Typology in The Scriptures

Extract

In the great pastoral effort of contemporary Catholicism, a return to sources seems to provide one of its most powerful inspirations and also to give some of the finest results. Catholics are re-discovering an interest in the Bible, the Fathers, the Liturgy, an interest which completes and perfects what the return to the texts and teaching of St Thomas has contributed to Christian thought during the last fifty years. But since in this case a purely scientific perspective is not sufficient, what is required being not only to admire but to assimilate, the problem of the approach to, and interpretation of, these sources cannot fail to arise. And, primarily, the problem of how to read the Bible, how to discover anew a constant source of spirituality and of triumphant Christian energy in the Old Testament which modem exegesis seems at first sight to have drained of its spiritual value. A more extensive reading of the Fathers, by revealing innumerable possibilities and resources, has made the problem of the Bible more acute. We know that the Fathers, like the men of the Middle Ages moreover, were familiar with the sacred text through and through; many of them knew it by heart; it formed the subject of their prayers, the theme of their sermons; their language, even when there is no explicit quotation, is of the very warp and woof of the expressions of Holy Scripture. For them the Scriptures truly and unceasingly provide a meeting place with God, a discourse and a lesson given by God to man repeated over and over again in a thousand different forms, but (the point is an important one) directly and totally translatable, in terms of Christianity and the mystery of the New Covenant.