Craig Allert, Patristic Exegesis and Literal Interpretation. IVP Academic, 2018.                                             

There has been, gratefully so, in the last few decades, a questioning of the reformed, evangelical and charismatic approach to how the Bible should be read, interpreted and applied. This larger question transcends the protestant tendencies and ethos, but it is a bugaboo of sorts for those whose approach to the Bible tends to be excessively focused on a more literal, grammatical, historic and linguistic approach to the text (with usually some moral and devotional application to rescue the book from an excessive scholarly attitude or simply museum culture). The turn to a more catholic exegetical (catholic in the Patristic sense) approach to Scripture has been growing in momentum and commitment the last few years, and such an approach is being applied to various and varied content issues within the Bible.

The sheer bounty of Allert’s recent book, Early Christian Readings of Genesis One, is the way he applies Patristic reads of early chapters of Genesis to the creation accounts. Needless to say, this is a heated topic (often more heat than light) for those who tend to read the creation accounts in both a literal and young earth way and manner. Such an approach needlessly collides with many reads of science and alternate ways of reading Genesis that are classical, hence cannot be easily dismissed as liberal. The careful and historic turn by Allert to the layered exegetical means by which the Fathers of the Church read the early chapters of Genesis illuminates for the curious and honest faith seeker that there is more to the Bible than has often revealed by a more reductionistic and one dimensional approach by many within the evangelical and evangelical-reformed tribes.