Historicism Versus History and Spirit: Henri de Lubac on

What We Can Learn from Studying Origen

Thomas P. Harmon

Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Volume 19, Number 3,

Summer 2016, pp. 29-58 (Article)

Published by Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2016.0026

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/621325

Access provided at 13 Jan 2020 07:13 GMT from University of Technology, Sydney
 Thomas P. Harmon

Historicism Versus
History and Spirit
Henri de Lubac on
What We Can Learn from Studying Origen

I. Introduction
In 1950, when Henri de Lubac first published his book Histoire et
Esprit, the least that could be said about it is that it moved against the
dominant current of most Scripture scholarship of the day. It helped
to show how the study of patristic exegesis of the Bible could be
considered not merely relevant but particularly important for de Lu-
bac’s time. The choice of topic, the Old Testament exegesis of Ori-
gen of Alexandria, was no accident. Interestingly, de Lubac was not
interested in a naive return to Origenian exegesis; nor was he inter-
ested in a root-and-branch critique of the historical-critical method
of exegesis.1 De Lubac’s book put into practice several strands of his
theological project, among which were the clarification of the mean-
ing of spiritual exegesis, the attempt to demonstrate the connec-
tion between Scripture and Christian living, and a demonstration of
continuity in the Church’s tradition of reading the Bible spiritually.
Not least among the strands was an attempt to combat historicism.2
For de Lubac, who largely follows Blondel in his understanding of
historicism,3 historicism mistakes the scientific study of history for
the actual history itself and therefore, in Blondel’s phrasing, reduces

l o g o s 19 :3 s u m m e r 2016
30 logos
“history to the intelligible determinism of phenomena.”4 As a result
of emptying history of the interiority of real human life, historicism
entails that all human thought is reduced to historical phenomena
and therefore completely conditioned by its historical setting. The
historicist therefore subsumes thought under the aspect of the de-
terminism of phenomena that he studies. The passing of each histori-
cal era, therefore, entails the obsolescence of the thought that arose
within it.
This article tracks de Lubac’s argument against historicism in
History and Spirit and points out the ways in which de Lubac’s own
practice of reading and learning from Origen undercuts historicism
and thereby assists the contemporary exegete to be a better reader,
not only of ancient authors like Origen, but also of the inspired text
of the Bible. History and Spirit undertakes to study Origen’s exegesis
historically, to be sure, but in a non-historicist way. In it, Origen’s
exegesis appears as a resource for discovering the truth rather than as
a historical phenomenon completely determined by its predecessors
and context. The implication is that contemporary exegetes have
something to learn from Origen, not just about Origen, something
that can help the contemporary exegete to purify his own modes
of thinking in ways that make him a better reader of the Bible. But
in what ways exactly, according to de Lubac, can Origen teach the
exegete of today? At least in two ways: (1) negatively, by showing
that the inevitability of intellectual progress is a false tale, and (2)
positively, by illustrating what forgotten wisdom an apprenticeship
to, or at least a genuinely sympathetic reading of, Origen has to offer.
This article will therefore proceed by examining some of the diffi-
culties in studying patristic exegesis in a period in which the historical-
critical method is the standard and almost the sole way of studying
Scripture, then by examining two contrasting evaluations of Origen’s
exegesis by Raymond E. Brown and Luke Timothy Johnson in order
to illuminate de Lubac’s thought5 and to provide examples of the need
for non-historicist approaches to the Bible and the exegesis of the Fa-
thers of the Church. My article will briefly outline some of Brown’s
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 31
objections to patristic exegesis and show how de Lubac meets them
in History and Spirit. Next, it will consider Johnson’s arguments for
the usefulness of the study of patristic exegesis. Finally, it will evalu-
ate Johnson’s position against the work of de Lubac, showing that,
whereas de Lubac studies Origen in order to apprentice himself to
Origen, Johnson’s approach to Origen ends up preventing the scholar
of the Bible from availing himself of the resources for understanding
Scripture that Origen offers.6

II.The Difficulties of Studying Patristic Exegesis

In itself, de Lubac’s practice in History and Spirit challenges the his-
toricist judgment that the history of thought is a history of unmixed
progress—that is, in virtue of living when they do, later thinkers are
always able to consult and therefore inevitably transcend their prede-
cessors.7 In addition to the possibility of the progress of understand-
ing through history, however, de Lubac is also alive to the fact that the
shift to what he occasionally calls “scientific exegesis” and away from
the exegesis of the Fathers has lost a great deal. Intellectual history is
a story of both progress and decline. If the exegete has both suffered
losses and achieved gain in understanding the Bible, then it is impor-
tant to apprentice ourselves once again to someone who possesses
what has been lost and does not share the blind spots characteristic of
the present age and some of the limitations of present practice. Nor
does this approach require leaving behind genuine gains.
The question is, for de Lubac, what are the preconditions for
learning from Origen? The answer has to begin with a catalog of
what de Lubac thinks modern interpreters have lost. These include
an extreme this-worldliness or immanentism, a forgetfulness of the
soul, and an inability to understand how the spirit is borne in his-
tory.8 The latter is especially important for de Lubac and might be
thought of as the consequence of the first two problems, since it
is the spirit borne within history that makes Scripture into a liv-
ing word capable of transforming even readers who are far removed
32 logos
from the time of its composition; it is the spirit borne in history that
makes Christ present and active in every age. Origen therefore offers
to those who are willing to become his students a way of purifying
their approach to Scripture by strengthening and supplementing the
contemporary concern for history with a deeper, more theologically
sound understanding of the relationship between spirit and history.
De Lubac consequently fights both “extreme spiritualism,” a fight
that most twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholars are willing to
join alongside him, and “extreme literalism” that is “no less deadly.”9
In order to learn from Origen, then, one must first have a sense that
one lacks something that Origen might be thought to possess, which
includes divesting oneself of the view of intellectual history that sees
only the possibility for progress and cannot tolerate the suggestion
that it is, itself, open to a critique from the past. Second, the initial
stance of humility toward the ancient author must issue into a care-
ful, sympathetic reading of his texts that is open to the possibility
that one’s own assumptions and opinions will need to be revised or
corrected. That means that the modern reader must focus on under-
standing the ancient author as he himself wants to be understood,
rather than attempting to understand him better than he understood
himself. Doing the latter inevitably risks that one will allow unexam-
ined prejudices to color one’s interpretation since it already assumes
the later standpoint to be superior.10
In order to clarify the intention of de Lubac, it is useful to look
at two exegetes whose evaluations of Origen contrast with that of
de Lubac: Raymond E. Brown and Luke Timothy Johnson.These two
figures in particular are interesting because Brown unambiguously
champions the historical-critical method over and against patristic
exegesis, while Johnson affirms that there is value in studying the ex-
egesis of the Fathers. For Brown, the advent of the historical-critical
method makes patristic exegesis obsolete. Why is this? Because the
meaning of Scripture depends absolutely on the literal sense, which
in turn demands the utmost care in studying the historical circum-
stances of the Scriptures. Hence, when a new method arrives, better
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 33
able to illuminate those circumstances than any previous method,
we ought to prefer it. Since the exegesis of the Fathers, according to
Brown, was more imaginative than historical, the modern method of
historical-critical interpretation of the Bible replaces—without look-
ing back—the ways of reading the Bible popular among the Fathers
of the Church. Luke Timothy Johnson, on the other hand, while by
no means calling for the end of historical-critical scholarship, sees
that the historical-critical method has not been an unmixed bless-
ing, especially in its inability to sustain the life of faith in the Church
and the awareness of Christ’s presence as living and active. Johnson
therefore sees a value in studying the Fathers of the Church, espe-
cially Origen, because of their intensely ecclesial focus.
But even as Johnson takes Brown and his generation of Catho-
lic exegetes to task for neglecting the Fathers, Johnson’s own way
of utilizing them arguably banishes them further from the actual
judgments and procedures of the exegete than Brown did. This is so
because Johnson submits all judgments to the panel of historically-
developed experience while subjecting experience to no higher stan-
dard of judgment, which is historicist. De Lubac’s approach, there-
fore, may be even more important now than it was in 1950.

