Note: this was originally post #436, but I substantially rewrote and expanded it to cover more material.
Oh, well thank you for clearing that up. It seems to me a lot of the confusion comes from a hermeneutic that approaches the Bible backwards. Rather than beginning and understanding what is happening in the Old Testament so the arguments presented in the New Testament may be understood, New Testament arguments are interpreted using medeival/modern concepts and then those concepts are read into the Old Testament. As an example, the Levitical sacrifices were not payment for sins committed but thanksgiving offerings for God's mercy towards them. Atonement was in the blood, and the blood was provided by God to cleanse them of sin. Rather than seeing the theological cycle in Leviticus of unclean-clean and common-holy and connecting it to Paul's arguments, substitutionary themes are read into Leviticus.
That being said, I do support both an Alexandrian typological method of the Old Testament, where we read it in the context of the New as Christological prophecy and allegory, and an Antiochene fundamentalist-literalist approach. And I think based on the ending of the Gospel of Luke, the Old Testament must be seen as being about Christ, and this justifies reading it in light of the New Testament.
I like the lectionaries of the ancient Gallican, Mozarabic and Ambrosian Rites and the East Syriac Rite, where the Old Testament lesson, or two lessons in the case of the East Syriac Rite which follow the Jewish Synagogue tradition of a Torah lesson followed by a corresponding Haftarah from elsewhere in the Old Tesrament,* followed, in all of these rites, by the standard Christian practice, inspired by Judaism, of an Epistle followed by the Gospel; in the four specific rites I mentioned, all the lessons are connected and related.
But I think we need both the literal Antiochene and the typological Alexandrian approach, named for the ancient catechtical schools; the Alexandrian method was exclusively used by Origen, who was very much influenced by Alexandria but set up his own catechtical school in Caesarea, in which Eusebius of Caesarea, a bishop famous for his Ecclesiastical History, who was also sympathetic to Arius and the Arians, may also have been a successor to Origen, which if true would have fueled the fires of people like St. Epiphanios, who held Origen responsible for having inspired Arius (I disagree, and so did the Cappodacians, St. Basil the Great, his best friend St. Gregory Nazianzus, his younger brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, his older sister St. Macrina, and arguably his youngest brother St. Peter of Sebaste, for they compiled an anthology called the Philocalia** of Origen’s best writings, which omitted the controversial material that eventually caused the Chalcedonian churches to possibly anathematize him at the Fifth Ecumenical Council).
Theodore of Mopsuestia, still venerated as a saint in the Assyrian Church of the East, was also possibly anathematized at the Fifth Ecumenical Council, making him and Origen the only people widely venerated as saints who were later anathematized***, followed the opposite approach to Origen, and was famed for his strictly Antiochene literal-historical interpretation, which is nonetheless different from contemporary literal-historical interpretations by many Protestants.
I think it is telling that the early church was, to say the least, not unanimously in favor of Origen or Theodore of Mopsuestia shows that a balanced approach is required, with more Alexandrian interpretation used in the Old Testament, and the New Testament read in a primarily Antiochene context with Alexandrian interpretation restricted to complex portions such as the Revelation and other eschatological prophecies, and as a means of understanding apparent contradictions. In the Old Testament, the specific amount of optimal Alexandrian vs. Antiochene interpretation varies from book to book I would further argue.
We see this hybrid approach in St. Athanasius the Patriarch of Alexandria, who was educated by the Alexandrian School at the insistence of St. Alexander of Alexandria, who later made him his Protodeacon, and as Protodeacon, St. Athanasius was the chief advocate in defense of the actions of the Church of Alexandria in anathematizing Arius for heresy at the Council of Nicaea, and is credited**** with the victory of Christianity over Arianism at that council, and also as one of the main contributors to the triumph of Christianity over Arianism in general; on his death, one of the Cappodacians, St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus) I think, said “To praise Athanasius is to praise virtue.” He developed our modern NT canon, which was similar to, but more inclusive than, the canon proposed by Eusebius of Caesarea, and lacked the graded canonicity of the Eusebian canon, with books either being allowed to be read in church, with two other books, including the Shepherd of Hermas, allowed for catechesis but forbidden from being read in the church and thus not canonical; his promulgation of it via an encyclical to all bishops in his very large jurisdiction, along with Pope Gelasius promulgating it, albeit with a prohibition of any use of any books not listed by Athanasius as canonical, including the Shepherd of Hermas, in a Decree in 490, the Decretum Gelasianum I think it was called, ensured the Athanasian New Testament canon was universally adopted. His book, On the Incarnation, in which he explains the Nicene theology of the divinity of Christ and His status as God incarnate, is hugely important, and his interpretation of the Old Testament shows use of Antiochene interpretation alongside his native Alexandrian method.
