“shatters all the canons of art” and “dwarfs mere aestheticism,” over-
whelming it with the beauty of the God-made-human.- Rowan Williams, “The Defl ections of Desire: Negative Theology in
Trinitarian Discourse,” in Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and
Incarnation , ed. Oliver Davies and Denys Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 115–135 (119). - Williams, “The Defl ections of Desire,” 119.
- Philocalia 10.1.
- For Origen, the “letter” is not shorthand for literal interpretation, but a
way of reading that brackets out the possibility that Christ is the defi nitive
point of reference for all the scriptures. See Dawson, Christian Figural
Reading and the Fashioning of Identity , 19–82 and Martens, Origen and
Scripture , 138–148. - Steiner, On Diffi culty , 39.
- Here I am using (loosely) Hays’ categories; see Richard B. Hays, Echoes of
Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1993). On the nature of intertextuality in general, and scriptural intertex-
tuality specifi cally, see Robby Waddell, The Spirit of the Book of Revelation
(Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2006). - Jesus does something similar in his reading of the Isaiah scroll; see Lk.
4:16–21 and Is. 61:1–2. - See Origen, Commentary on John.
- Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology Volume 1: The Doctrine of God
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 456–457. At every depth of meaning,
and whatever our station of maturity, we must read for Christ—the whole
Christ ( totus Christus )—in at least two senses: fi rst, to fi nd what the Spirit
reveals about him in our readings of the scripture; second, to avail our-
selves to the Spirit’s work of recreating us in his image and likeness. - See Sonderegger, Systematic Theology Vol. 1 , 264–265.
- In David Steinmetz’s words (“The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,”
Theology Today 37.1 [April 1980], 27–38 [38]), “The medieval theory of
levels of meaning in the biblical text, with all its undoubted defects, fl our-
ished because it is true, while the modern theory of a single meaning, with
all its demonstrable virtues, is false.” - Peter Leithart, “The Quadriga or Something Like It: A Biblical and
Pastoral Defense,” in Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future, ed. Mark
Husbands and Jeffrey Greenman (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2008),
110–125 (124). - Quoted in Burton-Christie, “The Luminous Word,” 79. Origen, like vir-
tually all of the Fathers, holds a similar view; see de Lubac, History and
Spirit , 160.
118 C.E.W. GREEN