III. Raymond E. Brown on the Value of Reading Origen

Not long after the publication of Histoire et Esprit, Brown questioned
whether the study of patristic exegesis had any value for the modern
exegete at all. Brown regarded the renewed interest in patristic ex-
egesis as, at best, useless, and at worst, a threat to the real gains mod-
ern Catholic exegetes had been making because of the relatively new
acceptance of the historical-critical method in the Catholic Church.
After referring to the attempts of Jean Daniélou and Henri de Lubac
to revive the study of the spiritual sense of Scripture, Brown writes,
“Despite the serious attempt in our times to vindicate the exegesis
of the two great exegetical schools of antiquity, Alexandria (Origen)
and Antioch (Theodore of Mopsuestia), I would judge the attempt to
34 logos
give great value to patristic exegesis as exegesis a failure.”11 He contin-
ues, “But while appreciating the rich patristic legacy in theology and
spirituality drawn from the Bible, I think that we must recognize that
the exegetical method of the Fathers is irrelevant to the study of the
Bible today.”12 The exegesis of the Fathers seems to have been arbi-
trary and purely “imaginative and symbolic,” more “a form of literary
art,”13 as opposed to current, more scientific, historical-critical ap-
proaches. For Brown, it is impossible to see a use for the “more-than-
literal”14 exegesis of the Fathers. Their exegesis has become for us,
due to our historical consciousness, an admirable but obsolete relic,
considering that “its characteristic indifference toward the literal
sense militates against its revival today.”15 He therefore concludes,
“This writer does not share the view that Origen’s exegesis can really
be revived for our time.”16
It is important to note that Brown does not reject the sensus plenior
itself or, even more clearly, the spiritual sense of Scripture. He actu-
ally calls more-than-literal meanings in the Bible “extremely impor-
tant.”17 Instead, what Brown objects to is using the Fathers’ exegesis
to guide the modern interpreter. Brown’s own practice follows suit.
He seldom refers to the exegesis of a Father of the Church in his
own interpretive work. Two examples show Brown’s normal use of
patristic texts in his own exegesis. In his 1965 New Testament Essays,
Brown cites St. Irenaeus on the connection of the Wedding at Cana
to the Eucharist.18 But it is not Irenaeus’s arguments, or the reasons
for his exegesis, that are useful for Brown, but rather Irenaeus’s wit-
ness to an early tradition of the interpretation of the passage. Again,
in his 1981 book The Critical Meaning of the Bible, Brown cites St.
John Chrysostom as a source for the statement in Dei Verbum, the
Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation, that
“The words of God, expressed in human language, have been made
like to human discourse, just as of old the Word of the eternal Fa-
ther, having taken to himself the weak flesh of humanity, became like
other human beings” (Dei Verbum, 13). He introduces Chrysostom as
an authority on the theology of revelation, but not as a guide or aid in
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 35
exegeting the texts of Scripture.19 That task is reserved for the meth-
ods of modern, historical-critical exegesis applied by the competent,
properly trained exegete.

IV. De Lubac on Origen:

His Weaknesses and What Can Be Learned from Him
Henri de Lubac agrees with Brown to the extent that he says mod-
ern exegesis should not make a simple, uncritical return to patristic
exegesis. He says, “I find the distance to be as great as anyone else
does, that distance which separates us irremediably from this Alex-
andrian of the third century and from his intellectual universe. The
river does not flow back to its source. No more than life itself does
thought retrace its steps. Even if it wished to do so, no miracle would
allow such a dream to be realized.”20 Even more interesting is the
picture one gathers from de Lubac if one reads his book merely with
an eye to his criticisms of Origen. Consider the following catena of
quotations:

1. “Origen is sometimes tempted to find a sublime meaning a bit

too quickly for other precepts.”21
2. “On occasion, however, the mystical sense does serve our au-
thor, too, as an expedient to resolve textual difficulties.”22
3. “Is this to say that he shows a true historical sense? Assuredly
not, and this deficit prevents him from understanding many
things.”23
4. “He is almost totally unaware both of Semitic ways of think-
ing and of the literary modes of expression that correspond to
them.”24
5. “Always this denigration and this rejection of the Old Testa-
ment! Origen, that man of the Church, is never insensitive to
this danger. His Catholic instinct makes him react. But then, as
in other analogous cases, he goes too far. He lets himself be car-
ried away by the controversy. A desire for more solid, less pliant
orthodoxy makes him exaggerate in the opposite direction.”25
36 logos
6. “[Origen] did not have the historical sense in the purely hu-
man, modern, and scientific understanding of the term. In that
respect, there is nothing to distinguish him from his contem-
poraries. Once the events are past, he, too, does not dream of
devoting a retrospective interest to them.”26
7. “Arbitrary exegesis, of course, like so many others in Origen.”27
8. “So his justifiable conviction of the overall inspiration, too for-
getful of the inevitable infirmities of the human author, often
led him to seek profound intentions beneath miniscule par-
ticularities of the text that did not have any such intentions.”28
9. Speaking of the ignorance of literary genre, style, and language
in Scripture among the Fathers of the Church, de Lubac ob-
serves, “More prolific and more acute than most, Origen falls
more frequently than they into this failing.”29
10. “Many of the spiritual meanings he thought to discover beneath
every text taken one after the other seem debatable to us, and
more than debatable.”30
11. “But in this ‘congregatio in unum’ (gathering together into
one), Origen does not take into account either the human con-
texts or lines of development.”31

De Lubac is sensitive to many of the concerns Brown articulates

about the exegesis of the Fathers in general and Origen in particu-
lar. Given de Lubac’s insistence that we neither can nor ought to
return to Origenian exegesis, one can only conclude that de Lubac
rejects, pace Brown, an uncritical revival. Indeed, he says himself, “I
have sought, not to ‘defend’ Origen, but simply to know what in fact
he thought and said.”32 Only this kind of sympathetic reading can il-
luminate the real differences between “us” and Origen’s “intellectual
universe.” This way of sympathetically but not uncritically reading
Origen is a model for how to benefit from studying ancient think-
ers. De Lubac observes, “Every mode of thinking, thus, has its faults,
and it is natural that we are more clear-sighted about those of the
ancients than about our own.”33 This point seems obvious, but it is
one that is seldom emphasized enough. What are the faults de Lubac
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 37
believes a historical study of Origen can help to correct? He tells us:
“We are threatened with a totalitarian ‘earth-boundedness’ and hu-
manism. In the diversity of their systems, psychologists, sociologists,
and metaphysicians conspire to impose such views on us. In a word,
our great temptation is to make God the symbol of man, his im-
age objectified. Through this dreadful inversion, all biblical allegory,
along with faith itself, would obviously be taken away with a single
stroke.”34 The stakes, therefore, are very high: the faith itself. Our
temptation is to expunge from Scripture any hint of God’s conde-
scension, thereby subjecting the God of the Bible to our own preju-
dices. De Lubac identifies the main culprit as historicism, which he
distinguishes from the historical meaning.35 De Lubac points out,

