One consistently important practice for Christians since the early days of the church has been Bible reading. So how did they read the Bible? And how might knowing more about their varied approaches to interpreting God’s Word help us as students of the Bible today? In his new book, Reading the Bible with Ten Church Fathers: How to Interpret, Teach, and Preach Like the Early Christians, church historian and theologian Gerald Bray answers these questions through ten in-depth studies.
Bray is Research Professor of Divinity at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. His previous books include God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology, God Has Spoken: A History of Christian Theology, and Augustine on the Christian Life.
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Nadya Williams: Can you explain who the Church Fathers were?
Gerald Bray: The Church Fathers were the Christian writers of the early centuries of the faith, whose work and witness form the basis for our understanding of Christianity today. They lived and wrote during the time of persecution, which lasted until AD 313, after which they entered a golden age in which they formulated Christian doctrine and evangelized the ancient world. After the council of Chalcedon in AD 451 there were increasing divisions in the Church and both the quantity and quality of theological writing declined. By about AD 750 it was clear that the era of the Fathers had ended and later writers looked back to them for inspiration as they moved into the Middle Ages.
Nadya Williams: How and why did you select these particular ten Church Fathers to study in detail?
Gerald Bray: There are hundreds of Church Fathers and it is impossible to mention them all in a short book! The selection found here is rooted in a common theme, which is the way in which they interpreted Scripture. All the Fathers based their teaching on the Bible, but some devoted themselves to preaching and writing commentaries on it to a degree that others did not. This is why some famous names, like Cyprian of Carthage and Athanasius have been left out, while others like Ambrosiaster and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who may be less well-known, have been included.
Nadya Williams: How did the Church Fathers read the Bible? Can you give us a taste of your findings in this book?
Gerald Bray: The Fathers started with the Old Testament, which they read in Greek translation. The Old Testament presents a worldview that is radically different from the polytheism of the Greco-Roman world around them. Ancient paganism was disorganized and many of its gods clashed with one another, making it impossible to conceive of an orderly universe. The Bible however insists that there is one supreme God, who is the Creator and Preserver of heaven and earth. Everything that we see around us was made by him and he holds it together. He is in control of nature, and has made a world fit for us to live in. We do not have to be afraid of evil powers or worry about spiritual enemies that are out to destroy us. The devil and his minions exist, to be sure, but they are subject to the rule of God and will be destroyed in the end. The Fathers understood that as believers, we have the key to victory over sin and death, a victory that God has provided for us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Today we are used to this, and polytheism of the ancient variety has virtually disappeared, but to the early Christians this message was entirely new—and life-transforming. As creatures made in the image and likeness of God, the Fathers knew that we can have fellowship with him and participate in his government of the world as servants and messengers of his truth. The Greek philosophers could only guess what the world was made of and speculate about what power might lie behind it, but Christians knew the answers to such questions and those answers opened their eyes to the true nature of things. It took many centuries for modern science to develop out of that knowledge, but the groundwork was laid in the Bible, and the Fathers understood it. That is why they wrote more commentaries on Genesis 1-3 than on any other part of the Scriptures.
The Fathers also understood from the Old Testament that sin is not inherent in matter. Creation is good, not evil, and it is to be used for the benefit of humanity. Sin is not located in material things, but in the rebellious hearts of human beings who have listened to the tempting voice of Satan, the prince of this world, who rebelled against his Creator and tried to put himself in God’s place. It can only be overcome by a total change of mind that is the work of the Holy Spirit, sent by God to dwell in our hearts and to bring about the change that is required. This is only possible because God the Father sent his Son into the world to destroy the power of sin and Satan and has made those of us who believe in him a new people. The Fathers were very conscious of that. They knew that before the Son came into the world, God had revealed his purpose to the nation of Israel, which he had set apart from the rest of mankind, but that after the coming of Christ what had been proclaimed and promised beforehand was turned into a living reality for everyone who came to know him. What ancient Israel knew in principle became the experience of the Church in practice, and this determined how the Fathers read the Bible.
It is at this point that there was a parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity, as Justin Martyr pointed out. It was clear to the Fathers that the Jews had misread their Scriptures, because Jesus himself had said that (see John 5:39). They believed that the law of Moses was an end in itself, and many of them thought that at the end of time God would send a Messiah, descended from the family of David, who would deliver Israel from bondage to its enemies. What they failed to realize, said the Fathers, was that the sacred texts pointed beyond this world and beyond the physical descendants of Abraham, the ancestor of the Jews. Because of that, they did not recognize the Son of God when he came in the person of Jesus Christ and so they missed out on the salvation that had been promised to their ancestors.
Nadya Williams: In what ways did the Fathers’ reading of the Bible differ from the way we read it today?
Gerald Bray: In broad general terms, most Christians would probably go along with the Fathers, but the way they interpreted the Bible in practice often gives us pause for thought. How should Christians read the Bible? The answer the Fathers gave to that question was that Christ is present in all the Scriptures, including the Old Testament. Today we would probably understand this to mean that God made a covenant with Abraham, renewed it in Moses and David, and fulfilled it in Jesus. At each stage of this process, God revealed something more of his purposes to his people until at last the fulness of the revelation came in Christ. But although the Fathers accepted this historical development, they also believed that Christ could be found in every Bible verse, regardless of its historical context.
