Antiochene Theôria and “Holistic” Eschatology

It is well known that the representatives of the exegetical or catechetical school of Alexandria, during the third and fourth centuries, were strongly influenced by Platonic philosophy, whereas those of the school of Antioch were especially marked by Aristotelian thought.¹ This influence played out in the realm of hermeneutics as much as in that of Christology. Simply stated, the Alexandrians developed an “anabatic,” semi-docetic Christology that stressed the divinityof the Incarnate Word, such that his humanity tended to be “absorbed” by his divinity. The result was to question the very reality of the Incarnation, while it prepared the way for Monophysitism.

Antiochene theologians reacted against their Alexandrian co-religionists by adopting a “katabatic” Christology that stressed Christ’s humanity, to the point that some of them made a radical distinction between the man Jesus and the divine Logos or Word of God. Theodore of Mopsuestia, for example, spoke of the homo assumptusand the Verbum assumens, thereby endangering the teaching on the “hypostatic unity” of the incarnate Son of God. An inevitable consequence of this tendency was the Christological dualism of Nestorius. This dualism, by the way, persists to the present day with the separation between “the Jesus of history” and “the Christ of faith.”

Tendencies of this kind characterized as well the hermeneutics and exegetical work of both schools. On the one hand, the Alexandrians – from Pantaenus to Cyril, including Clement, Origen, Dionysius, and Didymus the Blind²– adopted as their chief approach to biblical interpretation the well-established allegorical method, elaborated at the beginning of the Christian era by the Jewish philosopher Philo. Based on two Greek terms (allos,“other”, and agoreuô, “to speak in public”), the term “allegory” means “to say one thing in order to express something else,” using, in other words, metaphorical language.

Allegory was used to discern and convey a “spiritual” or “mystical” sense hidden behind or standing over and above the words of Holy Scripture. Origen held that every passage of Scripture possesses a spiritual sense, discernable by means of allegory, which reveals the meaning of the passage for the moral and spiritual life of the believer (what would subsequently be called the “tropological” meaning of the biblical text). From this point of view, the words of Scripture can reveal a sensus plenior, a fuller and more significant meaning than what is conveyed by the “literal” or “historical” sense, generally understood as the meaning the biblical author sought to convey to his readers. In the Old Testament, for example, the Song of the Vineyard of Isa 5 is to be understood as an allusion to Israel, but more “deeply” as an image of the Church (cf. John 15 and the image of the “true vine”). The Song of Songs celebrates in the first place the reciprocal love between the Lord and his people, but on a superior, allegorical level it represents the image of the human soul that longs for union with God. Jesus often made use of allegory in his parables (e.g., the homicidal vine-keepers of Mk 12:1-12 and parallels), whereas the Apostle Paul found in the crossing of the Red Sea an image of Christian baptism (1 Cor 10; cf. 1 Pet 3:20-21 where the Flood prefigures baptismal water). Consequently, the Alexandrians were persuaded that their hermeneutic approach, based on allegory, stood in perfect accord with methods used by Jesus and the New Testament writers. The Old Testament was understood to conceal a hidden meaning, which represents the true sense – the ultimate, spiritual sense – that could be revealed for the salvation of God’s people.

The Antiochenes, on the other hand, worked out a typologicalhermeneutic that preserved the historical aspect of God’s saving work, while it found in various OT images prophetic figures (“types,” typoi) that are fulfilled by persons and events of the New Testament. Rather than look for a sensus pleniorabove and beyond the actual words of Scripture, exegetes such as Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus were determined to anchor types or prophetic images solidly in Israel’s history. Type and antitype are related as “promise” to “fulfillment.” God orders events and establishes persons, institutions and rituals of the OT in such a way that they foretell their future fulfillment in the person of Christ and in the life of the Church. Thus, in the thought of St Paul, Adam is a typosof Jesus Christ (Rom 5:14), while later patristic writers found in the Temple of Jerusalem a type of the Church, in the desert manna an image of the Eucharist, and so forth. The implied movement here is both horizontal and vertical: from past to future, but also from earth to heaven, from immanence to transcendence. Thus the earthly Church is a type of the Kingdom of God, as the Eucharist is of the heavenly Banquet.

