83. Martin, Pedagogy of the Bible, 30.
84. Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechism, 481.
85. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, 25.
86. Trible, “Eve and Adam,” 258.
87. Augustine, “On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins,” 22.
88. Augustine, City of God, 279. See also Rombs, Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul, 101–6.
89. See Langdon Gilkey’s assessment that “both Bultmann and Niebuhr, so it appears from the vantage point of the present, seemed surprisingly too liberal” on the issue of the primitive versus real or permanent meaning of Christian myths in On Niebuhr, 68. For a helpful discussion of Niebuhr on myth, see Dorrien, Word as True Myth, 122–26.
90. Niebuhr, “Truth in Myths,”16.
91. Ibid., 25.
92. Niebuhr, Interpretation, 46.
93. Ibid., 53–54.
94. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, 18.
95. Ibid., 14.
96. Ibid., 16.
97. Ibid., 59.
98. Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 34.
99. Wyschogrod and Caputo, “Postmodernism and the Desire for God,” 301.
100. Henriksen, Desire, Gift, and Recognition, 32.
101. Ward, “A Postmodern Version of Paradise,” 7.
102. Ibid., 8.
Chapter Three: Biblical Journeys
The stories of Abraham setting out for the land of Canaan, Moses leading the Israelites through the wilderness, and Jesus traveling to Jerusalem have long sparked the imagination of Christian writers who discovered a deep resonance between these pivotal events in the biblical narrative and the twists and turns of their own journeys of faith. Both in the life of the community and the life of the individual, the journey stories function as compasses to orient Christians as they navigate their way through time. The elements that comprise the journeys become symbols of the dynamics of the Christian life: the allies who make it possible for the sojourner to advance in the journey become the virtues, the foes who attack under the cover of darkness become our deepest fears, and the destination being sought describes our deepest aspirations. In this chapter we will examine how the image of the biblical journey has been incorporated into the theology of the third-century biblical scholar Origen of Alexandria in his Homily XVII on Numbers, the twelfth-century Augustinian canon Achard of St. Victor in his Sermon XV, and the contemporary Franciscan Richard Rohr in his recent work, Falling Upward. It is hoped that a study of how they employ the image of the biblical journey might help us revitalize the use of the image in our own theological reflection and spiritual reading of the Bible.
Origen, Homily XVII on Numbers 33
The common thread that runs throughout all areas of Origen’s thought is his deep familiarity with the Bible. This, his supporters contend, enables him to uncover various levels of meaning from the most seemingly insignificant biblical passages. According to his critics, however, he can spin fanciful tales from the simplest biblical details. Origen’s exact position on the number of meanings to be found in a biblical passage remains a matter of scholarly dispute. At the heart of the debate is Origen’s observation in Book IV of his On First Principles (or Peri archon):
One must therefore [portray] the meaning of the sacred writers in a threefold way upon one’s own soul, so that the simple man may be edified by what we call the flesh of the scripture, this name being given to the obvious interpretation; while the man who has made some progress may be edified by its soul, as it were; and the man who is perfect and like those mentioned by the apostle: “We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought; but we speak God’s wisdom in mystery, even the mystery that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory”—this man may be edified by the spiritual law, which has “a shadow of the good things to come.” For just as man consists of body, soul, and spirit, so in the same way does the scripture, which has been prepared by God to be given for man’s salvation (IV, 2, 4).103
Many of Origen’s interpreters have taken this to mean that each passage has a threefold sense. This position, however, is not without its problems. In his study on the history of biblical interpretation, Henning Graf Reventlow notes that “it is conspicuous that nowhere in his later practice of exegesis does [Origen] carry out this threefold sense.”104 Other scholars believe the three groups mentioned by Origen are not meanings within the text, but rather different strategies (each with its own unique types of emphasis) that preachers and teachers can employ when addressing Christians at various stages of their discipleship: beginners in the faith, the intermediate, and the advanced.105 Origen more commonly speaks in terms of two types of meanings: of the letter and the spirit, the shadow and the reality, or the surface of a field that is in plain sight and the hidden treasures below that we seek to discover. “There are in Scripture,” writes Henri de Lubac, “fundamentally, only two senses: the literal and the spiritual, and these two senses themselves are in continuity, not in opposition. The spirit is in the letter like honey in its honeycomb.”106
In Homily XVII on Numbers, Origen plays the metaphorical role of beekeeper as he extracts the honey (the spiritual meaning) from the honeycomb (the literal meaning) in the summary account of the Israelites’ journey from Egypt to the borders of the Promised Land in Numbers 33. Even a passage as seemingly insignificant as one that simply lists the cities on each stage of the journey is important, for we “cannot say of the Holy Spirit’s writings that there is anything useless or unnecessary in them, however much they appear obscure to some.”107 As Origen asks rhetorically, “Who would dare to say that what is written ‘by the Word of God’ is of no use and makes no contribution to salvation, but is merely a narrative of what happened and was over and done a long time ago, but pertains in no way to us when it is told?”108 The Bible is a historical work, literary masterpiece, and for Christians, religious text. How an interpreter relates each of these aspects of the Bible to the other two determines how that person reads the Bible. For Origen, the religious dimension of the text dominates the other two. The various biblical texts have as their author the Holy Spirit. The historical details, in this case the story of Israel’s journey from Egypt