Questions to Guide Your Reading

                                                                                                                       

Henri de Lubac, S.J., “Spiritual Understanding,” in Scripture in the Tradition

 

1. According to Cardinal de Lubac, how do Christians read the Old Testament and the New Testament?

 

2. What does it mean to say that Christians read and interpret the Old Testament in the spirit of the New?  So, for example, what if I asked you to read a letter from one of your worst enemies in a spirit of generosity?  What would that mean?  Have you ever given thought to what it means to read with a certain “spirit” – let’s say, a spirit of generosity as opposed to a spirit of anger or resentment; a spirit of openness as opposed to a spirit of criticalness?

            Cardinal de Lubac probably uses the phrase “in the spirit of” in this context because it has theological implications; that is, when reading the Bible, we should seek the right “spirit,” and that would undoubtedly be given to us by the Holy Spirit.  But a roughly equivalent phrase in English for “in the spirit of” would be the phrase “in the light of.”  So, for example, Cardinal de Lubac might have said that Christians read and interpret the Old Testament in light of the New?  Does that make the relationship any clearer?  What would it mean to say that we should read the Old Testament in light of the New?  To get a clearer sense of this, ask yourself the following question.  What would it mean if I said, “You should read this angry letter from your friend in light of the fact that her mother had just died when she wrote it?”  Or, “You know, when you get frustrated with what your father asks you to do, you should view his discipline in light of the fact that he is working two jobs to keep you in the best school possible.”  What “light” is thrown upon the reading or interpreting of a letter (as in the first case) or an act (as in the second case) by the further bit of information? 

            Now, what “light” is thrown upon the reading and interpreting of the Old Testament if one reads it in light of the New?

 

3. I mentioned in class that what we call “the Bible” is actually a whole library of books written by numerous authors over the course of many centuries.  And yet, Christians seem to think that there is a continuity between these books – even between the books of the Old Testament and the New.  According to Cardinal de Lubac, the continuity between the Old Testament and the New is not a continuity given by the human authors.  From whence comes this continuity then?

 

4. According to Cardinal de Lubac, the continuity of the Old Testament with the New is a continuity “in God, not in man.”  “It is the continuity of the divine Plan, something to be admired after the event.”  Compare Cardinal de Lubac’s statement about admiring the Plan “after the event” with the answer to the following question (#35) on Prof. Haught’s “Meaning and History”: According to Prof. Haught, the meaning of history can only become clear when?  Until then, what must we be content with?  What must we have in the mean time?” 

 

5. On pp. 36 and 37 in his text, Cardinal de Lubac lays out a series of correspondences between the Old Testament and the New.  Please be able to list and discuss each of these.  (We also will be discussing them in class.)

 

6. On p. 37, Cardinal de Lubac says this about the relationship between the paschal (Passover) Lamb whose blood saved the Jewish people from death and Jesus, whose blood saves us all from sin and death:   “This is not some extrinsic resemblance alone, no matter how striking this might be.  There is actually an ‘inherent continuity’ and ‘ontological bond’ between the two facts, and this is due to the same divine will which is active in both situations, and which, from stage to stage, is pursuing a single Design – the Design which is the real object of the Bible.”  Please discuss (in your own words) what he means.

 

7. On pp. 37 and 38, Cardinal de Lubac asks: “But how was God’s plan to be achieved?  In the final analysis, what would the manna or the paschal Lamb mean?  What reality was prepared and prefigured by the things of which we read in the Bible?”  He then says: “The Israelites themselves could not know.”  Why not?  And again, several sentences later: “When they celebrated their Passover, they rightly evoked the memory of a great historical fact, the word of the God of their fathers, while looking forward to a great eschatological fact, in which that work would be consummated.  But they could have no idea of what this consummation would be, how it would occur, what perspectives it would open up, what new existence and new dimension of being it would create for the beneficiaries of the divine knowledge.”  Again, why was this the case? And what theological virtues would the Jewish people have needed given this “developmental” state of affairs? [Hint: Look lower down on the same page.]

 

8. I don’t usually have you focus in on the footnotes, but footnote 26 has an interesting, and I think important, observation.  In that footnote, Cardinal de Lubac says this about St. Augustine: “Augustine ... saw each stage of history as preparing the later stages, with the final stage having to integrate them all in its definitive truth.”  This is as good a one-sentence description as you’ll find of an early Christian theory about salvation called “recapitulation.”  That is, in his sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus “recapitulates” all of salvation history.  For the exam, please be able to describe this notion of “recapitulation.” 

 

9. What, according to Cardinal de Lubac, is the problem with historicism?  (If you don’t know the word, look it up.)

 

10. On p. 40, de Lubac suggests that “Christ’s presence in the Bible transcends both awareness and men and lies in the profound logic of idea and event.”  What does he mean?

 

11. Okay, so here’s what we’ve got so far.  We don’t need to insist that the writers of the Old Testament were individually aware that what they were writing about would ultimately be a “prefiguration” of Jesus of Nazareth.  (How could they have been aware of that?  He hadn’t come yet.)  And yet, according to Cardinal de Lubac, there is a certain “continuity of awareness.”  And the place we can look for its source is in the “messianic awareness of Jesus.”  What does he mean?  What is he talking about?

 

12. About 4/5 of the way down p. 40, you will find a key sentence, which describes the fundamental Christian view of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments: “the New Testament in its entirety is brought forth by the Old, while at the same time the Old Testament in its entirety is interpreted by the New.”  For a good authoritative statement of the principle, look at Dei Verbum, ch. IV, section 16: “God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New” [emphasis mine]. “For, though Christ established the new covenant in His blood (see Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25), still the books of the Old Testament with all their parts, caught up into the proclamation of the Gospel, acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament (see Matt. 5:17; Luke 24:27; Rom. 16:25-26; 2 Cor. 14:16) and in turn shed light on it [the Old Testament] and explain it.”  So, if I ask you what is the traditional Christian understanding of the relationship between the Old Testament and the New, you should give me the previous paragraph, especially the sentence in bold-face.