Benedict XVI: a reform of Biblical Exegesis

The January/February issue of FAITH Magazine has an article by Fr Marcus Holden entitled Beyond Historical Criticism - Pope Benedict XVI and the Reform of Biblical Exegesis. It isn't yet on their website.

In the context of Benedict XVI's book Jesus of Nazareth, Fr Holden identifies two key elements of a renewal of Biblical exegesis in the work of Pope Benedict.

The first is to purify the historical-critical method itself. ... There is no reason why we cannot conduct perfectly rigorous and impartial historical research on the history of ancient peoples and texts while believing at the same time in God, providence and divine inspiration...

A second way towards solving our exegetical crisis [is] to revive a truly theological exegesis as exhibited by the Fathers of the Church ....Almost all the Fathers of the Church, to a greater or lesser extent, employed in their writings a particular method of scriptural exegesis which they believed to have been established by the Lord Jesus himself and passed down through the Apostles. This method uncovers a "mystical meaning" of the Scriptures founded on God's perfect plan for the history and salvation of the world. This "mystical meaning" came to be called the spiritual sense of Scripture ... The spiritual sense pertains to the Christological significance of the persons, objects, events, images and symbols referred to by the human authors of the Bible. These significations are not extrinsically or retrospectively applied by rather God himself has established them in his far reaching providence.

This two-fold exegetical strategy is not just apparent in Jesus of Nazareth. It is also apparent in Pope Benedict's homilies and pastoral addresses. The General Audience address for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, with its exegesis of the passage from Ezekiel, is a good example of this. The strategy has a couple of interesting consequences. Sometimes a homily dedicated to the readings of the Mass can end up doing little more than just repeating the reading itself. There is no danger of that with Pope Benedict, as the historical aspect of the exegesis "adds" to the text of the reading itself, as does the presentation of the "spiritual sense". A second consequence, though, is a quite delightful beauty in the exposition of the Scriptural passage, a certain sense of "newness" which makes you feel that, even if the passage is very familiar, you have just heard it for the first time. It is not, therefore, just academically effective; it is also profoundly effective at a pastoral level.