Paul Chandler writes:
| John Wickstrom raises a very interesting question which perhaps needs to
| be set within the general context of the tensions within medieval biblical
| hermeneutic. Generally speaking, as I understand it, the system of the
| four senses allowed each level of meaning to be interpreted without
| reference to the others. The meaning of a figure or symbol in a given
| biblical passage could be explored in one direction, and then another
| taken up and interpreted in a contradictory or inharmonious sense, without
| reference to the meaning of the whole. Uneasiness with this procedure led
| Aquinas to insist that the spiritual senses had to be founded in the
| literal sense (ST 1.10, ad 1), but the habit still continues of holding
| together metaphors that are logically incompatible. It is a habit of mind
| which disconcerts our more linear logic.
Minor correction: TA was not the first to insist on this.
Grosseteste scooped him on this by about forty years (De cessatione
legalium, 1.9). Even here, there is a patristic precedance as the
idea of the spiritual sense being grounded in the literal is drawn
from Augustine. And I would bet an entire Elvis memorabilia
collection that someone will discover that this emerged in the
12th century (or this just wishful thinking?).
End shameless plug for RG...
|
| As Jo Ann McNamara said, medieval people did not take this imagery too
| literally. But I wonder to what extent were they aware of the tensions it
| contains? Baldwin of Ford (d. 1190), commenting on Lk 1.28, explains how
| Mary can be at once God's mother (through fruitful virginity), daughter
| (through the grace of adoption), sister (through the grace of communion),
| spouse (through the pledge of betrothal), friend (through the reciprocity
| of love), and neighbour (through the closeness of likeness) (Sermon 13).
| It seems hard to tell whether this represents an attempt to clarify a
| paradox or simply rejoices in it.
I think what we often forget is that the identification of the sponsa
as either Mary or the church was not mutually exclusive for the
medieval exegete. After all, Mary was deemed part of the church, and
in an interesting use of synedoche, the church was Mary (much like
the way Abel was the church). Hence, with this in mind Baldwin's
elaboration contains no paradox, but presents Mary in terms of her
historical status, as well as the various ontological and
relational states she becomes by being one who was transformed by
grace and thus a member of the church.
Cheers
Jim
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James R. Ginther
Dept. of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
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E-mail: Phone: +44.113.233.6749
[log in to unmask] Fax: +44.113.233.3654
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http://www.leeds.ac.uk/trs/trs.html
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"Excellencior enim est scriptura in mente viva quam in
pelle mortua" -Robert Grosseteste.
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