Medieval Exegesis . Vol. I The Four Senses of Scripture by Henri De Lubac (review)

Abstract

running head henri de lubac, MedievalExegesis. Vol. I The Four Senses ofScripture, translated by Mark Sebanc. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. Pp. xxiii, 466. isbn: 0-8028-4145-7. $45. Henri de Lubac's study of the four senses ofscripture (published in 1959 as the first part oíExégèse médiévale) is probably more often referred to than actually read as a classic in its own right. It is not often realized that de Lubac (1896-1991) played a major role in the revitalization ofcatholic thought in the decades prior to the Second Vatican Council, through both his students and a great range ofwritings, whether about Buddhism (1951-55), Origen and medieval exegesis (1959—64), atheism (1968), Teilhard de Chardin (1962-68), Pico della Mirandola (1974), or Joachim of Fiore (1979-81). In all these works, de Lubac was fascinated by possibilities offered by any hermeneutic that emphasized spiritual dimensions of meaning. As de Lubac explains, there were many variant forms of the theory of multiple meaning. According to one popular saying, 'the letter teaches events, allegory what you believe, morality what you do, anagogy what you aim for.' There were many versions, however, ofthe theory. Origen espoused a three-fold system, that ascended from the historical to the mystical and then to the moral sense. De Lubac tells the fascinating story of Origen's influence in the Latin West. Although officially condemned for heresy, Origen's writings were still copied through translations made by Rufinus and Jerome, despite the dangers they recognized in his work. De Lubac's concerns in MedievalExegesis can be read as a coded critique ofthe narrowness ofthe neo-scholastic orthodoxy then prevailing in catholic circles in the 1950s, along the same lines as Jean Lcclercq in The Love ofLearning and the Desirefor God (1957). MedievalExegesis is the more nuanced and richly documented work. Lcclercq's vision ofmonastic culture as a whole was perhaps too much shaped by his fascination for St. Bernard, and a tendency to classify medieval thought as either monastic and meditative or scholastic and unspiritual. De Lubac's analysis is more aware of its diversity. De Lubac's discussion of medieval interpretations about the injunction (Deut. 21:10-14) t0 capture a beautiful woman from the enemy, shave her and then marry her as about the appropriation ofpagan wisdom, touchingly unaware oftheir sexist brutality, unconsciously sheds much light on the gendered assumptions ofmedieval exegesis as a whole. The theory that there were multiple senses to scripture was itself based on analogy with the presence of different dimensions (body, soul, and spirit) in the human person. While not commenting explicitly on Origen's act of selfmutilation , he indirectly helps show how medieval exegesis was itself shaped by ambiguous attitudes towards the body. Origen acted out a process ofself-castration that monks and clerics (as well as their academic heirs) have long engaged in through the mind. De Lubac's rich documentation enables us to become aware ofthe way in which so much medieval exegesis is about a struggle with the meaning ofthe body. Nowhere is this more vivid than in the tradition of ascetics commenting on the 'Song ofSongs.' Although Origen was always hostile to gnostic exegesis, and insisted on the fundamental continuity of the Old Testament and the New, he was himself arthuriana accused ofgnostic extravagance. By releasing exegesis from the constraints ofa purely literal interpretation (favored by the Antiochian school), Origen encouraged William ofSt. Thierry and St. Bernard to explore the richness oferotic desirewhile suppressing awareness of the physical. Not all medieval writers agreed with their exegesis. De Lubac is certainly too dismissive ofthe creativity ofliteral exegesis between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, practiced alongside moralizing and allegorical interpretations. Like Leclercq, de Lubac was writing within the context ofa debate among catholic scholars within religious orders, important in the 1950s but now rather dated, that pitted admirers of patristic asceticism against enthusiasts for scholastic culture. Mark Sebanc's fluent translation of both de Lubac's text and of numerous Latin passages itselftestifies to the fact that we can no longer take for granted the capacity of students interested in medieval literature to...