Dr. Clark takes a new approach in seeking to understand and describe the various approaches used in the early church to interpret Scripture. In the past these approaches have been loosely (and unhelpfully) divided into "literal" and "allegorical" readings of the biblical text. Clark picks one area that is common to the church fathers--that of asceticism, or the stated preference for the celibate life. She then looks at their actual usage of the biblical text to more carefully classify those methods than has been done in the past. Following that description, she shows how these ways of reading the text enabled the fathers to harmonize the non-ascetic Old Testament with what they saw as an ascetic New Testament. Following this,she examines in detail how the fathers dealt with one key New Testament chapter on marriage and celibacy: 1 Corinthians 7. Her last chapter then shows how the fathers were able to read the later New Testament epistles in such a way as to conform them to the ascetic understanding of 1 Cor 7. Throughout, she shows an astonishing familiarity with the primary sources.
Anyone interested not only in how the Bible has been read in the past, but in how it is read in the present should own and study this work.