A fundamental hermeneutic principle guided the Antiochene exegetes in all of their work of interpretation: the spiritual sense of a biblical passage flows out of and depends upon the literal sense. This means that any quest for the meaning of a text for the spiritual life of the believer must begin by discerning the message the biblical author himself understood and sought to convey to his readers. Unlike Origen, the Antiochenes insisted that every passage of Scripture contains a literalsense, which the exegete needs to discover before attempting to discern the spiritual sense.

Until fairly recently, specialists in patristic hermeneutics tended to set the schools of Alexandria and Antioch over against one another as being radically opposed in their aims and methods: typology was viewed predominantly as a corrective to the abuses inherent in allegory. This is accurate, to the degree that the Antiochene theologians reacted viscerally against certain de-historicizing tendencies of the Alexandrian approach. Over the last half-century, however, specialists have come to realize and accept that representatives of each of the two schools made use of both approaches, allegorical and typological. Increasingly, typology is being viewed as a function or sub-category of a broader allegorical methodology for the interpretation of biblical and other texts. The works of scholars such as Bertrand de Margerie³, and Andrew Louth⁴, together with the eminent Methodist theologian Frances Young⁵, have provided us with ample reason to consider typology as a special form of allegory. Thanks to their insights, allegory is increasingly seen as a generic category of patristic exegesis, of which typology is a particular aspect.

II.

After this brief survey, I would like to take up the question of theôria, the contemplation or inspired vision that guided the exegesis of the holy Fathers, especially those of Antioch. Specialists are at a loss to give a definitive definition of the term, since the Fathers themselves used it in a variety of ways that were not always mutually compatible.

In what follows, I would like to reproduce, with modifications, a summary of Antiochene theôriathat was published many years ago in my book, The Power of the Word.⁶ I will deal especially with the contributions to patristic hermeneutics made by Diodore, bishop of Tarsus from 378 until his death in 392. Then I would like to develop these reflections, to illustrate the way Diodore elaborated what can be called a “holistic eschatology,” grounded in his reinterpretation of typology.

Well before Diodore, the exegetical school of Antioch was characterized by concern for a rigorously scientific interpretation of the biblical text, which prefigured the historical-critical methodology that came in vogue toward the end of the nineteenth century. Toward the year 360, Diodore founded at Antioch a monastic center (askêtêrion), consecrated to the teaching of asceticism and theology, the two disciplines being considered fundamentally integrated into one another. (His two most important disciples, by the way, Theodore and John Chrysostom, bore eloquent testimony to the high quality of their master’s moral and ascetic life.) Diodore’s exegetical work includes commentaries on the whole of the Old Testament, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and several Epistles. Because their author was accused of heresy, most of his writings were unfortunately destroyed.

Both eastern and western Fathers were convinced that the Old Testament represents essentially a preparation for the coming of Christ. Therefore, they held, the spiritual history of the Jewish people should be read in the light of the Gospel. Diodore accepted this notion unconditionally, to the point where he could declare Abraham to be the “Father of the Church.” This means that the task of the Christian exegete is to develop a hermeneutic that stresses above all the relation of promise to fulfillment that links the two Testaments.

Diodore worked out his solution to this challenge in a treaty, now lost, entitled “On the difference between theôriaand allegory” (tis diaphora theôrias kai allêgorias, where diaphoraprobably signifies “disagreement”). Other extant works of his, like his Prolog to Psalm 118, nonetheless offer enough information to enable us to retrace the major elements of his conception of theôriaas a method of interpretation.