Because of that, they were inclined to look for hidden meanings in the text. Familiar passages from Isaiah, which talked about his virginal conception in the womb of Mary (chapter 7) and his eventual suffering for our sins (chapter 53) were no problem for them, but what should we do about the Song of Songs, for example? On the surface, it is a tale of physical passion that makes no mention of God, but the Fathers were convinced that since it is included in the Bible it must speak about Christ. But how?
This was the dilemma confronted by Origen (AD 185-254), the greatest biblical interpreter of the patristic age. Origen claimed that the Bible speaks to the whole human being—body, soul and spirit. The literal sense of the text addresses the body, which is important because it is a message meant for unbelievers as well as for God’s people, and the material body is where we all begin. Then there is the moral sense, the appeal to notions of right and wrong. This goes beyond the body to the soul (which for Origen included the mind) and enlightened pagans could share that perception, though few actually did. Finally, there is a spiritual sense which is revealed only to those who have the Holy Spirit dwelling in their hearts. It is this sense that speaks of Christ, and only a believer has the spiritual awareness needed to understand it.
Applying this to the Song of Songs, Origen said was that its descriptions of erotic passion are meaningless and even immoral. Therefore, since it is God’s word, it must be entirely spiritual. The man is a figure of Christ, and the woman is either the Church or the soul of the believer. There is not much to choose here in practice, because the Church is made up of souls who have been touched by the Spirit of God. Sometimes her Beloved (Christ) is near and we rejoice in his presence; at other times he seems to hide himself and we go through periods of spiritual drought. So forget all about Solomon and his bride—the Song is really about how our relationship with Christ swings from mountain top experiences at one end to valleys of dryness at the other.
This was the approach that captured the mind of the Fathers. The great Augustine (354-430) for example, thought that the Good Samaritan was Jesus, who rescued the wounded man (sinful Adam, and therefore you and me) on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, placed him (i.e. us) on his donkey (the cross), brought him to the inn (the Church) and gave the innkeeper (the clergy) two coins, which might be either the two Testaments or the two elements of the Lord’s Supper (bread and wine) which would restore the sinner to health. It makes for a great story with evident pastoral application, but is that what the parable is really about?
Here and elsewhere the Fathers had a strong tendency to turn the literal sense of the text into an allegory that would bring out the meaning of Christ and his salvation. In one sense, Origen and Augustine were not wrong—they were applying the gospel message to biblical texts that they thought did not proclaim it very clearly. But in doing this, they were resorting to fantasy and making the biblical story fit what it was they wanted to say rather than what it actually said.
This is where the modern mind starts to ask questions. Can we resort to a spiritual paradigm and impose it on the text whether it is there or not? This is one important reason why scholars today tend to turn away from patristic interpretations of Scripture, though we should not forget that even the Fathers did not always approve of allegorization. Men like Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428) fought against it, and even people like Augustine resisted it as much as possible. Allegory was a kind of last resort, employed only when the literal sense of the text apparently did not yield the spiritual lessons they were looking for. Its purpose was to explain how the literal sense of the rest of Scripture could be applied to passages that on the surface appeared to be less clear.
What should we make of this today? The Reformers of the sixteenth century moved away from allegory by developing a historical understanding of God’s covenant with his people that matured over time and prepared them for the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ. We do not dig into the texts in the hope of finding some hidden gold concealed beneath the surface, but interpret them as stages on a journey to the fulfilment of the promises in the incarnation of the Son of God. When we think in those terms, we actually draw nearer to the Fathers, because that is what they saw as well, even if they went about finding what they were looking for in a way that we would not accept today. We cannot follow the road they took to reach the goal, but we can at least recognize that our goal is the same as theirs. We may have found a better way of getting there, but we must appreciate what their intentions were and test ourselves to make sure that our goal is the same, even if we go after it in a different way.
Nadya Williams: Is there a Church Father with whom you feel a particular affinity?
Gerald Bray: This is a hard question to answer, because they all have something worthwhile to say and the fact that their works have been preserved bears witness to that. If I had to choose from the ten that I have selected, I think that I would pick John Chrysostom, because his biblical preaching is systematic and full of practical pastoral insight.
Nadya Williams: How do you approach your own daily Bible reading?
Gerald Bray: I follow the McCheyne pattern of reading the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in an ordered cycle. McCheyne spreads it over two years, but I compress it into one, reading the first year in the mornings and the second in the evenings. The Fathers have taught me to look for what the text says about God, about us human beings, and about the plan of salvation. The rest is mostly incidental detail – interesting and important in many ways, but less fundamental.
Nadya Williams: What are you working on next?
Gerald Bray: Right now I am busy with four other projects, three of which are on the same general theme. On 17 June 2026 the second edition of my Biblical Interpretation: Past and Present (which originally appeared in 1996) will be published. Then on 26 October my translation of Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Commentary on Isaiah will come out—the one work of his that has not yet appeared in English. There is also a short introduction to biblical interpretation in general, which is due later in the year, but I do not know exactly when. Finally, for those who like Church history, I have edited the canons of the councils held in fifth-century Gaul, which will appear in May or June, complete with a French translation, as Conciles gaulois du Ve siècle in the series Sources Chrétiennes.