The historical sense—which is more than the critical sense—

is in large part a recent conquest. There is no reason to scorn
it: it has enriched the human mind.We would be foolish to do
without it. But it also includes its dangers. The inferiority in
this regard of one of the ancients like Origen was not without
its compensations; notably—and perhaps we are not sensitive
enough to this advantage—he escaped all the narrowness, all
the illusions, all the pitfalls of historicism.36

Historicism differs from the historical sense. Historicism regards

the past as dead and obsolete, cut off from the present. If all human
thought is inextricably tied to the period in which it arises, then the
thought of another period is interesting only as a museum piece—
or, to stick with de Lubac’s image of life and death, an embalmed
corpse—and not as something urgent and vital that makes a claim
on our attention and can assist us to purify and develop our own
understanding.
According to de Lubac, historicism robs history of any interiority
and denies that history bears any transcendent impulse. Historicism
“reconstitutes the past without taking into account that with which
it is pregnant.”37 It disables the exegete’s attempt to read the Old
Testament in light of the New, since God’s presence in the interior
38 logos
of history directing it toward fulfillment in Christ is ruled out in
advance. It makes the totality of Scripture, Old and New Testaments,
a dead letter to people of today because it denies that spirit dwells in
history.38 De Lubac explains the essence of Origen’s exegesis, on the
other hand, saying,

If it were necessary to sum up in a single word the spirit of this

exegesis, we would say that it is an effort to grasp the spirit in
the history or to undertake the passage from history to spirit.
An effort both twofold and single, which, by the fact that it
transcends history, serves as the basis for this history by giving
it a meaning. This is what we conceive so poorly today, since
this category of history has acquired so great, so unquestionable
a value for us—even while it poses us so many questions; and
since we are also so little accustomed to reflecting about it. We
imagine it to be spontaneously connatural to the human con-
sciousness, and we willingly believe, without further examina-
tion, that it justifies itself, as it were, so to speak, in the air!39

If, however, spirit does not dwell in history, then the Bible can-
not be inspired in any weighty sense, because it is the Holy Spirit
dwelling in history that provides the Bible with all of its significance
as a divine communication.40 Human beings would, therefore, be
cut off from the word of God.41 This kind of what de Lubac calls
totalitarian earthboundedness that robs history of its interiority and
has such harmful effects for the faith is part and parcel of historical-
critical exegesis, which methodologically excludes from its purview
anything that transcends the externals of history, materialistically
construed. For de Lubac, therefore, it calls out for a supplement,
without which it issues only in distortions. Brown is insightful when
he says, “It is not by accident that the emphasis on the literal sense de-
veloped in our times. The historical-critical method by which the lit-
eral sense is uncovered is sympathetic to modern man’s whole mode
of thought.”42 If modern man’s whole mode of thought is, like the
thought of every age, subject to blind spots, then what Brown points
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 39
out would have to mean that our use of the historical-critical method
today can only be fruitful if we are cognizant of our blind spots and
work to counteract them.
For de Lubac, one ought not to have to choose between the de-
ficiencies of the past and the deficiencies of the present. Instead,
studying great thinkers of the past such as Origen without yielding to
historicism can purify current ways of thinking without losing hold
of genuine advances.43 De Lubac describes experiencing this process
of purification himself:

It was no longer a matter of measuring, in any given exegesis,

the part allotted to the “letter” or to history. It was no lon-
ger even a matter solely of exegesis. It was a whole manner
of thinking, a whole world view that loomed before me. A
whole interpretation of Christianity of which Origen, fur-
thermore, despite many of his personal and at times ques-
tionable traits, was less the author than the witness. Even
more, through this “spiritual understanding” of Scripture, it
was Christianity itself that appeared to me, as if acquiring a
reflective self-awareness.44

For de Lubac, reading Origen was important because Origen un-

folded the mysteries of the faith for him, which led to a deeper intel-
lectual and spiritual conversion.
De Lubac’s judgment about the importance of Origen and the
rest of the Fathers stands in marked contrast to Brown’s account of
them. For Brown, “The Church Fathers accomplished a true herme-
neutic task: they made the Scripture of an earlier and largely Semitic
period speak meaningfully to a later Greco-Roman world.”45 But
for Origen, the point of exegesis was not to translate historically-
bound texts, but to uncover the transcendent reality to which texts
refer, which requires an act of understanding rather than technique
or method. On the other hand, if there is no interiority to history,
then the meaning in biblical texts can be adequately excavated us-
ing only technical means. Brown does not mention the importance
40 logos
or necessity of conversion or of the purification of the mind of the
critic. For Brown, the application of a technique or method seems to
remove the necessity for conversion, either spiritual or intellectual.
Since techniques develop over time, that means that the understand-
ing of Scripture will increase as better techniques for understanding
Scripture arise and are refined.
Even with respect to history, however, de Lubac does not want
to leave Origen undefended against his modern critics. For Origen,
de Lubac says, “The whole symbolic construct, with its ‘allegoriza-
tions,’ its interiorizations, its spiritual consequences, does not evacu-
ate history. It is not even indifferent to it, as Philo’s allegorism could
be. It is built, in principle, on the ground of history.”46 The reality
Origen possessed but that his great teachers Philo and the pagan Pla-
tonists did not is the Christian mystery of the Incarnation, in which
the value of history is infinitely raised because God himself has acted
within it by entering it himself. The great difference between Chris-
tian and pagan Greek allegory is that Christianity is not mythologi-
cal: Christian allegory is founded on and draws itself from events that
happened rather than being an imposition on deeds or texts in order
to draw out a beneficial meaning perhaps not to be found in the text;
in other words, Christian allegory happens in the reality of the events
written about in the Bible, whereas all previous allegory happened in
the mind of the allegorist as a post hoc reflection on texts.
As mentioned above, de Lubac does criticize Origen for making
too quick a use of the spiritual sense to resolve textual difficulties.
Still, de Lubac denies that this undercuts the historicity of events47
as Philonic and Platonist allegorizing inevitably does.48 Christianity
takes history so seriously because the Word of God enters into his-
tory.49 The result is that, for de Lubac, Christianity originally gave
rise to historical thinking.50 For example, de Lubac observes that,
according to Origen, “It was really night when Judas went out to
betray, and that physical night was the image of the night that then
began in his soul.”51 Thus, for Origen, “Very far from compromising
the evangelical reality, he merely accentuates it, for the reality of the
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 41
story is the necessary guarantee of the mysterious reality that it sig-
nifies. Then he is within the intention of Saint John, within the prac-
tice of Saint Paul.”52 Origen’s exegesis is solidly historical because he
bears witness to Christ, the concrete universal, the person in whose
incarnation spirit and history meet.
De Lubac is also aware that Origen’s historical sense is not tu-
tored by contemporary standards, and that this apparently leads him
to make mistakes.53 Even further, “The consideration of biblical his-
tory has for us a religious importance whose precise tenor could not
have been suspected by the ancients. That is to say that the initiation
to reading the Bible, even by those who are in no way concerned
with knowledge, could no longer be today what it was in the time of
Origen.”54 Precisely because of the importance of history for Chris-
tianity, the modern emphasis on history, if it is purified from any
historicism, can, and has, led to genuine advances in understanding
the Christian mystery.This is where modern approaches to the Bible,
de Lubac says, can best correct weaknesses in patristic exegesis.
The challenge that reading Origen presents to us, for de Lubac, is
also the challenge presented to us when we read any of the great fig-
ures in the Christian tradition: how to understand the concrete uni-
versal, the mystery of Christ and the Church, in successive and very
different historical epochs. To focus our attention on the desirability
(and also the immensity) of this task, de Lubac compares Origen
and St. Thomas Aquinas. He observes that, just as Origen transposed
Platonist philosophy in his time, so also did Aquinas transpose Aris-
totelianism in his time. De Lubac held that for both Aquinas and Ori-
gen, “No more in the domain of knowing than in that of acting did
either of them wish to ‘overturn’ everything: they believed it better
to ‘purify.’”55 The principle guiding this transposition, the dialectical
force driving the purification of current thought, is and must always
remain faith in Christ, since “it is the very person of Christ that [Ori-
gen] presents as the source of all renewal and the principle of final
unity; it is the Christian life that he preaches tirelessly in his treatises
and in his homilies; it is the Christian interpretation of all things, of
42 logos
which he is the first to try his hand at tracing the major principles.”56
For de Lubac, this Origenian principle is evergreen.
Finally, a constant undercurrent in de Lubac’s volume is Origen’s
dependence on St. Paul. De Lubac is constantly at pains to show that
Origen follows Paul in his spiritual reading of Scripture, that Origen
at all times attempts to be faithful to the example Paul gives: “Origen
imitates and extends the movement of the Apostle, in whom he sees
above all the foremost of exegetes.”57 Origen finds that Scripture has
a spiritual sense only because Paul does so before him: “There truly
is in the Bible, according to Saint Paul and according to Origen, an
allegorical sense.”58 If de Lubac is right, then to deny or even deem-
phasize the spiritual sense as used by the Fathers of the Church is to
depart from the practices of the authors of Scripture themselves.
The best corrective to the deficiencies in our own thinking is a
dialogue partner who does not share the same weaknesses. As C. S.
Lewis once said about reading St. Athanasius:

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing

certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.
We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the char-
acteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old
books. . . . Not, of course, that there is any magic about the
past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they
made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.
They will not flatter us in the errors we are already commit-
ting; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will
not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because
either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong
in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future
would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past,
but unfortunately we cannot get at them.59

De Lubac’s book is not an attempt to revive an old way of read-

ing Scripture in order to replace the modern historical-critical ap-
proach. He thinks that there are good reasons not to wish to return
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 43
uncritically to the patristic exegesis of Scripture and good reasons
to be thankful for the historical-critical method. Nevertheless, it
would be sheer complacency to regard our own way of doing things
as without any deficiency of its own as compared with other ways.

V. Historicism and Historical Study: Luke Timothy Johnson’s

Recommendation of the Study of Origen
Luke Timothy Johnson attempts to resist the excesses and abuses of
the historical-critical method of exegesis, recognizing in his own way
the poverty of current biblical exegesis. He devotes a chapter to Ori-
gen of Alexandria and obviously greatly admires him. He describes
himself as a member of the generation of Catholic exegetical scholars
characterized by their “disillusionment” with the patrimony of the
previous generation of Catholic exegetes like Raymond Brown, Jo-
seph Fitzmyer, and Roland Murphy.60 He finds that the work of this
generation, which made the historical-critical method the center of
its exegetical enterprise, has in addition to conferring many benefits
also had ambiguous or even bad effects. He lists four conclusions his
generation can recognize more clearly than the preceding genera-
tion: (1) the historical-critical method is not merely the study of his-
tory, but is involved in historical reconstruction as its distinguishing
mark; (2) the method has not resulted in scientific consensus on the
reconstructions its various practitioners have proposed, nor has it
succeeded in sustaining the life of faith in the Church; (3) it consigns
other ways of reading the Bible to uncritical and unscientific irrel-
evance, thereby abandoning all other ways of reading the Bible used
by Christians in prior times; and (4) it is not theologically neutral,
bearing within it presuppositions of Protestant religion that are cor-
rosive to Catholic faith. For all of these reasons, Johnson worries that
research on the Bible as Catholic scholars currently carry it out in
the academy has lost much of its Catholic character and now fails to
serve the Church.61 He even writes: “I think what we are in danger of
losing is even more precious than what we have gained.”62
44 logos
Like de Lubac, Johnson regards the reopening of a conversa-
tion between premodern and modern ways of reading the Bible as
necessary to correct the problems he describes.63 Like de Lubac, he
knows that this task will require enormous labor and great histori-
cal acumen. He says, “The point is not an easy nostalgia about the
good old days (there is much in ancient interpretation that is unat-
tractive) nor a simple imitation of perfect models (there is much
in ancient interpretation that is inadequate). The point, rather, is a
critical engagement that can enrich and enable a future.”64 Johnson
observes that what underlies much of the historical-critical method’s
narrowness is its understanding that the object of exegesis is scientia
(knowledge), while it neglects sapientia (wisdom). He notices that
few contemporary biblical scholars are scholars of the whole Bible
and that historical-critical exegesis tends to break up the Bible rather
than reading it as a whole. The sapiential approach to the Bible is a
distinguishing mark of pre-modern exegesis, and so Johnson finds it
disheartening that, “Among New Testament dissertations produced
in the United States today, it is rare to find a dissertation that reviews
interpretation of the passages in question before the 19th century.”65
It is in light of this imbalance that Johnson recommends a return
to the study of patristic exegesis, including Origen. Johnson is ef-
fusive in his praise of Origen. He says: “No Christian theologian ever
more fully embraced Scripture as revealing the mysteries of God,
or ever had a clearer perception of the intellectual difficulties in-
volved in such an embrace,”66 and “Origen was the least anxious of
all theologians. He had the willingness to risk his mind together with
a cheerful openness to being corrected by the reading of others.”67
He defends Origen from charges that he is pre-critical, pointing out
ways in which Origen is a precursor of many of the most heralded
characteristics of the historical-critical method: “Pre-Enlightenment
scriptural interpretation is sometimes dismissed as ‘pre-critical,’
meaning, in effect, prehistorical-critical. The term precritical in any
sense, however, does not apply to Origen. He saw it as his vocation
to inquire (Cels. 4.8–9; 6.37), convinced that truth is truth wherever
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 45
it appears;”68 “He was text-critical;”69 “His interpretation is linguisti-
cally informed;” 70 and “Origen’s commentaries contain many acute
literary observations.”71
It is here that Johnson and de Lubac begin to diverge. Johnson
praises Origen primarily for those traits he sees as being early forms
of, preparatory to, and in common with the Scripture scholarship
of today. The value of pre-modern exegesis for Johnson is that the
pre-modern age has more in common with our postmodern age than
either have with the modern age.72 For Johnson, the purpose in read-
ing ancient authors like Origen is not to challenge and correct the
deficiencies and errors in our own thought and the ways we read the
Bible, but to fill out what is inexplicit or may have been forgotten in
our own largely adequate thought and ways of reading the Bible. He
argues, “Biblical scholars must go back in order to get to the future,
by reading the best of ancient interpreters of Scripture, seeking to
learn again some of the things they ought not to have forgotten.”73
The differences with de Lubac emerge when Johnson begins to con-
sider what precisely modern exegetes have forgotten and therefore
might relearn from Origen. He advises, “How might the postmod-
ern church be instructed by premodern Origen with respect to the
interpretation of Scripture? I think we have much to learn at the level
of sensibility rather than at the level of specific method.”74 De Lubac
might argue that a “method” or way of reading the Bible at the very
least contributes to the “sensibility.” The sapiential sensibility in read-
ing the Bible requires a sapiential “method,” or at least a cast of mind
open to and informed by faith from the outset and confident that
human thought can grasp wholes and not just parts, can penetrate
to revealed realities rather than just pick apart texts, can understand
spirit as it is borne in history.
Johnson provides an example of what it would mean for a con-
temporary exegete to learn from Origen in reading the Bible. He
takes the passage from 1 Timothy 2:11–15 about the silence of
women in the assembly and describes the consternation among con-
temporary laypeople and scholars about this passage. He reproaches
46 logos
those who read it, as he describes it, naively by saying, “This passage
also appears to create a contradiction in Scripture, since it stands
in tension with other Pauline and non-Pauline instructions and the
practice of the early churches with regard to women. Above all, the
passage is a moral stumbling block, a scandal for contemporary read-
ers. Simple Christians who put the passage into practice literally
bring the good news into disrepute among those seeking the equal
dignity of all women.”75
He also reproaches those who reject the passage out of hand as
unacceptable to current sensibility: “More sophisticated Christians
read it literally, cannot accept the Paul found in the passage, and deny
its authority for the church.”76 Both groups fail to read the passage as
Scripture. Johnson then asks:

