People do not often associate “biblical theology” with the early church. It is true that this discipline emerged in the eighteenth century with the publication of Johann Philipp Gabler’s famous 1787 lecture “On the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology.” In the ensuing years, others picked up the task of biblical theology and shaped the disciples in a variety of ways. But along the way, the early church has been a dialogue partner for many biblical theologians. Consider, for example, German theologian John Lawson’s book, The Biblical Theology of Saint Irenaeus, or more recently, Brevard Child’s work on the history of interpretation of Isaiah, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture.

Irenaeus of Lyons is often beloved by biblical theologians and rightly so. I can recall in seminary when I first picked up his short catechetical manual, The Demonstration of the Apologetic Preaching. This small, but dense text is a classic example of biblical theology showing how the early church pieced the Bible together in a coherent whole. While modern biblical theologians are trying to prove that the Scriptures are not just a disconnected assortment of stories, laws, prophecies, and letters, Irenaeus and the other fathers of the early church were already doing biblical theology with theological depth, spiritual seriousness, and ecclesial commitment.

In my recent book, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Early Church, I try to capture how the fathers explained the unity of Scripture.[1] I argue that the practice of biblical theology in early Christianity is not principally about the issues of canon or covenants, but about the reading of Scripture in the church, or what I term an “Ecclesial Biblical Theology.” Biblical theology is alive in the reading and proclamation of the Word of God for the people of God.

I explain that this vision of biblical theology flows from certain assumptions about the nature of Scripture itself. Reading the Bible entailed coming to Scripture with certain interpretive postures that formed the incubator for good biblical interpretation. These postures include: (1) Scripture is God’s self-revelation; (2) interpretation must be worthy of God; (3) Scripture interprets Scripture; (4) interpretation requires divine assistance; and (5) Scripture is the highest authority. These postures were not abstract theories; they were lived convictions, guiding how the church prayed, preached, catechized, and defended the faith from the text.

In what follows, I explain these five postures, which continue to challenge and enrich our reading of the Bible today.

Scripture as God’s Self-Revelation

The first and most basic conviction of the fathers was that Scripture is God’s self-revelation. The Bible is not merely a record of human religious experience but the Spirit-inspired disclosure of God’s character and work of salvation. Justin Martyr expresses this conviction in his The First Apology, where he defended the Scriptures as true and trustworthy.[2] The sayings of the prophets, he argues, were “inspired” by the Divine Word. Clement of Rome encourages his readers to look carefully into the Scriptures, which are “the true utterances of the Holy Spirit.”[3] In Sermon 22 on Psalm 68, Augustine tells Christians that until they behold God face-to face, they should “treat the scripture of God as the face of God,” and “Melt in front of it.”

When I read these texts, I realize how different the fathers’ approach was from much of modern biblical scholarship. For them, Scripture was not primarily a puzzle to solve but a revelation to receive and imbibe. They approached Scripture with awe, convinced that God was speaking through every word. They saw the Scriptures as the inspired and inerrant gift of God, revealing to them God’s will. That posture continues to challenge us: When we open the Bible, do we come as critics or with a listening ear, ready to receive divine revelation?

All Interpretation Must Be Worthy of God

If Scripture reveals God, the fathers believe that any theology derived from the Bible must honor God’s nature as God has been revealed. The fathers often assumed this point when they confronted difficult passages, texts that seemed to depict God as cruel, changeable, or unjust, as say Marcion or the Gnostics argued. Their guiding principle was simple: All interpretation must be worthy of God. Clement of Alexandria, for example, argues that those who misread Scripture, such as the heretics, “do not quote or deliver the Scriptures in a manner worthy of God and of the Lord.”[4] Against the Gnostic interpretation of Scripture, Irenaeus insists that the God of creation and the God of redemption were one and the same: “For the Creator of the world is truly the Word of God: and this is our Lord, who in the last times was made man.”[5] Any reading that fractures the unity of God’s creative and salvific activity across the Testaments was unworthy of God. Augustine expresses something similar in his memorable statement in On Christian Doctrine: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”[6] For Augustine, the ultimate test of interpretation was love of God and neighbor. If a reading diminished love of God or neighbor, it could not be a good reading of the text.

Today, it is all too easy to weaponize the Bible, quoting texts in ways that distort God’s character or use Scripture to defend some ideological agenda that is contrary to the nature of God. The fathers remind us that exegesis is always accountable to the God revealed in Christ, the one true, righteous, and holy God.

Scripture Interprets Scripture

The fathers also read the Bible with the conviction that Scripture interprets Scripture. This principle was a guiding assumption among the Reformers and for much of the Reformed tradition, and the Fathers are no different. No verse or passage stood alone apart from its theological coherence with the rest of revealed Scripture. Returning to Irenaeus, he states this principle plainly, the proofs of the things which are “contained in the Scriptures cannot be shown except from the Scriptures themselves.”[7] Irenaeus’s famous image of the mosaic of the king illustrates this point. The heretics, he said, “disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth.”[8] So, they take apart the Scriptures, which depict the beautiful image of the king, and rearrange things so that the Scriptures portray the image of a fox or a dog. For Irenaeus, the key was to read Scripture within the church’s confession of Christ crucified and risen, letting the revelation of Christ help make sense of the rest of Scripture.

