopes to expand this list to include other books, such as Revelation, Luke, Ephesians, Hebrews, Exodus, Leviticus, Job, and Ecclesiastes.
The project called The Church’s Bible will be published (beginning in the year 2000) by William B. Eerdmans and is supported by the Community of Christ in the City of New York and the Homeland Foundation.