What would it mean to learn from Origen in this case? We

have no extant reading of his on the passage. Were we to have
such a reading, we would undoubtedly find it unsatisfactory,
because to him it would not have been morally offensive. Ori-
gen is truly a Platonist in his steady depreciation of women’s
ability (see Num I.I; Gen. 4.4; 5.2; Lev. 4.7.4). But learning
from Origen is not repeating his opinions or imitating his
precise methods. It is rather seeking to share his sensibilities
and convictions and employ them in our context.77

Johnson’s dismissal of Origen rests on Origen’s Platonism, which

he says was conditioned by the prejudices about women of his time.
Johnson does not provide an explanation of Origen’s offense other
than that it frustrates “those seeking the equal dignity of all women,
especially when the injunction serves as cover for the degradation
of women.”78 In so doing, Johnson substitutes the moral standards
of contemporary feminism for listening to the standards of Scrip-
ture. In a moral conflict between Origen (and, indeed, Scripture)
and contemporary standards, contemporary standards automatically
trump. The reason for this automatic triumph seems to be chrono-
logical rather than sapiential.79 Johnson does not consider wheth-
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 47
er the ancient thinker might, in this case, see more clearly than he
does.80 Johnson also does not apply the same standard of criticism
to himself: that Johnson’s view of what constitutes the dignity of
women might be a product of the prejudices of our age. Whether
his own moral commitments might be as revisable as he considers
Origen’s to be is a possibility he does not address.
Johnson uses contemporary moral consensus as an interpretive
key in revising the meaning of the passage. He says, “We would, then,
be ruthlessly analytic in showing how Paul uses his own opinion, mis-
reads Genesis, betrays his own best insights into the nature of the
good news in Jesus Christ. In order to see these things, we would
need to read the passage not only within the context of 1 Tim or even
Paul, but of Scripture as a whole, and read it according to the ‘mind
of Christ.’”81 Johnson then makes two moves. First, he provides a
new understanding of the moral sense of Scripture. Johnson says,
“We would then seek the spiritual sense—not allegory, but a moral
understanding that enables us to gain insight into the good news as
it is found in this passage.”82 Johnson’s moral reading of Scripture
is quite different from Origen’s moral reading of Scripture. To take
one example, in commenting on Origen’s Homilies on Joshua and his
interpretation of Joshua’s conquest and slaughter of the inhabitants
of the Holy Land, Johnson says, “The literal slaughter of the inhabit-
ants of the land, therefore, must be read as our spiritual victory over
the powers of evil.”83 These things, Johnson reads Origen as saying,
“may have applied to people in the distant past, but if read at the lit-
eral level, cannot have any pertinence to the present.”84 But Origen
would say that the moral reading of those troublesome passages in
Joshua points to a reality deeper than their literal sense. We can read
this passage as referring to our victory over evil now because of the
difference between figure and truth from the Old Testament to the
New. The threat to Israel of the flesh represented by the inhabitants
of the Holy Land is parallel to the threat that vices and sins present
to the Israel of the spirit in the soul of Christian believer. The prior
inhabitants of the Holy Land had to be destroyed because they would
48 logos
have tempted Israel to idolatry and disobedient, polytheistic infidel-
ity to God, undercutting the main purpose of the establishment of
Israel in the Holy land: pure worship of the one God. Just so, interior
vices and sins impair the simplicity of heart needed to cleave faith-
fully to the one God of Jesus Christ, leading to a form of spiritual
polytheism. It is the difference in historical situation provided by the
entrance of Christ into history that grounds Origen’s moral reading,
not a change in the believer’s moral sensibility.
In addition to differing with Origen on the realism of allegory,
Johnson does not acknowledge the great difference in Origen’s read-
ing of the Old and New Testaments that de Lubac observes: “Origen
uses this word ‘allegory’ with much more reserve in regard to New
Testament writings.85 For that matter, all his exegesis takes on a dif-
ferent appearance. Except for a few isolated reflections, his com-
mentary on the Letter to the Romans, for example, in no way re-
sembles his explanations of the texts from the Hexateuch.”86 Johnson
seems to judge that alteration in historical epoch from ancient to
modern (or postmodern) provides the same sort of historical change
that grounds the spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament in light
of the New, such that the shift between Old and New Testaments
provided for by the Incarnation is parallel to the shift from ancient to
modern historical epochs.This is consistent with Johnson’s judgment
that revelation is not complete, that God has not finished speaking.
In effect, he supposes that the Word is continually incarnated anew
in every epoch. A modern exegete, therefore, can find a spiritual
reading in the New Testament equivalent to Paul finding a spiritual
reading in the Old Testament.
Johnson then makes a second move. He makes “contemporary
experience and the wisdom God has taught the church through the
Holy Spirit over the ages” the exegetical key.87 In his preference for
the wisdom of today over the wisdom of the past, Johnson reveals
that he thinks the Church has progressed such that the insights of
ancient authors are obsolete in an even more thoroughgoing way
than they are for Brown.88 Johnson says, “We might follow Paul’s too
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 49
casual reading of Genesis with a much more careful one that leads to
another sort of conclusion.We might do a number of creative things.
But we would read it. By God (and for God) we would together
shake this passage until it spoke to us a wisdom that is worthy of the
God who shapes our lives and inspired this writing.”89 Johnson’s his-
toricism sanctions the violent imposition (“shake”) of contemporary
opinion onto Paul’s text. Johnson therefore effectively accomplishes
what Henri de Lubac worries about in History and Spirit—that our
age is prone to exchanging God for the image of man.