To Clement and the other Alexandrians, the term theôriadenotes the spiritual sense of a scriptural passage as revealed by an allegorical interpretation. Henri de Lubac, the leading French Catholic specialist in patristic hermeneutics of the last century, has shown that theôriain Alexandrian terminology is practically synonymous with allêgoria.⁷ Origen held that every passage and every word of Scripture possesses its own spiritual meaning, even there where the literal sense needs to be discarded as “unworthy” of God and of his revelation.⁸ The aim of exegesis, he maintained, is to decipher the symbolic language of the Bible, in order to discover its “inner meaning.” In practice, that means that the exegete should seek the meaning of a given passage in the biblical words themselves, rather than in the historical realities that underlie them. For the most extreme allegorists, the historical event had significance only to the extent that it represented symbolically or metaphorically a mystical or moral experience in the life of the believer. This conception of theôriadestroys typology, because it breaks the vital link between the two poles, type and antitype. Exegesis, as it were, becomes more important than the biblical text itself; a scriptural passage is of less significance than its interpretation. Historical objectivity thus gives way to a subjectivism that denies the temporal aspect of eschatology, and projects the economy of salvation into a celestial sphere conceived in terms of Platonic idealism.

A healthy reaction against this approach led Antiochene theologians to initiate a movement that would reestablish and reconfirm the importance of history, historical reality, as the indispensable framework of biblical revelation. Recognizing the de-historicizing tendencies of allegorical exegesis, they attempted to make a precise distinction between allegory and typology. According to Diodore of Tarsus, the task of the exegete is to discern at the core of an historical event, person, ritual or institution, both its literal and its spiritual meaning. To the “historical-critical” exegetes of today, the literal sense of a given passage refers basically to the meaning understood and expressed by the biblical author himself. It contains a spiritual dimension only to the extent that the author himselfrecognized that a particular image is in fact a typosof a future, eschatological reality. For example, the Suffering Servant of Isa 52-53 is to be considered a legitimate type of Christ only to the extent that (Deutero-) Isaiah himself saw in that figure a prophetic image of the Messiah (the “Christ,” or Anointed One). The problem here is that this perspective attributes too much significance to the element of conscious anticipation on the part of the biblical author. Whether or not the author himself was conscious of a typological relation between two images, historical and eschatological, is in the final analysis of little importance. What really matters is rather the spiritual insight of the interpreter, who beholds in a past person or event the actual presence of an eschatological or soteriological reality. It is this perception or “divination” by the interpreter of Scripture that Diodore and his contemporaries termed theôria.

Antiochene exegetes applied theôriato the biblical text by means of typology. Like allegory, typology establishes a relation of promise and fulfillment between two poles, the type and the antitype. These poles are related to each other in one of two ways. They can both be historical, one situated in the time of the Old Covenant, and the other in the time of the New (for example, Melchizedek or Moses as types of Jesus Christ). The antitype can also be trans-historical or eschatological. In this case, the type is located in the present historical age, and the antitype (or archetype) in the age to come. In both cases, a typological relationship can exist only between two images or poles, where the type is realized or fulfilled by the antitype, and the eschatological antitype is firmly grounded in the historyof salvation.

Allegory tends to see in a given event a mere “sign” that indicates a particular eschatological reality: the event simply points forward to or suggests that coming reality, which alone possesses ultimate significance. Typology, on the other hand, stresses the symbolic character of history. The historical type is not merely a sign; it is a symbolthat actually participatesin the reality to which it points. It is that actual participation that makes of a given event a true “type.” It draws its very meaning from the fact that, as an historical event, it shares in the future or transcendent reality of the antitype and derives its meaning from it. This is what enables typology legitimately to discover “the Face of Christ in the Old Testament,” and to affirm that eucharistic celebration enables the Church to participate proleptically in the feast of the Kingdom of God.

