Patristic allegorical preaching as a mimetic technology: an exploration and proposal. (original) (raw)

In Zachary Guiliano and Cameron Partridge (eds.), *Preaching and the Theological Imagination*. Studies in Episcopal and Anglican Theology 9. C.K. Roberton. Series Editor. New York, London, & Berlin: Peter Lang, 2015.

Abstract

I argue that patristic exegesis partly aims at developing a particular 'sense' regarding the world and one's actions. Moral action, in particular, is dependent on an allegorical imagination that sees common actions as being modeled on the 'figures' of historical events, characters, objects, and buildings. This understanding is related to Girard's theory of mimesis and Foucault's understanding of technologies of the self. The inculcation of such an imagination was historically brought about by specific practices involving the regular liturgical reading of patristic exegesis.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (5)

  1. Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. 3 vols. Trans. by Mark Seband (Grand Rapids, MN and Edinburgh, UK: Eerdmans and T&T Clark, 1998), II:33-36, 197-206.
  2. E.g. DeGregorio, "Bede and the Old Testament," in idem. The Cambridge Companion to Bede (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp. 127-141, at 133.
  3. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, p. 209.
  4. Indeed, the force of such interpretations often rests precisely on their multiple resonance rather than on a strictly individual application. One of the most famous examples of this phenomenon comes whenever an author interprets "Jerusalem," the allegorical term par excellence, which can refer to Solomon's Temple, the Temple rebuilt by Ezra, the restoration of it by the Maccabees, or the expansions of Herod. Or it can denote the body of Jesus, the body of Mary, the body of the individual believer, the body of the Church, the city of the angels, or the eschatological city "coming down from heaven." Cf. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, p. 201.
  5. E.g. as exhibited by R.A. Markus in preferring Augustine's theory of interpretation over his practice or that of Gregory the Great's. See Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1996), pp. 12-13, 59. We need not think that Augustine's extravagant or "erratic" practice failed to live up to his semiotics (p. 12), but that his semiotics was too rigid.