Irenaeus and Augustine recognize that not all Scripture passages are equally clear, so the wise interpreter will read the clearer passages with the unclear ones. In “On Christian Doctrine,” Augustine writes, “from the places where the sense in which they are used is more manifest we must gather the sense in which they are to be understood in obscure passages.”[9] Difficult texts were clarified by clearer ones, and the entire canon was understood within the framework of the church’s confession. This posture challenges us to resist fragmenting the Bible into isolated proof-texts. Scripture is a unified whole, a single story in which Christ is the key.

Interpretation Requires Divine Assistance

Another shared conviction of the fathers was that biblical interpretation requires divine assistance. Because Scripture is God’s Word, it cannot be fully understood apart from the Spirit’s illumination. Exegesis is not simply a matter of intellect but of holiness, prayer, and dependence on God.

Gregory of Nazianzus warned of this in his First Theological Oration: “Not to everyone, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God . . . and I will add, not before every audience, nor at all times, nor on all points; but on certain occasions, and before certain persons, and within certain limits.”[10] The contemplation of God, he continues, is “who have been previously purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified.” Returning to Justin Martyr, he recounts in his conversion experience that a certain Christian old man share with him the Scriptures and prayed, “that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom.”[11] Justin explains that after this conversation, “a flame was kindled in my soul; and a love of the prophets, and of those men who are friends of Christ, possessed me; and while revolving his words in my mind, I found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable.”

The fathers remind us that the Bible is not conquered by intellect but received in humility. Reading Scripture rightly requires prayer, repentance, and openness to the Spirit’s guidance.

Scripture as the Highest Authority

Finally, the fathers affirmed that Scripture was the highest authority in the church. Tradition, reason, and philosophy had their place, but all were subordinate to the Word of God. Tertullian set the tone for the supremacy of Scripture when he writes: “In the Lord’s apostles we possess our authority; for even they did not of themselves choose to introduce anything, but faithfully delivered to the nations the doctrine which they had received from Christ.” For him, Scripture was the decisive court of appeal against false teaching. Athanasius embodied this principle in his battle against Arianism. He appealed not to speculative philosophy but to the testimony of Scripture, knowing that the “sacred and inspired Scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth.” There were, of course, other trusted Christian authorities, but the authority of the Bible undergirded all others. Augustine expressed a similar conviction in his letter to Jerome: “have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error.” While Augustine valued tradition as a faithful witness, he saw Scripture as uniquely inspired and authoritative.

This posture remains deeply relevant in an age when so many other voices compete for authority—tradition, culture, politics, personal experience. The fathers remind us that Scripture must remain the norming norm, the standard by which everything else is measured.

Conclusion

These five interpretive postures remind me that the Bible is not an artifact to analyze but the living Word of God that is the guiding light for the people of God. It seems that much of modern biblical interpretation often fragments the text or detaches it from the life of the church. The fathers call us back to a theological, spiritual, and ecclesial reading of Scripture, one that forms not only the mind but my soul, and the community of believers gathered around its pages praising the God that the Scriptures reveal.

To recover these postures is, in the end, to recover the conviction that the Bible is God’s Word, given not merely to inform but to transform, not merely to describe but to reveal, not merely to study but to worship. And that is a vision I want to carry with me every time I open the Scriptures. The early church has helped me see that these postures were not theoretical. They were embodied in the church’s preaching, catechesis, liturgy, and doctrinal disputes. These postures do not solve all theological issues or complexities, but they provide the right kind of environment where the church can thrive. A vision of biblical theology centered in the church and leading the people of God to behold the glory of God.

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[1] Stephen O. Presley, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Early Church: Recovering an Ancient Vision (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2025).

[2] Justin Martyr, “The First Apology,” New Advent, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm.

[3] Clement of Rome, “Letter to the Corinthians,” New Advent, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm, chap. 45.

[4] Clement of Alexandria, “The Stromata,” New Advent, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02106.htm, chap. 15, sect. 4.

[5] Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” New Advent, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103518.htm, book 5, chap. 18, sect. 3.

[6] Augustine, “On Christian Doctrine,” New Advent, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/12021.htm, book 1, chap. 36, sect. 40.

[7] Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” book 3, chap. 12, sect. 9.

[8] Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” book 1, chap. 8, sect. 1.

[9] Augustine, “On Christian Doctrine,” book 3, chap. 26.

[10] Gregory of Nazianzus, “First Theological Oration,” New Advent, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310227.htm, oration 27, sect. 3.

[11] Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho,” New Advent, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01281.htm, chap. 7.