Augustine's Interpretation of John's Prologue: A Theology of God's Word

Abstract

Biblical scholars and theologians who wish to distance themselves from the methodological trappings of modern biblical scholarship and retrieve a theologically informed interpretation of Scripture are increasingly turning to patristic practitioners of biblical exegesis such as Augustine. Augustine shows in his exegesis of John's Prologue that there is actually not much difference between what patristic interpreters and modern interpreters do with Scripture. The dissimilarities that exist are not so much in a difference in tasks but in the execution of them. Augustine is untroubled appealing to the grammatical and rhetorical tools of his day. Yet what differentiates Augustine's use of such tools from his modern counterparts is his a priori commitment to a spiritual construal of the text's subject matter, God's Word. For Augustine, God's Word is not a static historical phenomenon but is ever present and thus able to speak to the church in and through the testimony of the apostolic witness. Augustine thus gives primacy to divine communicative acts over his interpretative undertakings. The communicative presence of God's Word informs his understanding of, and thus approach to, the historical particularities of the text. For Augustine, theories of understanding, history, or texts cannot be the starting point for a theological exegesis of the Bible because human reasoning must first be redeemed and thus directed by the communicative presence of God's Word.