Christ meets me everywhere : Augustine's early figurative exegesis / Michael Cameron.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Print version record.

Most readers first encounter Augustine's love for Scripture's words in the many biblical allusions of his masterwork, the Confessions. Augustine does not merely quote texts, but in many ways makes Scripture itself tell the story. In his journey from darkness to light, Augustine becomes Adam in the Garden of Eden, the Prodigal Son of Jesus' parable, the Pauline double personality at once devoted to and rebellious against God's law. Throughout he speaks the words of the Psalms as if he had written them. Crucial to Augustine's self-portrayal is his skill at transposing himself into the texts. He sees their properties and dynamics as his own, and by extension, every believing reader's own. In Christ Meets Me Everywhere, Michael Cameron argues that Augustine wanted to train readers of Scripture to transpose themselves into the texts in the same way he did, by the same process of figuration that he found at its core. Tracking Augustine's developing practice of self-transposition into the figures of the biblical texts over the course of his entire career, Cameron shows that this practice is the key to Augustine's hermeneutics.

Introduction: Ask, seek, knock: approaching Augustine's figurative reading -- Novice: rhetor, convert, seeker of wisdom (386-391). Eureka! In Milan: when Ambrose taught Augustine what he already knew ; A thousand words is worth a picture: the experiment of On Genesis, against the Manichees ; Enigma variations: playing hide-and-seek in the figurative reading framework ; Book binder: Christ the glue of scriptural unity -- Journeyman: Priest, apprentice, student of Paul (391-396). Reading Moses in the school of St. Paul: the apostle and Christology 101 ; Hearing voices: Christ at prayer "in the psalm and on the cross" -- Master: teacher, defender, pastor of souls (396-ca. 400). High and low on Jacob's ladder: reading scripture from both ends in On Christian teaching and On instructing beginners ; The Old Testament as the first book of the new: Augustine figures it out against Faustus the Manichee -- Epilogue: The astounding exchange.

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