A stunning insight on the Fathers’ reading of Holy Scripture:
…at any mention of “wood” the Fathers will immediately jump to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then link that to the wood of Noah’s ark, and then the ark of the covenant, and so on. O’Keefe and Reno show how these “random associations” are more like the music expert’s ability to hear just one bar of music and immediately recall the whole symphony it came from.
In the Fathers’ reading, seemingly superfluous words can echo off even the remotest corners of Scripture. When they hear “wood,” that word becomes like a musical theme to trace through the symphony of redemption, beginning with the Fall at the tree and culminating in the triumph of the Cross.
That’s from Ryan J. Jack McDermott’s review of the book Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible, by John J. O’Keefe and R. R. Reno. The review appears in the current (May) issue of Touchstone. If you love reading the Fathers, you should subscribe today.
Wow! It’s reasons like this that I love reading the Fathers! They don’t miss a thing.
On a side note, have you read R.R. Reno’s article from First Things where he tells of his reason for converting? I read it when I was discerning my conversion. It’s excellent! Here’s a link to it:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0502/articles/reno.htm
When I was younger, I thought the Fathers’ chains of references were kinda farfetched. But the more I learn about the Bible (and about the intentional OT scripture references written into the Gospels and other NT books), the more I realize that the Fathers are not dragging in irrelevant stuff.
Funny how our reading changes as we get older. I recently read Peter Brown’s second edition of his biography of Augustine. I was impressed by his frank admission, in an appendix, of how little he understood about liturgy and sex when he first wrote the book, as a young man. To paraphrase Mark Twain, Brown was surprised by how much Augustine had learned between editions.