Allegory, as practiced by the Alexandrians, tended to find two totally distinct meanings behind the words of a biblical text: an historical or literal sense, and a spiritual sense. Only the second of these had real importance for the life of faith. In the case of a theôriafounded on typology, on the other hand, it is not the words of Scripture that contain ultimate meaning; it is rather the eventsto which those words point. And at the heart of the historical event, theôriadiscerns not two different meanings, but rather what Diodore calls a double sense, whose spiritual dimension is firmly anchored in the literal, historical dimension. That is to say that theôriadiscerns a typological relationship at the very heart of the event itself. This relationship expresses a double meaning: on the one hand, in the intention of the author (the literal sense), and on the other, in its fulfillment in the messianic age. Unlike allegory, Antiochene theôriaaffirms that the spiritual sense is inseparable from the literal sense, becausethe antitype itself is inseparable from the historical reality, which it uses as a vehicle of expression. In a very real sense, then, the eschatological antitype is present– proleptically yet actually – in the historical type. Christ, for example, is mysteriously (“sacramentally”!) present in the person of Moses, just as the Church is present in the Jerusalem Temple and its rituals. Or to use the language of St Paul, the rock that followed the Israelites through the wilderness was Christ(ê petra de ên ho Christos, 1 Cor 10:4).⁹

To the Antiochenes, then, the type is a prophetic symbol that participates in the antitype as a “premise” or “foretaste” (arrabôn). And conversely, the eschatological antitype is truly (ontologically) present in the historical type.

This raises an important question. Just how does theôriadiscern the eschatological reality within the typological event? What allows the antitype to be truly “present” within the original type? To Diodore, this occurs by virtue of the hyperboliccharacter of the biblical narrative. Referring to the double sense of Scripture discerned kata theôrian, he holds that the prophets, in predicting future occurrences, adapted their discourse both to their contemporaries and to future ages. To their contemporaries, their words were “hyperbolic” or exaggerated expressions (hyperbolikoi), insofar as they contained a meaning that was not yet fully graspable. Yet those words were in perfect agreement – they corresponded fully – with the coming events, once those were realized in history. Interpreted historically (historikôs), persons and events of the Old or First Covenant possessed their own meaning within the framework of Israel’s history. Interpreted in the light of theôria(theôrêmatikôs), however, those same persons and events disclosed a superior, eschatological meaning. Therefore, according to Diodore, the Psalms are at one and the same time historical and prophetic. As “history,” the words of the Psalms bear a hyperbolic sense (discerned kat’ hyperbolên); as “prophecy,” they are “realized in truth” (kat’ alêtheian) in the person of Christ and in the life of the Church.

This double aspect pertains to all Old Testament typology. As Diodore understood and employed theôria, historical realities such as Israel, David, Solomon and the Passover lamb were fulfilled in the person of Christ. Rather than being reduced to a mere sign, the historical event is perceived by theôriato be a true vehicle of revelation. This aspect of Antiochene typology radically distinguishes it from Alexandrian allegory. Theôriacan discern the spiritual meaning of scriptural passages precisely because those passages bear witness to concrete events that constitute the historical context in which the divine economy is worked out.

Theôriaprovided Diodore with the means to strike a balance between the excesses of allegory and what he called “Judaism,” meaning a concern only for the literal meaning of a biblical passage.¹⁰ The two extremes are equally dangerous, since the first can be the fruit of pure imagination, while the second leads to a verbal rationalism that deprives Scripture of its mystical and eschatological significance. Insofar as the interpreter seeks a “theoretic vision” of the biblical witness, he or she can avoid the one-sidedness of Alexandrian exegesis by discerning in Scripture a double sense, both literal and spiritual. Theôria, in other words, preserves both the original meaning of a biblical text, and the revelatory character of sacred history.

III.

Antiochene theôriaand Diodore’s unique understanding of typology afford us a perspective on eschatology, which, as far as I know, has never been elaborated by specialists of patristic hermeneutics. This perspective situates typology both within and above what we usually mean by “history.” It breaks the limits of time and space, by affirming that the future can actually participate in the past, and that the relation between type and antitype can be understood only in the perspective of transcendence.

