ABSTRACT
Patristic texts are simply exploited to create and endorse a kind of classical doctrinal stance, and this particular theological exposition of scripture is simply appropriated. What reads like an account of patristic thought turns out, then, to be a thesis about the nature of Christian theology. But its importance lies in the fact that it challenges us with the questions of hermeneutics. Western scholars have devoted much effort to the hermeneutics of scripture, and for the churches of the Reformation it may seem as if the canon alone has the kind of authority that requires attention to these questions. The chapter focuses the wider question of the isolation of most patristic study from those current intellectual movements which have challenged the presuppositions of the historico-critical method. Once upon a time there was a young patristic scholar. Meanwhile the mid-Twentieth century world became the late-Twentieth century world, and the young patristic scholar was growing old.
