John W. Martens and Paul V. Niskanen (eds.), The Transcendent Mystery of God’s Word: A Critical Synthesis of Antioch and Alexandria (Saint Paul Seminary Press, 2024).

There has been, in the history of Christian exegesis, at one level, a consistent yet unhelpful tension, simplification and polarization between the literal, grammatical, historic and linguistic approach to exegesis that Antioch (both as a place and metaphor for a type of exegesis) embodies and the more allegorical, tropological, anagogical and mystical exegetical approach of Alexandria (both as a site and icon) of an alternate approach to exegesis. Needless to say, such an either-or attitude should not dominate—in short, there is plenty of Alexandria in Antioch and Antioch in Alexandria.

I should note, before I comment on this fine book, that it was dedicated to Ben D. Meyer (1926-1995). When I was doing my PHD at McMaster University in the mid-1980s, I was Ben’s TA for a semester. I shall never forget the way he assigned, for a lower level class, Bernard Lonergan’s (1904-1984) Insight: A Study in Human Understanding—we who were his TAs had to interpret Lonergan to students who had not the slightest idea of what Lonergan was saying, doing and why, his opposition to “field specialization-subject specialization”, most young students not mature enough to comprehend. But, Ben’s thinking had been deeply impacted by Lonergan and Lonergan-Meyer were grappling, in a significant and nuanced way, with the challenges of the Enlightenment’s historic, empirical and rationalist approach (that was used by many in their approach to the Bible) and a more classical layered method (that was true to modern methods but also acutely alert to how such approaches both revealed and concealed the motherlode and mystery of the text).

The Transcendent Mystery of God’s Word brings together essays from a conference in June 2022, highlighting eight packed and challenging chapters that engage, in an updated way, layered ways of defining both Antioch and Alexandria and a lively and healthy dialogue between them. Specific texts are chosen from limited passages in the Bible that reflect both Antioch and Alexandria and massage the nature of both “letter” and “Spirit”. The varied approaches of Patristic exegesis and how Psalms can be interpreted and applied are wisely covered just as New Testament texts that reflect on the baptism of Jesus and “the Johannine Farewell Discourse”. Each of these chapters, when read slowly and thoughtfully, reread and sat with for days, walks the attentive reader into a way of reading the Bible in a way that asks of the reader a thoughtful and receptive mind and imagination. A rather dated and, perhaps, irrelevant notion of Antioch versus Alexandria or Alexandria versus Antioch vanishes in such a judicious approach and multiple probes. I have no doubt that Ben Meyer would be amply pleased with those who have been given the torch he once carried and carried it yet further.

The front cover of the book has splendid painting of St. Jerome as a portal of sorts into the sanctuary of insights. It might have been valuable, given the Antioch-Alexandria dialogue to have Origen gracing the cover also. 

Ben Meyer was at McMaster at the same time as the much respected Canadian political philosopher George Grant. Both Grant and Meyer would have agreed with Lonergan’s questioning of “field specialization-subject specialization”–all three would have been committed to multiple methods to approach the more comprehensive whole and mystery of the journey. The underlying vision of The Transcendent Mystery of God’s Word very much reflects such a notion of the deeper concerns and reasons for uniting, in an updated way, Antioch and Alexandria.     

The Bibliography in The Transcendent Mystery of God’s Word is an inviting library in itself and many of the books listed point in directions for those interested that bring to the fore the fuller landscape of the Antioch-Alexandria merging. If understood aright, these approaches can be friends on the journey rather than opponents. John Martens and Paul Niskanen should be offered many a kudo for this 10 bell book that one and all should read and inwardly digest for a mature understanding of Antioch-Alexandria and the transcendent mystery of God’s Word.

Amor Vincit Omnia

Ron Dart