The most significant aspect of Diodore’s conception of theôriais his conviction, noted above, that the antitype is truly (ontologically) present in the historical type. Taken literally, this notion might well appear absurd. In the macroscopic world, where everything is governed by Newton’s laws and every effect is the result of a specific cause, the thought that a future event (the antitype) can determine the meaning of a past event (the type), or that what has not yet occurred in time can nevertheless be revealed in the past or present, seems to violate common sense. According to our experience, time is linear; the “arrow of time” progresses from the past to the future, and never the reverse. What’s more, the idea that a past event can have a “double meaning,” both literal and spiritual, both historical and eternal, seems at best improbable. It’s true that we easily speak of “realized” or “inaugurated” eschatology (Florovsky), but without having a clear grasp of the paradox such expressions imply. The same is true when we speak of eternity. Just how, in the categories of Orthodox experience for example, are we to understand an affirmation such as “Yesterday I was crucified with You, today I am raised with You” (from the Paschal canon)? And how in the anamnesis of the Divine Liturgy can we “remember” or “commemorate” what has not yet occurred: “the cross…the ascension into heaven…the second and glorious Second Coming”of Christ? In the perspective of classical Newtonian physics, “realized eschatology” simply makes no sense.

The solution to the dilemma is not to follow the lead of many of today’s theologians, who reject eschatology wholesale as mere wishful thinking, and “demythologize” every biblical and liturgical passage that speaks about it. In our present day, especially in light of modern physics, we need to accept the fact that the world – including time and space – is infinitely more complex than we can imagine simply on the basis of our empirical experience.

In what follows, basing these remarks on some of the findings of quantum physics, I would like to propose a certain perspective on the world we live in, which might help us understand the paradox that lies at the heart of traditional eschatology.

First of all, we need to free ourselves from a widespread and erroneous notion of the relation between time and eternity. The popular mind tends to conceive eternity as an unlimited extension of time, as if time will flow forward until its end, at which point eternity will begin. Einstein’s theories of relativity, however, have demonstrated conclusively that time and space constitute a whole: the four dimensions of “space-time.” Taking up and developing these intuitions, a significant number of physicists today describe the universe “holistically,” as though it constitutes a hologram.¹¹ A hologram is a three-dimensional image, projected in space by means of a laser, whose every part contains the information of the whole (the whole is “contained” in each of its parts). Since the middle of the 20^thcentury, studies in the realm of quantum physics have shown that at the microscopic level of reality, everything functions according to a “holographic principle.” This means that “separation” is in fact an illusion, and that everything emerges from a transcendent background identified by Eastern mystics as the “akashic field,”¹² and by theists as God.

Physicists speak of “non-local coherence.” This is the phenomenon that makes what happens or exists in one part of a system occur in all of it, in the entire system. And it does so instantaneously. Once two quantum particles have interacted, an effect produced on one of them (for example, a change in “spin”) occurs instantaneously on the other, irrespective of the distance that separates them, be it millimeters or light-years. This phenomenon, known as “entanglement,” demonstrates the fact that the entire cosmos – everything that constitutes what is “real” – is fundamentally holistic or holographic. Time and space are transcended, such that all things occur – are actualized – in an eternal present.

Another aspect of reality that is pertinent to our discussion is what is referred to as
the “superposition of states.” Manifest only at the quantum level, superposition signifies that a system can be simultaneously constituted of two states or conditions that appear to be contradictory. The classical example of this is “Schrödinger’s cat,” where in an imaginary thought-experiment the cat is both alive and dead until it is directly observed by a conscious being. Another example is the electron, which is in a wave state before it is observed, and, once observed or measured, assumes a corpuscular state: it “becomes” a particle. According to the “Copenhagen” theory of quantum mechanics proposed by Niels Bohr, observation by a conscious being results in the “collapse” of the wave state that produces a material particle. Prior to observation, the particle is in a “virtual” wave-state and represents probabilities or potentials rather than a concrete object. The role of consciousness is essential, according to this theory, in order to perceive the superposition of states and cause the transformation that results in a single material state. Conscious measurement collapses the wave function in a process of “decoherence,” which effects the transition from microcosm to macrocosm, from the quantum world to the empirical world. In a Christian perspective, we would say that the consciousness that brings all things “from non-being into being” and accomplishes the collapse of the wave function, to give rise to the domain of our experience, is the Consciousness of God.

