The Medieval Exegesis of Biblical Texts: Understanding an Understanding

The lecture was addressed to members and friends of a newly founded Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (SSBMA). It first reviews the development of the surge of interest in the history of biblical interpretation since 1955, then warns of three misconceptions and finally emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between “principles” and “rules” in any endeavor to trace the history of a particular biblical verse or passage through the early and medieval centuries of church history. The need for competence in a wide range of subjects is great but the scholarly reward can be significant

Turning Points in the History of the Literal Sense

This lecture traces the surprising history of the literal sense of Scripture in early and medieval times. Until Origen of Alexandria, "literal sense" had a negative connotation for Christians as the interpretation of what they called the "Old Testament" by unbelieving Jews. A positive evaluation began with the School of Antioch in the Fourth century, Jerome's philology and Augustine's interest in figurative language as a means of the spiritual ascent. The Middle Ages valued the letter as the foundation of a plurality of senses and added the definition as authorial intention—of God as the primary author as well as the human writers as secondary ones (Hugh of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas). Eventually, this split eroded the trust in human words and led to the confused notion of two literal senses, one being "mere words" without final meaning, the other the trustworthy biblical word having God as its author. Relying on the latter notion, Luther subsumed all scriptural senses under the one literal sense but with this move faced the hermeueutical problem: How does one read God's intention in the human words of the Bible

A Medieval Treatise on Galatians 2: 11-14: Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420)

The M.A. thesis at Drew University introduces, transcribes, and translates an unpublished Latin text written around 1380 by Pierre d'Ailly who, as a leading theologian of the University of Paris, bishop of Cambrai, and cardinal played a central role at the Council of Constance (1414-18), the council which ended the Great Schism of the West by disposing of three popes (causa unionis), caused John Hus to be burned at the stake (causa fidei), and made some attempts to reform the Church (causa reformationis). Gal. 2:11-14, the Pauline passage mentioning the altercation between the Apostles Peter and Paul at Antioch, was used as the main biblical support for conciliarism, a movement among Paris academic theologians which argued since the beginning of the Schism in 1378 that, just as Peter was rightly rebuked by Paul, popes can err and be corrected by a Council representing the Church Universal. As a leading conciliarist, Ailly used the passage prominently in his later writings. Our quaestio antedates this conciliarist phase. Discussing the controversy between Jerome and Augustine over the passage, the young scholar endorses the position of Augustine who maintained Peter's culpability against Jerome's suggestion of a staged simulation. It also favors Augustine's definition of the "times of the Law" and follows Augustine's speculative suggestion that Peter probably gave in at Antioch and became the model of the "humble prelate" who accepts the necessary correction even from subordinates. At the very end of the treatise the author hints that this theme may well apply to the recent outbreak of the Schism with its two papal contenders

Reflections on the Beginnings of Ecclesiastical Law

The problem signaled by the title is introduced by the description of the controversy over the organization of the Early Church between Adolf von Harnack and Rudolf Sohm in the early 20th century—organic development vs. regrettable deviation of a free-wheeling spiritual community to a legally constituted societal entity. If the nature of Law can be described as a dynamic movement from formulation through promulgation and testing to the final step of enforcement, one must conclude that ecclesiastical law as "law" is deficient because it is lacking the final element of earthly enforcement. It is eschatological law which remains dependent on God's final action

Paul the Theologian?

Saint Paul lived on in his Epistles and in Christian hagiography. In terms of the latter, apart from being paired with Peter in the tradition of Rome, his veneration was surprisingly subdued compared with that of his supposed convert Thecla. On the other hand, the reception of his letters led to heated controversies in Early Christianity. In the Latin Middle Ages, the Epistles characterized the thirteenth Apostle as the exemplary professor of systematic theology, and his writings provided the basic vocabulary for the revolutionary theology of the magisterial Reformers in the 16th century

Bible Commentaries - The Crisis of a Literary Genre

The original (German) version of this 1986 article was dedicated to Bernhard W. Anderson who, at that time, was planning to write a commentary on Genesis. He struggled with the idea of a commentary and agreed that the genre faced a crisis. Froehlich described the crisis as an overload of expectation: far too much is expected of biblical commentaries. To gain a perspective, he tried to sketch the history of the genre from its origins in classical textual scholarship through modern times under four headings: designation, occasion, format, and method. At the end, he agreed with Anderson's description of a rather modest goal of what a commentary should deliver: information on the original text, a clear decision about hermeneutical presuppositions, help with the penetration into the foreign world of the text, but also help in developing the reader’s own imaginative facilities in dealing with language and incorporating the biblical text into the life of the Christian community

Johannes Trithemius on the Fourfold Sense of Scripture: The Tractatus de Inuestigatione Sacrae Scripturae (1486)

This Essay presents and analyzes an unpublished essay of a controversial monastic author of the late Middle Ages who was a much appreaciated chronicler but also an inventor of literary fictions as it is reflected in the turbulent story of Trithemius scholarship. The treatise is transcribed from MS Trier, Bischöfliches Priesterseminar 84. It is a typical medieval schoolbook of biblical hermeneutics teaching the elements of the fourfold sense of scripture basically through a string of quotations from other authors. That there is so little originality in the compilation is declared to be a virtue because the tract gathers together everything important that earlier eccesiastial writers have said on the topic. In a way, the piece can serve as a compendium of the state of traditional hermeneutics at the threshold of the Early Modern Age

'A Man of God is in this Town' (1 Sam. 9:6): Princeton Years of the Ethiopian Patriarch Abuna Paulos (1936 – 2012)

Abuna Paulos was for twenty years the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church with its 40 million members. Elected in 1992 after the downfall of the communist Derg regime, he was an energetic, though controversial leader active as an advocate for peace in his country and in the region, ecumenically engaged on a global scale, and deeply concerned about social issues. He served as an Honorary President of "Religions for Peace," as one of the seven presidents of the World Council of Churches, and was awarded the Nansen Medal of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2006. During his earlier years he spent almost twenty years at Princeton Theological Seminary, earning a Th.M. degree in 1970 and starting work on a doctoral level in 1972. His studies were interrupted when he was called home by his church in 1974 to be consecrated as a bishop, but then was imprisoned by the Derg for six years. Released in 1982, he returned to Princeton, established several Ethiopian exile congregations in the US and Canada and finished his Ph.D. degree in 1988 after defending his dissertation on Marian teachings and practices in the Ethiopian tradition. During his entire time at Princeton I was his primary adviser and came to appreciate his human qualities, his persistence and his character

Die deutsche Universität aus amerikanischer Sicht: Erfahrungen eines deutschen Hochschullehrers in Princeton

Der Vortrag betont weniger die Gemeinsamkeiten als die großen Unterschiede der beiden Erziehungssysteme. Er beginnt mit persönlichen Erfahrungen und erörtert dann die historischen Wurzeln auf beiden Seiten, die auf ganz verschiedenen soziologischen Voraussetzungen und politischen Zielvorstellungen beruhen

Adventures in the Seminary Library Land

This presentation highlights some treasures of Princeton Seminary’s Wright Library: Manuscripts of a 12th century Greek Gospel Lectionary and of a lovely 16th century Schwenckfelder sermon collection, an early 1540 print of the Zurich Bible and a reprint of the 1534 Luther Bible owned by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a copy of the first printed edition of the biblical Glossa Ordinaria 1480/81 in four volumes, and a 1542 volume of Heinrich Bullinger’s Gospel commentaries. It closes by discussing the strange fate of a 1528 Erasmus edition of Augustine’s writings with a large trove of contemporary handwritten marginalia which was offered to the Seminary for a price of 1 Million Dollars