Love the Key to Scripture

Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. 1 TIMOTHY 1:5

The young Augustine did not think much of the Bible. When Cicero’s Hortensius had set him longing for wisdom, he turned to the Scriptures to see what they offered, and was disappointed. They seemed to him, he says in Book III of the Confessions, unworthy to be compared to “the stateliness of Tully” — Tully being Cicero. The style was plain, the stories crude, the Latin of the old translation rough. But he adds at once that the fault was his. His swelling pride shrank from their lowliness, and his sharp wit could not pierce their inner meaning. They were a book that would grow up with a little one, and he disdained to be a little one.

Learning to read

The man who later preached through the Psalms and the Gospel of John and wrote commentary after commentary on Genesis had to be taught to read Scripture. His first teacher was Ambrose. At Milan, Augustine says, he heard Ambrose again and again commend to the people the rule that the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life, drawing aside the veil from passages that, taken woodenly, had seemed absurd. The Manichees had mocked the Old Testament. Ambrose showed Augustine that it was deeper than its mockers.

Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:6

He also watched Ambrose read. In Book VI he gives a small portrait that has fascinated readers ever since: when Ambrose read, “his eye glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest.” People would come to his room and find him reading in silence, and sit and watch, not daring to disturb him. Here was a man for whom the Bible was not a text to perform but a word to ponder.

The rule of love

Years later, as a bishop, Augustine wrote a handbook on how to understand and teach Scripture. On Christian Doctrine is one of the most influential books on interpretation ever written, and at its heart is one simple principle. The whole of Scripture, he says, aims at love: the love of God for His own sake, and the love of our neighbour for God’s sake.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. MATTHEW 22:40

From this he draws a bold conclusion. Anyone who thinks he has understood the Scriptures, or any part of them, but whose understanding does not build up this double love of God and neighbour, has not yet understood them as he ought. And anyone who draws from a passage a meaning that builds up love, even if it is not what the writer meant, is not dangerously deceived — though he should be corrected, as a traveller who has left the road, even if he has reached the right place across the fields, needs setting back on the road before he wanders further.

It is a remarkable rule, and it cuts two ways. It rebukes the scholar whose learning has made him proud and cold; however accurate his readings, if they do not lead him to love God and people more, he has missed the point of the book. And it comforts the humble believer who reads with little learning but much love; the Spirit who wrote the Scriptures is not stingy with those who come to them to love Him better.

Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. 1 CORINTHIANS 8:1

Charity among interpreters

Augustine practised what he taught. In Book XII of the Confessions, working through the first verses of Genesis, he surveys several possible meanings and admits that he cannot be certain which one Moses intended. Rather than attack those who differ, he pleads for peace. “Let us not then be puffed up for one against another, above that which is written,” he says: let us love the Lord our God with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves. It would be foolish, he says, to quarrel so bitterly over the meaning of the words as “with pernicious contentions to offend charity itself, for whose sake he spake every thing, whose words we go about to expound.”

That sentence deserves to be written over the door of every seminary and every church Bible study. We are tempted to fight hardest over Scripture precisely where Scripture most commands us to love. Augustine did not believe that every interpretation was as good as every other; he argued fiercely when the gospel was at stake. But he knew the difference between the essentials of faith and the places where good believers read differently, and he refused to break charity over the second.

Christ in all the Scriptures

Augustine also taught that the whole Bible speaks of Christ. In one famous formula of his, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is laid open in the New. He found Christ in the Psalms, in the patriarchs, in the tabernacle, in the story of creation. Some of his allegories strain modern readers, and not all of them should be followed. But the conviction behind them is the Lord’s own.

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. LUKE 24:27

Humility in reading

Above all, Augustine read as a pray-er. The Confessions is full of Scripture, woven so closely into his own words that it is often hard to tell where the Bible ends and Augustine begins. That is what a lifetime of loving reading does. The words of God become the words in which we think and pray.

Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. PSALM 119:18

He knew too that the plainness he had once despised was a mercy. The Scriptures are lowly in access and lofty in their depths, he says, like a door low enough for a child and a house too great for any scholar to fill. They humble the proud and feed the humble, which is exactly what they were meant to do.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 1 CORINTHIANS 13:2

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before you read the Bible this week, pray that it would make you love God and your neighbour more — and afterwards ask whether it has.

2. Is there a part of Scripture you have despised as dull or crude? Read it slowly this month and ask God to show you its depth.

3. Think of a disagreement over the Bible in which you have been more concerned to win than to love. Seek to put it right.

4. Try reading a short passage slowly and silently, as Ambrose did, letting your heart search out the sense.

5. Learn by heart one verse this week, so that Scripture begins to become the language of your prayers.

A PRAYER

Lord, You have given me Your Word, and I have sometimes read it proudly and coldly, and sometimes not at all.

Open my eyes to behold wondrous things in it. Humble me, that I may enter by its lowly door.

Let everything I learn from it make me love You more and my neighbour better, and keep me from breaking charity over the words You gave to teach it.

Show me Christ in all the Scriptures, until my heart burns within me. Amen.