Ruminating
March 30, 2012, 9:09 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
The Lord our God spread the faith in and by which we live in many and varied ways through the holy Books, the Scriptures. While varying the mysteries of the words [sacramenta verborum], he nonetheless commended the one faith. Because the same thing is told in many ways, the variety prevents boredom while the agreement preserves the unity. And so in the Psalm we have just heard sung, to which we have responded with our own singing, we are about to say things that you already know, and yet, with God’s help and grace, perhaps we shall bring you some pleasure when things you’ve heard over and over you now chew over when reminded of them. By calling animals clean that chew their cud God wished to suggest that everyone ought to place what he hears into his heart so that he will not be slow to think about it later. When he hears, he’s like an eater; but when he recalls what he heard and reflects on it, he’s like a ruminant. When the same things are said in a new way, they enable us pleasantly to think about things we already know and even gladly to listen to them again. The ancient becomes new because differently expressed. (EnPs 46[47], 1; PL 36, 524-25)
This was timely reading for me, because I’ve been thinking a lot about the allegorization employed by late antiquity theologians. What struck me about this was Augustine’s reference to allaying boredom through a variety of presentation. This is because my personal response to much of the allegory found in these theologians’ readings is one of basic boredom. What I mean is that the inevitability of unearthing “the same things” from the variety presented by texts seems kind of deadening to me. Or, to put things more simply, I just find that there aren’t many surprises in store. This isn’t true across the board–sometimes a writer will spring an allegory that IS surprising (Tertullian’s On baptism is loaded with a lot of what you’d expect, but with a few great surprises, as well). In general, however, just how enriching is it supposed to be when someone like Ambrose uncovers yet another anti-Arian nugget in the Gospel of Luke?
When you read directives about animals who chew the cud as really being about the need to reflect on truths, the text might seem more useful or more spiritual (or, to use another of Augustine’s examples, finding the unity-preserving agreement in accounts of patriarchs hooking up with prostitutes may make living with the Bible easier), but, to me, doing so ultimately winds up making the Bible seem less like its own thing.
Yes, after a while, the constant allegorizing can become boring, even predictable, as when even Augustine is in a polemical mode. But with him at least there’s usually a vivid image or a brilliant insight on every other page, whereas with, say, Gregory the Great the images and insights come less often, although they are not lacking: E.g., “The Scriptures grow with the one reading them,” said in the course of an allegory of the first vision in the Book of Ezekiel.
I think in the end it’s the life of the Church that guides the interpretations. That’s how I read them anyway–for the interpretation not so much of the Scriptures as of the Christian life. The great risk, as you say, is that the Bible becomes “less its own thing.” But for many users of the historical-critical method, the biblical books are left back there, when and where they were written. (I think here of many of the authors in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary.)
It’s not just the historical-critical method that weakens our sonfidene in translations/interpretations. The post-moderns pretty much destroyed any theoretical hope that sure interpretations are possible, and the analytical philosopher W.v.Quine also weighed in challenging the possibility of sure interpretations.
(Actually, I did my master’s thesis on a closely related subject, and I have to agree with them — language is essentialy ambiguous (if it weren’t it wouldn’t work at all) and there is no way of escaping the fact.)
How did the audience of Augustine react to his sermons? Perhaps, not in the way we would today.
Fr. Komanchak, I never find Augustine’s allegorizing boring. Maybe, it’s because my mind works that way. One example of Augustine’s imaginative mind that I find particularly interesting:
In a sermon on John’s Gospel where it says that the disciple whom Jesus loved laid his head on the breast of Jesus, Augustine says John was feeding from the breast of Jesus His teachings and that he burps up (?) that teaching to us.
Most probably, his audience back in the fourth century would not have found it as funny as I.
Thanks, Joseph. Parables as things sufficient unto themselves. Unimproved by detailed dissection or defended by reference to specific time, place or circumstance.
Parables, also being metaphors, are doubly ambiguous. One never knows just what part of the meaning the speaker meant to convey nor exactly what they meant by it. Their advantage, I think, is that they generally use a lively image to think about the meaning with. All thinking requires that we use an image to think, and the images don’t even have to look like what they stand for. For instance, we can think of the meaning of “absence”, but by definition that cannot be imagined. But we use some sort of image to stand for it anyway, e.g., an empty jar.
Must be nice to be an angel and not have these problems :-)
Parables are not easy for me to use because “detailed dissection” is my way of meditating over a text. If the exact wording and the details are unimportant, then how can one go beyond the immediate, superficial first impression? How can one appropriate the text?
It seems to me that parables are cautionary tales which might or might not apply to similar but very particular circumstances. if the salient elements don’t match , then the parable doesn’t apply, but if they do we have been forewarned. How do we know what the salient factors are? It seems to me that there is where the story-telling ability of the story teller counts. He/She forces us to look at the point of the parable.
Which reminds me that not all parable writers are equally successful (though some of them sell wel). Check out this hilarious review of Khalil Gibran’s cmplete works over at Frst Things.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php?year=2009&month=03&title_link=003-on-the-recent-publication-of-kahlil-gibrans-icollected-worksi-50
Helen: I’ve been away and couldn’t reply earlier. We can often get some idea of how his congregation was responding to St. Augustine’s preaching from the fact that stenographers were taking down his sermons as he preached them. Sometimes He replies to their reactions, noting that they like something or are puzzled or restless or tired of standing through it, etc.
Peter Brown’s fine biography of Augustine includes some useful material on Augustine’s preaching in chapter 22 and in the appendix to the revised edition where Brown discusses the significance for Augustinian studies of recently discovered sermons and letters. Brown refers also to the fifteenth chapter of F. van der Meer’s wonderful book, Augustine the Bishop, still very much worth reading, and available on used book sites on the Web.