VI. Conclusion
De Lubac calls our attention to Origen because he sees that con-
temporary exegesis of the Bible has fallen victim to historicism,
which deforms faith, cuts off the present from revelation given in the
historical past, and encourages complacency and undeserved self-
assurance. Origen’s nonhistoricist exegesis lacks the pronounced
historical sense that we take for granted today, but is still far from
denigrating or forgetting history; on the contrary, de Lubac says that
a balanced study of Origen shows how seriously he takes history. In
contrasting Origen and the rest of the Christian exegetical tradition
prior to the advent of the historical-critical method to the allegori-
zations of pagan Greeks and even Philo, de Lubac shows that Chris-
tian reflection on the entrance of God into history in Jesus Christ
provides the beginning of true historical consciousness. De Lubac
engages in nonhistoricist historical study of Origen’s nonhistoricist
exegesis. The way forward, for de Lubac, is therefore a renewal and
a reform using the resources of the entire tradition of the Church,
always focusing on the person of Jesus Christ. De Lubac is not in-
terested in an uncritical revival of Origenian exegesis, but rather is
interested to hold Origen up to the contemporary exegete as a ben-
eficial contrast and as a resource from whom much of importance
can be learned. There are certainly ways in which historical-critical
exegesis has advanced over the exegesis of the Fathers, but de Lubac
50 logos
thinks the deficiencies of historical-critical exegesis are at least as
serious as its strengths. The contrast with a great figure of patristic
exegesis like Origen is meant to provide a corrective to the contem-
porary exegete, whose mistakes are liable to empty the Scriptures of
their living and life-giving qualities.
A historicist historical study leaves the researcher immune to any
beneficial challenge and potential purification from the past, whereas
a nonhistoricist historical study can help us to correct our errors and
deficiencies without requiring us to abandon what gains we really have
made in the course of history. Marcellino d’Ambrosio argues that for
de Lubac, “Though it necessarily begins with an attempt to appre-
hend the literal or historical meaning of the Bible with the help of
the best scientific tools available in a given epoch, this comprehensive
hermeneutic invariably proceeds to search out the deeper ‘spiritual
sense’ of the biblical texts by means of a corresponding ‘spiritual un-
derstanding.’” 90 To proceed to the spirit borne in the history, it is first
necessary to grasp the history; but the historicist approach to history
dogmatically excludes the transcendence of the externals of history
out of a desire to deny or control the spirit within it. Openness to the
spirit within history is precisely what the modern historical-critical
exegete ought to learn from Origen and from de Lubac.

