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 and 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 Scripture s core Augustine discovered this skill by learning to readScripture as a work of divine rhetoric that mirrors the humility of the human Christ who forms humble readers to ascend its spiritual heights Tracking Augustine s developing skill in reading Scripture s figures as microcosms of the history of salvation during the first fifteen years of his Christian life Cameron shows how Christ s self transposition into Scripture s readers became the key to Augustine s hermeneutics

Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) by Michael Cameron (2012-09-05) PDF

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