Then again, quantum physics has demonstrated that the “arrow of time” can be reversed, so that under certain conditions time moves from the present to the past; it “flows backwards.” This means that an event of the present or future has the capacity to influence what has already occurred in the past. Experiments by scientists such as Richard Feynman, Bernard Livet, Alan Aspect, and Olivier Costa de Beauregard have shown that antiparticles such as the positron (a particle identical to the electron but with a positive rather than a negative charge) can move backwards through time, to impart information to a reality that existed in the past. This “pre-dating” is not limited to the microcosm. Phenomena such as prescience or precognition are certainly governed by the fact that time and space are not absolute, but that in certain circumstances they can be transcended. If the prophet seeswhat is to come at some future time, it is because his contemplative vision, his thôria, is not subject to the limits of space-time. The same is true with regard to “the presence of the antitype in the type.” It is this aspect of theôriathat enables the apostle Paul to declare that Christ was presentin the desert rock (1 Cor 10:4), and Diodore of Tarsus to find in the past type the very presence of the antitype, its future fulfillment.

In the light of these discoveries in the domain of quantum physics, verified countless times since the beginning of the twentieth century, eschatology must be seen as neither “future” nor “realized.” Rather, it is to be understood as the manifestation of an “eternal present,” in which the past and future are actualized in every present moment. This is what enables faithful Jews to “relive” the Exodus each Friday evening. It also explains how Orthodox Christians can affirm that “yesterdayI was crucified with You, today I am raised with You,” and in the anamnêsisor memorial of the eucharistic Liturgy proclaim that “the Second and glorious coming [of Christ]” is part of the memoryof the Church. (We should not forget that the term “parousia” primarily signifies not what “is to come,” but rather what is already present.)

This also explains the fact that a typosin Israel’s history can “contain” its antitype. In a holistic reality, the information of the whole is present in each individual part – to the extent that individuality and separation do not exist. Time and space are transcended, in the sense that future and past are both presentin the events that constitute the history of salvation. As weird or strange as this perspective may appear, the superposition of two states that are a prioricontradictory exists in many aspects of Christian faith and experience. For example, God as one and three; Christ as both human and divine; the Church as earthly and heavenly, historical and transcendent; the Spirit of God who is “wholly other,” infinitely beyond the creation, and nevertheless “everywhere present, filling all things.” This phenomenon is also what gives more than rhetorical force to St Paul’s affirmations in Second Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way but not crushed…always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (4:8-10), and “when I am weak, then I am strong” (12:10). (We could add Luther’s notion of the redeemed person as simul iustus et peccator, at one and the same time justified or righteous, yet remaining a sinner.) This same apparent contradiction characterizes Christian eschatology. Neither “future” or strictly “realized,” the term refers to a superposition of the two – the future proleptically realized in the here and now – which results in what we have termed an “eternal present.”

Unlike his master Plato, Aristotle insisted that “substances,” the ousiai or essences of things, exist within the historical reality rather than in a transcendent domain of “ideas” or “forms.” Under the influence of Aristotle, Diodor and other representatives of the “school” or hermeneutic movement of Antioch maintained that typoi, rooted in history, exist in a kind of superposition of states. Each of them is invested with a meaning anchored in the experience of the prophet, and a distinct, transcendent meaning represented by the antitype. Yet the two are ultimately inseparable: the type bears the conditions of its own fulfillment. The eschatological reality manifests or “incarnates” itself in the historical event. This is what enables each moment of history to be invested with eternal value.