Notes
1. Susan K. Wood argues, “De Lubac does not advocate that we abandon the contempo-
rary methods of biblical scholarship, what he calls ‘scientific exegesis,’” Wood, Spiri-
tual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1998), viii. Even further, Marcellino D’Ambrosio argues convincingly that, “unlike
other advocates of spiritual exegesis, de Lubac not only recognized the legitimacy
and fruitfulness of historical-critical exegesis, but actively encouraged its acceptance
by the Church.Yet, in contrast to other proponents of this new exegesis in the forties
and fifties, he also recognized the inherent limitations of exegetical science as well
as the questionable presuppositions with which it had been bound up since its incep-
tion,” D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac and the Critique of Scientific Exegesis,” Com-
munio: International Catholic Review, 19 (Fall 1992), 367. Robin Darling Young, who
has recently emerged as a fairly harsh critic of de Lubac, concurs: “De Lubac himself
de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 51
abjured a return to the past.” Young, “A Soldier of the Great War: Henri de Lubac
and the Patristic Sources for a Premodern Theology,” in James Heft, SM and John
O’Malley, SJ, After Vatican II: Trajectories and Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2012, 143).
2. As Susan K.Wood shows, de Lubac was oftentimes on the receiving end of charges of
historicism that would lead to doctrinal relativism and the eclipse of truth in theol-
ogy. These charges came largely from neo-scholastic quarters. See Wood, Spiritual
Exegesis, 9–17.
3. See Marcellino D’Ambrosio, “Critique of Scientific Exegesis,” 384–85.
4. Maurice Blondel, “History and Dogma,” in The Letter on Apologetics and History and
Dogma, ed. and trans. Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (Grand Rapids: Erdmans,
1994), 254f1.
5. I must emphasize that I do not attempt to provide a comprehensive critique of either
Brown or Johnson, both of whom are rightly considered giants in the field of biblical
scholarship; my purpose in criticizing their thoughts on Origen and patristic exegesis
is to highlight some of the ways in which de Lubac’s contrasting approach might pro-
vide valuable resources both for scholars of Scripture and for theologians who want
to ground their studies more securely and deeply in Scripture.
6. As D’Ambrosio points out, “Historicism also violates another important canon of sci-
entific method, namely, objectivity. Ironically, it is those historians [under the sway of
historicism] who believe they are engaged in presuppositionless interpretation who,
notes Blondel, compromise their objectivity most severely.” D’Ambrosio, “Critique
of Scientific Exegesis,” 376.
7. This is, admittedly, a simplification of a doctrine that can be extremely sophisticated.
A detailed examination of the origins and theoretical underpinnings of historicism
lies outside the limitations of this essay. For a more popular treatment and critique
of historicism, see C. S. Lewis, “Historicism,” in Christian Reflections, ed. W. Hooper
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 100–13. For a profound, philosophic treatment
and critique, see L. Strauss, Natural Right in History (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1965), and two of his essays, “The Three Waves of Modernity” and “Natural
Right and the Historical Approach” in Leo Strauss, An Introduction to Political Philoso-
phy, ed. Hilail Gildin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 81–124. Ber-
nard Lonergan is also well worth consulting, especially “Natural Right and Historical
Mindedness” in Lonergan, Third Collection, ed. Frederick E. Crowe, SJ (Mahwah, NJ:
Paulist, 1985), 169–83. John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio also addresses histori-
cism in paragraph 87:
Eclecticism is an error of method, but lying hidden within it can also be the
claims of historicism. To understand a doctrine from the past correctly, it is nec-
essary to set it within its proper historical and cultural context. The fundamental
claim of historicism, however, is that the truth of a philosophy is determined on
the basis of its appropriateness to a certain period and a certain historical pur-
pose. At least implicitly, therefore, the enduring validity of truth is denied. What
52 logos
was true in one period, historicists claim, may not be true in another. Thus for
them the history of thought becomes little more than an archeological resource
useful for illustrating positions once held, but for the most part outmoded and
meaningless now. On the contrary, it should not be forgotten that, even if a for-
mulation is bound in some way by time and culture, the truth or the error which
it expresses can invariably be identified and evaluated as such despite the distance
of space and time.
8. This latter concern has been taken up in a prominent and outstanding way by Pope
Benedict XVI in his recent Jesus of Nazareth series.
9. Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit, trans. A. Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), 41.
10. Because of this danger, de Lubac counsels, “The first rigor to exercise in dogmatic
matters is a rigor against oneself.” Henri de Lubac, “La théologie et ses sources:
Réponse aux Études critiques de la Revue Thomiste, May–Aug., 1946,” Recherches de
Science Religieuse 33 (1946): 398, quoted in D’Ambrosio, “Critique of Scientific Ex-
egesis,” 376.
11. Raymond E. Brown, SS, “The Problems of the Sensus Plenior,” Ephemerides Theologicae
Lovanienses 43 (1967): 463. Italics in original. While the subject of his article is the
sensus plenior, his rebuke of the exegesis of the Fathers in this article is much more
sweeping.
12. Ibid. For Brown, the irrelevance is not only factual, in that few exegetes consult Pa-
tristic sources when they do their work, but also deserved since the historical-critical
method has achieved enormous advances in our knowledge of Scripture compared to
past ages.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid. Brown also observes in the same place, “I have purposely exposed some of my
best students to various types of patristic exegesis, and unanimously they found such
interpretation strange and forced.” Brown does not pose the question whether the
defect is in the texts under study or in his students. Perhaps he merely means to sug-
gest that modern scholars of the Bible are simply unmoved by the things that moved
men in ages past.
15. Ibid.
16. Raymond E. Brown, SS, “Hermeneutics,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Ray-
mond E. Brown, SS, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, SJ, and Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm (Lon-
don: Geoffrey Chapman, 1968), 612. Later on, Brown softened his stance on the
sensus plenior, attributing his prior position partly to the rhetorical need to emphasize
the usefulness of the historical-critical method. See Raymond E. Brown, SS, The Criti-
cal Meaning of the Bible (New York: Paulist, 1981), 29–30.
17. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 41.
18. Brown, New Testament Essays (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1965), 69–70.
19. Brown, The Critical Meaning of the Bible, 22.
20. De Lubac, History and Spirit, 14. De Lubac also writes, “Authentic science is not
everything, especially when its object is books containing the Word of God. It is nev-
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 53
ertheless invaluable, and I would consider harmful to the highest degree anyone in
the least inclined to contest its domain or scorn its results.” Further, “It would be no
less an error . . . to admire these ancient constructions so much that we wished to
take up permanent residence in them; to canonize these doctrines to the point of not
being able to discern the weak or no longer valid parts of them” (ibid., 429). It is
the very distance between “us” and Origen’s “intellectual universe” that makes it an
indispensable task for the modern scholar who studies the ancients to examine what
the differences are between “us” and Origen’s “intellectual universe,” and what the
causes of those differences are. Without this dialectic, the historical-critical method
cannot claim to be either truly critical or truly historical.
21. Ibid., 226.
22. Ibid., 231.
23. Ibid., 281.
24. Ibid., 282–83.
25. Ibid., 295–96.
26. Ibid., 319.
27. Ibid., 330.
28. Ibid., 348.
29. Ibid., 349.
30. Ibid., 351.
31. Ibid., 358. I say nothing about the justice or injustice of de Lubac’s criticisms of Ori-
gen, but merely point out the fact of them.
32. Ibid., 10. The implication is that there is something valuable in itself to be gained
from understanding what, in fact, Origen thought and said.
33. Ibid., 235. The study of an ancient author must be done with the strictest discipline
and care, lest our own prejudices and the idiosyncrasies of our own time be imposed
anachronistically onto that author. De Lubac warns, “Before criticizing, as it is legiti-
mate to do, a mode of exegesis that did not merely hold a considerable place in their
writings but was rooted in their deepest thought and was in intimate relation with
the substance of their faith, we could never take too much care in striving to under-
stand it well” (ibid., 374).
34. Ibid., 493–94. Lewis Ayres helpfully draws attention to one area in which the earth-
boundedness de Lubac decries has taken a grave toll on our ability to exegete the
Scriptures: we no longer have a robust knowledge of, let alone belief in, the existence
of the soul and the significance of the fact of our having souls. De Lubac’s argument in
favor of Origenian exegesis, the exegesis of the Fathers in general, and especially the
spiritual reading of Scripture according to the fourfold sense, is grounded in just such
a robust understanding of the human soul and its transformation through interaction
with the pages of Scripture. See Lewis Ayres, “The Soul and the Reading of Scripture:
a Note on Henri de Lubac,” Scottish Journal of Theology 61.2 (2008): 173–90. Since
the historical-critical method has little to nothing to say about the soul, it remains
blind to this critical aspect of understanding the Scriptures. Pre-modern masters like
54 logos
Origen are therefore particularly valuable for us to study because of their deep and
extensive reflection on the subject of the human soul. A better understanding of the
human soul, gained under the tutelage of Patristic authors, would help the contem-
porary exegete immensely in his task of interpreting the Scriptures. De Lubac would,
no doubt, add to this the fact that we no longer really understand what it means
to have a spirit in the Pauline sense. See, e.g., Henri de Lubac, Theology in History,
117–29.
35. For a treatment of de Lubac’s engagement with modernist historicists and ratio-
nalists, see R. Voderholzer, “Dogma and History: Henri de Lubac and the Retrieval
of Historicity,” trans. A. Walker, Communio: International Catholic Review 28 (Winter
2001): 648–68.
36. De Lubac, History and Spirit, 283.
37. As far as I can tell, de Lubac and Blondel mean by “interiority” simply that part of
history not subject to investigation in terms of determination by natural necessity. In
other words, a method that respects the “interiority” of history would leave room for
the causal power of free persons—both human and divine. If that is correct, then the
theoretical root of historicism would be the Cartesian split between res cogitans and
res extensa. De Lubac, History and Spirit, 464.
38. See along these lines Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI’s criticism of the abuses of
the historical-critical method in Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2008), xvi.
39. De Lubac, History and Spirit, 317.
40. It is interesting to note that Brown’s discussion of the authorship of the Gospel of
John in chapter 6 of his An Introduction to the Gospel of John not only lacks a treatment
of divine authorship to go along with human authorship, but does not even mention
the divine author. See Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, ed. Fr. Francis Mo-
loney (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 189–98. This is in no way to call into question
