The Letter and the Spirit

Many aspects of the thought of the Fathers are strange to us, and as a result we tend to value their writings for their spiritual rather than their intellectual content. In particular, we find it difficult to follow them in their use of allegorical methods of biblical interpretation. Dr. Grant is concerned with understanding these methods, with special reference to those employed by Origen. For this purpose, he first traces the development of Greek theories of the interpretation of poetry a...