In an essay on Pauline typology, George Malko¹³ gave a concise summary of the Antiochene perspective. Noting that Diodore links the linear, horizontal movement from past to future, with fulfillment of the future (Christ) in the past (the desert rock of 1 Cor 10), he speaks of “a proleptic movement in the relation of the antitype to the type in the fact that there is predating of the antitype that produces a circular movement in which time is eliminated. This occurs because the type incorporates the antitype into itself, while historical time simultaneously continues its linear progression toward the future fulfillment of the type by the antitype. This development on two different levels creates a circular movement that enables us actually to experience eternity, since time is abolished.”

In fact, both space-time and causality are abolished: ultimately, insofar as they suggest separation and differentiation, they do not exist. The separation that characterizes macroscopic material realities, with its temporal movement and physical location, is – on the microscopic scale – nothing more than illusion. Quantum physics, together with cosmology and even evolutionary theory, make it clear and undeniable today that the cosmos, with all of its component features, is structured like a hologram, in which each element exists in union with all the others, and each one contains the information of the entire system. As difficult as this picture is for us to grasp, quantum mechanics has nevertheless been verified so frequently and so thoroughly that it is now accepted as more solidly and reliably confirmed than any other theory in the realm of physics.

Quantum theory confirms as well the intuitions of various religions and philosophies of antiquity. The world constitutes a “whole”; it must finally be seen and understood holistically. Time and space are relative and limited, such that each “present” moment participates in eternity, just as the eternal is present at each moment and in every historical event. This signifies as well that at every instant and in all circumstances, those who perceive alêtheia– reality or truth – in the events of daily life are able to participate in this reality hic et nunc, in the eternal nyn (the “Now”) of God’s presence and activity. It is precisely this participation that constitutes the aim and end of patristic theôria.

By his unique and perceptive way of reformulating typology, Diodore of Tarsus has opened the way to a perspective on eschatology that is in thorough agreement with the discoveries of today’s physical sciences. Viewed theôrêmatikôs,Christian eschatology can only be understood “holistically.” In this way – but only in this way – eschatology can reveal the presence of eternity in each historical moment, and grant us the grace, here and now, to participate in it.

The theologians associated with Antioch formed less a “school” in the formal sense, than a movement that joined them in a common theological and hermeneutical perspective. ↩︎
Although St John Chrysostom is associated with Antioch, and St Athanasius with Alexandria, both theologians were able to avoid the exaggerations of other representatives of their respective schools, and are universally recognized as pillars of Orthodoxy. ↩︎
Introduction à l’histoire de l’exégèse, vol. I, “Les Pères grecs et orientaux” (Paris: Le Cerf, 1980). ↩︎
Discerning the Mystery, ch. 5, “Return to Allegory” (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). ↩︎
Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: University Press, 1997). ↩︎
Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986, pp. 71ff. ↩︎
See his “Typologie et allégorisme,” in Recherches de science religieuse34 (1947), 202; and Histoire et esprit : intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène, Paris 1950, 123. ↩︎
De principiis IV.12.20; In JohX.18.189. ↩︎
Compare Melito of Sardis’ homily On Pascha 69: Christ “is the one who in many people endured many things. This is the one who was murdered in Abel, tied up in Isaac, exiled in Jacob, sold in Joseph,” etc. (tr. by Alistair Stewart-Sykes, On Pascha, Crestwook, NY, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, p. 56). ↩︎
Praef. In pss, 8.23f. ↩︎
See Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe(New York: Harper, 1991); and David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Ark, 1980). A good, recent overview has appeared in French: S. Ortoli and J-P Pharabod, Métaphysique quantique. Les nouveaux mystères de l’espace et du temps(Paris: La Découverte, 2011). ↩︎
In the ancient culture of India, the term “akasha” signified the universal field that underlies all empirical reality and gives rise to all things: matter, together with the nuclear forces that maintain that reality in absolute unity. See E. Laszlo, Science and the Akashic Field (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2007), and The Connectivity Hypothesis(New York: State University Press, 2003). ↩︎
A former student at the St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, Malko made these remarks in an unpublished paper, submitted on June 4, 2010. ↩︎