I have heard Arius labelled a 'biblicist' in the past, and his case as evidence that exegesis will never decide anything. I have also heard the opposite: that here was a rationalist par excellence, determined to squash biblical material into his Middle Platonist framework.
Rowan Williams writes:
One thing which should be noted immediately is that none of this exegetical material, as described or implicitly characterized by Arius' enemies, really supports the idea that Arius was a 'literalist'. It is not literalism to take the Psalms as spoken in persona Christi or to identify the 'Wisdom' of the OT with Christ...Athanasius' objection to Arius' exegesis is not that it is negligent of a 'spiritual sense', that it is 'Judaizing' in character, but that it is arbitrary...
As Williams goes on to explain, Arius was aiming to be both biblically based AND rationally consistent. That is why he and Athanasius went toe-to-toe on exegetical matters; and in the end, perhaps it was a hermeneutical method that seperated them...
No comments:
Post a Comment