For De doctrina Christiana (1.35.39ff.) and the Enarrationes alike, all of Scripture concerns love: “Whatever is obscure in Scripture, this is hidden there. Whatever there is plain, this is open there” (140.2). In the figurative cosmos of Scripture, love is the upper part of the heavens (103.1.9). Because the heart that loves ascends to God (83.10), the work of interpretation has one task: “Whatsoever is carved out of the holy page has no other end (finis) than love” (140.2).
Michael Cameron, “Enarrationes in Psalmos,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 292.
For Irenaeus, the Christ proclaimed in the rule of faith is the key to the Scriptures
Keith D. Stanglin, The Letter and Spirit of Biblical Interpretation: From the Early Church to Modern Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2018), 36.
For Irenaeus, the hypothesis of Scripture is that Jesus fulfills all things. Jesus came according to God’s economy, and recapitulated everything in himself.11
For Irenaeus the economy is the “outline or table of contents of scripture.”12 Later generations tended to prefer the expression “salvation history” to the patristic word “economy.” An ancient rhetorical recapitulation is a work’s final summing up, repetition, drawing to a conclusion. In oratory it refers especially to the summary at the end of a speech that drives home the point of its strongest arguments. For Irenaeus, Jesus is the Father’s summary statement, his Logos or Word, the purpose for the biblical economy as incarnating the purpose of God’s economy.13
11 O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 37.
12 O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 38.
13 O’Keefe and Reno, Sanctified Vision, 39.
William S. Kurz, “Patristic Interpretation of Scripture within God’s Story of Creation and Redemption,” Letter & Spirit: The Bible and the Church Fathers: The Liturgical Context of Patristic Exegesis 7 (2011): 42–43.
In some Catholic methodologies, the final interpretation of a passage is measured against its consistency with love (or Jesus Christ) as the key to all Scripture. I have found a bit of Augustinian emphasis on love as the key in one Baptist author but that is it. Know any non-Catholic scripture interpretation methods that use the concept of one verse being a key that unlocks all scripture or of a single hermeneutical key being the measure of correct interpretation?