Brown’s own faith in the inspiration of Scripture, but only to note that the historical-
critical method, which Brown prefers over patristic ways of reading the Bible, seems
to have no room for the most important thing about Scripture for the exegete: that
it is inspired by God.
41. Wood explains, “In historicism, there is a sharp distinction between the material
and supernatural worlds. Biblical exegesis under the influence of historicism does
not approach Scripture as a privileged expression of faith, but rather interprets it as
any other historical document” (Wood, Spiritual Exegesis, 18). Historicism therefore
absolutely severs the work of the scientific, historical-critical exegete from the faith
of the Church.
42. Brown, “Problems,” 463. Brown’s statement seems to imply that the historical-
critical method and only that method is capable of uncovering the literal sense, which
is a bold claim and problematic for many reasons, not least of which is that it leaves
canonical authors like John and Paul, who also lacked the historical-critical method,
among those who could not but misconstrue the literal sense of Scripture. In the
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 55
same article, Brown claims, “While the NT does not veer toward the exaggerations
of Philonic allegory or of the Qumran pesharim, it does for the most part exemplify a
loose midrashic exegesis of the OT that cannot be directly related to the literal sense
of the respective passages, as that literal sense would be conceived by modern schol-
ars” (ibid). Brown’s claim here is different from saying, as I take de Lubac to say, that
the historical-critical method is singularly useful in uncovering the literal sense, but
not absolutely indispensable. In other words, we ought by all means to avail ourselves
of the historical critical method, recognizing its need for supplements. Additionally,
we should also regard all other ways of reading the Bible’s literal sense as useful to
some degree.
43. “We will never make use of the doctrines of the age without having purified them,
without having removed from them all that is sterile and dead” (de Lubac, History and
Spirit, 88). Part of Brown’s great virtue is his desire to remove from past exegesis
whatever is sterile and dead. It is less obvious in his writings that he also has a cor-
responding zeal to remove what is sterile and dead from contemporary exegesis, a
position that is understandable in light of his lifelong task to commend the practice of
modern, scientific exegesis to skeptical ecclesiastical authorities, which nevertheless
can have distortive effects.
44. Ibid., 11. Marcellino d’Ambrosio comments, “The fundamental principles of this
oft-misunderstood ‘spiritual’ or ‘allegorical’ method are in fact essential elements of
the Christian patrimony which therefore must be retained and employed even today”
(D’Ambrosio, “Critique of Scientific Exegesis,” 366).
45. Brown, “Problems,” 463.
46. De Lubac, History and Spirit, 281.
47. Ibid., 228.
48. “Such an attitude separates Origen from Philo as much as from the Greeks, in whose
eyes history was devoid of meaning and who actually did not have a concept of it”
(ibid., 318). To say the ancients had no concept of history may go too far, but de Lu-
bac is certainly right to note that there is a difference between their understanding of
history and ours. Rudolf Voderholzer observes that the Church Fathers’ “allegoriza-
tions (the term is Pauline: Gal 4:24) differ fundamentally from philosophical ‘allego-
rizations’ of the pagan myths precisely on account of their differing understanding of
history” (Voderholzer, “Dogma and History,” 660).
49. This is because, as Rudolf Voderholzer says, “In Christ, the ‘universale concretum,’ spirit
and history definitively meet” (ibid. 657). Wood expands on this point, saying,
The historical or literal meaning can refer to the empirical historical event, but
the allegorical meaning is also the historical insofar as history is the interpreted
event and the principle of this interpretation is the Christ event, an event which
is historical. It is therefore mistaken to suppose that the literal sense is historical
and the other senses are ahistorical. These other senses are also historical inas-
much as their Christocentrism grounds the objective actuality of history from the
Christian perspective. (Wood, Spiritual Exegesis, 33.)
56 logos
50. Voderholzer, “Dogma and History,” 656–57.
51. De Lubac, History and Spirit, 229.
52. Ibid., 236. Also: “If the reality of the visible world is a figure for the invisible world,
then the reality of biblical history will also be a figure for the things of salvation and
will serve as their ‘foundation’” (ibid., 104).
53. Although he also notes, “Even while we take note of these weaknesses . . . let us mar-
vel that they did not mislead him more than they did” (de Lubac, History and Spirit,
350). Humility in reading Origen might also lead us to ponder whether, when we
find what seem to us to be mistakes in Origen, there might still be something that
Origen sees that we do not.
54. Ibid., 321. De Lubac does not take up, in depth, whether this situation is good or bad.
55. Henri de Lubac, Theology in History, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Igna-
tius Press, 1996), 37.
56. Ibid., 35–36.
57. Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit, 263.
58. Ibid., 141. Also: “When he says of Jesus that he is ‘Moses placed among us,’ he is
quite simply using a turn of phrase analogous to the one Saint Ambrose will repeat in
speaking of Melchizedek. He imitates St. Paul, who himself also said: ‘This rock was
Christ.’ He imitates Jesus himself, who said: ‘John the Baptist is Elijah’” (ibid., 137).
59. C. S. Lewis, “Introduction,” in Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. and ed. A Reli-
gious of CSMV (Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 4–5.
60. Luke Timothy Johnson, “What’s Catholic About Catholic Biblical Scholarship?,” in
The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, ed. Johnson and William Kurz, SJ (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 14.
61. There is little in these four conclusions with which de Lubac would disagree. One
might quibble with Johnson that his criticisms require the standpoint of Johnson’s
generation. He lists his generation as the third generation of biblical scholars to use
the historical-critical method; Brown et al. constituted the second, and Bruce Vawter,
Jean Danielou, and Yves Congar, among others, the first. De Lubac, after all, would
have belonged to the period of time coinciding with the first generation and was al-
ready able to see the flaws Johnson enumerates about the historical-critical method.
Still, one already sees the tendencies toward historicism in Johnson’s thought: it is the
passage of time, the new generation, which brings insight.
62. Johnson, “Catholic Biblical Scholarship,” 33.
63. “For Catholic biblical scholarship to recover something of its distinctive identity, it is
necessary to move forward by engaging a more distant past, when Scripture was in-
terpreted by people at least as intelligent as contemporary scholars, often as learned,
and frequently holier. This long history of interpretation is part of our story; igno-
rance of it is an impoverishment of our present.” Johnson, “Rejoining a Long Con-
versation,” in Johnson and Kurz, SJ, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 35.
64. Ibid., 36
 de lubac on what we can learn from studying origen 57
65. Ibid., 40.
66. Johnson, “Origen and the Transformation of the Mind,” in The Future of Catholic Bibli-
cal Scholarship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 68.
67. Ibid., 69.
68. Ibid., 79.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid., 80.
71. Ibid., 81.
72. Ibid., 62–63.
73. Ibid., 64.
74. Ibid., 88.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid., 89.
78. Ibid., 88.
79. The reason for Johnson’s ability to revise the moral claims of Scripture are, for John-
son, that revelation is not complete, not even in Christ, but rather is ongoing in the
experience of local ecclesial groups. Scripture therefore provides, not authoritative
judgments, but rather the symbolic system for identity formation of groups and the
individuals within them and the “grammar for deciphering the Word spoken here
and now.” Johnson, Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1996), 25. See also ibid., 23–24. Johnson’s argument in the rest of this
book is that the Church must exercise a discernment of the experiences of individu-
als and group to tell which are from God and which are not, and the test for the
discernment is whether a particular experience or practice builds up the group in
holiness. He leaves vague what building up and holiness might mean. Further, expe-
rience by itself without critical judgment based on transcendent truth is incapable
of providing for the grasp of wholes or unifying in faith necessary for a genuinely
sapiential approach to Scripture.
80. I offer this observation without any attempt to provide a judgment about whether
Origen’s Platonism or Johnson’s feminism ought to win the moral argument. The
purpose of the observation is simply to note that Johnson’s preference for contem-
porary standards in interpreting St. Paul rests on the apparently unexamined assump-
tion that our standards are superior. One way to uphold both the authority of the
scriptural passage in question and the equal dignity of women is to take the path of
Hans Urs von Balthasar, who admittedly has a much more complementarian view of
the dignity of men and women than Johnson does. Balthasar speaks of the “Marian
Principle,” which he describes as, “the spirit of the handmaid, of service, of incon-
spicuousness, the spirit which lives only to pass on what it has received, which lives
only for others. No one demands personal ‘privileges’ less than the Mother of Christ;
she can rejoice only in so far as they are shared by all her children in the Church.”
Balthasar, Elucidations, trans. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), 111. Earlier
58 logos
in this essay, Balthasar recognizes forthrightly the time-boundedness of the judgment
behind 1 Timothy 2, yet also argues that even that time-bounded judgment discloses
something evergreen. He says,
Now it is true that from the beginning the leadership of the Church was restrict-
ed to men, nor can one say that such a decision was uninfluenced by contempo-
rary views and attitudes both in Judaism and Hellenism. But at the same time one
will not be able to deny that precisely in this decision expression was given to that
permanent sexual “order,” which in no way runs contrary to the personal equal-
ity of rights of man and woman or to the equality of status of their oppositional
sexual functions (ibid., 109).
81. Johnson, “Transformation,” 89. Johnson regards his own age to be so enlightened that
he can assert with confidence that St. Paul might be inconsistent, or that Johnson
himself might be able to know the contours of Paul’s thought and writing better than
Paul himself. Johnson reiterates here what he previously asserted in Scripture and Dis-
cernment: Decision Making in the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 130–32. There,
Johnson asserts that Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy violates the principle of egalitarian-
ism Paul articulates in Galatians 3:28.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., 87.
84. Ibid., 86.
85. In this respect, Johnson’s moral reading of 1 Timothy resembles ancient pagan al-
legory much more than Origenian and Pauline allegory.
86. Johnson, History and Spirit, 263.
87. Johnson, “Transformation,” 89.
88. William Kurz provides a gentle criticism along these lines in his response to Johnson
in The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship in regard to Johnson’s views on human
sexuality and family life. See William Kurz, SJ, “Response to Luke Johnson,” 154.
89. Ibid., 90. This startling statement has far reaching consequences. If Paul wrote a line
unworthy of God, then the Church erred in including that letter in the canon. If the
Church erred in the formation of the canon, then there really is no canon.
90. D’Ambrosio, “Critique of Scientific Exegesis,” 384.