St. John Chrysostom, a priest in Antioch, later the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the best friend of the aforementioned Theodosius of Mopsuestia, also used both methods in his famed exegetical homilies on the books of the Old and New Testament. He is widely regarded as the greatest preacher of all time and the probable author of the recension of the ancient liturgy of Antioch, the Anaphora od the Twelve Apostles, that is now the main liturgy in the Eastern Orthodox church, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom; the hagiographic appellation Chrysostom means “Golden Mouthed.”
In the aforementioned Cappodacians, we see a good Antiochene-Alexandrian balance, and by the time of St. John Damascene writing the
Fount of Knowledge, which included his famous
Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, in the eighth century, a full harmony between the two approaches was de rigeur, and indeed, both the Alexandrian and Antiochene Schools themselves were gone, replaced with monasteries which took up the task of preserving the faith and gradually morphed into the oldest universities, like Oxford and Cambridge, which were previously monastic centers like Mount Athos or Meteora Valley in Greece, and then seminaries appeared, as departments in universities and as standalone entitiesm taking us somewhat full circle.
*Some Old Testament lessons in the East Syriac Liturgy used by the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syro Malabar Catholic Church, correspond exactly with Torah/haftarah pairings from the one year lectionary found in the Babylonian Talmud, which most synagogues used, which is unsurprising, as the Church of the East was historically headquartered in Seleucia-Cstesiphon, the city built to replace Babylon when a shift in the Euphrates made Babylon uninhabitable; another shift rendered Seleucia-Cstesiphon uninhabitable and resulted in the construction of Baghdad, which is almost on top of old Babylon. Most Rabinnical Jews use the one year lectionary in the Babylonian Talmud, vs. the three year lectionary in the Jerusalem Talmud, which is generally regarded in Judaism as incomplete and less important than the Babylonian. In addition, I believe the lectionary in the Babylonian Talmud is probably much closer to the original lectionary established when St. Esdras (Ezra) the Priest and St. Nehemiah the Prophet established synagogues throughout Judea after the end of the Babylonian Captivity and instituted the continual reading of the Torah and Haftarah in these and in the Temple, with both following a thrice daily worship pattern of morning, noon and evening worship, which the Jews still use, and Christians based their services on (albeit due to Roman persecution, the three main offices tend to be Matins, said just before dawn, Vespers, said just after dusk, and Compline, said at night before bed, or the Midnight Office, because it was the custom of Christians to secretly celebrate the Eucharist on the graves of martyrs in Rome and elsewhere, and in the catacombs, or in houses, until the faith was legalized; consequently, midday prayer has been less important to us, because of that, and also because the most important service, the Eucharist, is now usually celebrated in the late morning, ending at or before noon, although the Orthodox churches, except for the Armenians, do celebrate it at midnight on Easter Sunday and in monasteries).
** Not to be confused with the
Philokalia, an anthology of texts on mystical theology, prayer, monastic living and Hesychasm, compiled by the Greek Orthodox monks Saints Nicodemus the Hagiorite and Macarius of Corinth. St. Nicodemus also compiled the
Pedalion, the nomocanon, or compilation of canon law as received by the Eastern Orthodox, which I regard as the most reliable view of the canons of the early church to exist in the English language, because we lack translations of the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian and Assyrian nomocanons, and the Roman Catholic Church changed its canon law completely a few times with the Decreetals and the contemporary Code of Canon Law and Canon Law for the Eastern Churches. And the Anglicans and other Protestant denominations who have canon laws, like the Episcopalians, defined their canon laws anew.
*** I myself regard both Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia as saints worthy of veneration, but I also venerate their opponents Saints Jerome and Epiphanios in the case of Origen, and St. Cyril of Alexandria and his allies and defenders against Nestorius in the case of Theodore of Mopsuestia. I think if we compare the errors they made and the impact they had, they were minor and accidental compared to the devastation unleashed by Arius and Nestorius, who allegedly took inspiration from them, but this is not proven in the case of Origen, and debateable even in the case of Nestorius, because the central thrust of Nestorianism was that it was wrong to venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary as Theotokos, as a distraction to worshipping Christ (sound familiar?) and the idea of Christ having two hypostases in a personal union or two persons in a union of will was a theoretical concept that Theodore reflected on, without an agenda, and Origen likewise reflected on the possibilities of transmigration
**** Together with the Holy Spirit, who is regarded as inspiring Athanasius.