New Book Now Available - Preface
Chewing the Cud: A Devotional Rumination on God, Man, and World
I’m happy to announce that my new book, Chewing the Cud: A Devotional Rumination on God, Man, and World, is now available on Amazon. Over the next few weeks, I plan to publish and send out a few sections/chapters to all my subscribers. If you’d like to support me, please share the link and this post with whomever you think might be interested! Thank you all for your support. Below, you will find the Preface:
Given the overabundance of traditions and perspectives loosely associated with a “Christian” approach to reality—both in terms of human understanding and way of life—I offer this preface to help ground and orient you, the reader, regarding what follows.
The subtitle of this book—A Devotional Rumination on God, Man, and World—signifies an exploration of the connection between these three foundational categories of the existential order. By devotional rumination, I mean a mode of reflection that integrates biblical, theological, and philosophical ways of thinking and situates them within the heart and mind of a person who yearns for communion with God.
The Holy Scriptures, central to the deposit of faith and Tradition in the heart of the Church, serve as an anchor for theological reasoning. Similarly, the dogmatic judgments rendered in the Spirit and received by the Church throughout Her history mark out the proper boundaries for the profitable practice of philosophy; only when rooted in such wisdom can the human mind be employed fruitfully as an instrument for deciphering reality. As such, in the rest of this introduction, I lay out the perspectives on Scripture, theology, and philosophy that have shaped the ethos of Chewing the Cud.
Holy Scripture
The Bible is the linguistic crown jewel of Holy Tradition, reflecting the glory of truth perfectly revealed. Breathed by the Spirit and given to man through those whom God called to compose it in synergy with Him, the Bible is a work of divine-human communion. It is not, therefore, a monergistic act of God by unilateral dictation through human instruments, but the result of cooperation between God and man in living union. Scripture reveals the Word—the Divine Logos, who is Truth—to man, and through the Word, reveals the Father, in and by the Spirit. The Bible is thus an icon of the Holy Trinity.
If man now has the Scriptures, and they constitute a perfect revelation of Christ, what further need is there for broader Tradition? Some might contend that Tradition has fulfilled its role in history by delivering the canon of Scripture, and is now obsolete. On the contrary, it is precisely by the Bible’s abiding presence within the living and Spirit-cast crown of Holy Tradition that its glory can be expressed—unblemished and in its fullness—through the flesh and blood members of the Church. Practically speaking, Tradition provides a living, participatory context in which to interpret and live out Scripture. For example, one could study an eyeball in isolation from the body for which it was made and, in this way, map out some facts about it as a physical object. But with such an approach, how could one possibly perceive the full significance of the eye to the creature endowed with vision?
Even if one could determine that an eye in isolation was an organ of perception, how could one then discern how it relates to the creature’s other senses, or to its more broadly integrated sensory apparatus? And beyond that, what is the higher purpose of perception per se for the creature? At best, such a disintegrative approach yields an incomplete—and surely distorted—understanding. Indeed, upon deeper reflection, one comes to see the Bible as a text like none other: an organ of spiritual meaning planted within a greater living whole—not merely a peculiar ancient work of literature, nor simply a library of diverse writings stitched together for religious purposes. But alas, many analyze the Scriptures in these terms—from the outside as an object of academic interest—and often emerge perplexed and untransformed.
In truth, the doorway to understanding the Bible is spiritual life in the Church. With deeper reflection and a reorientation of approach, one comes to experience the Scriptures as a multidimensional, living verbal icon—through which communion with and participation in God become possible. Through the awakened spirit and illumined consciousness of its readers, the Bible’s meaning is revealed in the very fabric of the world. For man lives in a biblical reality—as the bridge between creation and God, its source of life—with the responsibility to actualize His good purposes for it.
Fourfold Semantic World
To explore this vision of the world as a living web of symbols, let us turn to a concept explicated by a beloved father of the Church, St. John Cassian—whose very life was a brilliant manifestation of Holy Tradition: the fourfold sense of Scripture. The recognition of multiple levels of biblical meaning and interpretation stretches back as far as the Bible itself—and likely even to the Torah. St. John Cassian, a monastic who lived at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries, offers an incisive treatment of these levels.
In the eighth chapter of his Fourteenth Conference1, he distinguishes between two kinds of theoretical knowledge: historical—later identified as the first of the four senses—and spiritual. He discerns three dimensions of spiritual knowledge—allegorical, tropological, and anagogical—demonstrating the efficacy of this scheme by employing it to interpret various passages of Scripture. Indeed, this framework yields a symbolic map for reading, understanding, and applying biblical wisdom. The details of this approach have been variously interpreted and developed, sometimes with one or more senses emphasized to the detriment of the others. In a spirit of reactionary literalism, some have dismissed it altogether as a vain philosophical invention of man, devoid of spiritual fruit. I contend that this fourfold framework is not merely useful, but reveals a deeply integrated semantic unity within the hierarchical and fractal structure of the four senses. Taken together, the historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical dimensions of Scripture constitute a dynamic unfolding of meaning—one whose shape reveals not only that the Bible is a coherent and meaningful whole, but also that its very structure reflects that of the world itself. With this realization, one’s living situatedness within the scriptural world takes on cosmic significance. Let us now consider the four senses in greater detail, first implying their interconnection, and then making it manifest.
The historical sense is the material substrate of meaning. Just as physical words comprising sentences serve as vehicles for communication, so too does the historical sense provide a foundation for meaning beyond itself. The historical sense, as it is colloquially understood, conveys “literal” events, such as: My father drove to the gas station. At this level, a lamb is an animal, a temple is a physical building, and a serpent is—well, a snake. Although the historical sense carries distinct meaning, it soon becomes evident that it always bears significance beyond itself. This is so because the conveyance of any purported literal state of affairs—whether actual or fictional—is always framed as it is for a purpose; and the one who communicates it necessarily does so with intentionality, embedded within an implicit interconnected universe of significance. For, presumably, my father drove to the gas station for a particular purpose—perhaps to fuel his car in preparation for a visit the next morning to strengthen our bond as father and son, or perhaps to buy a coffee to muster the energy to finish a project at work. And each of these has its own nexus of teleological implications. In any case, the act implies a vast web of meaning that transcends the literal motion of his body through space. If this were not so, then it would not properly be human action. While the latent purposes previously mentioned may each operate on the historical level, this need not always be the case. For example, my father’s trip to the gas station might serve as part of a story intended to teach me a moral lesson; whether or not the event is historically true, its meaning would still unfold at a higher level of significance.
The second level of meaning is the allegorical, also commonly referred to as the typological. This sense involves figurative and structural correspondences between various elements in Scripture, along with their symbolic resonances—whether among narrative arcs, institutions, nations, cities, events, rituals, persons, animals, or even inanimate objects. A well-known example of this kind of meaning—one I will now briefly summarize—is the typological resonance between the life of Joseph, the son of Jacob, and Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As his father’s favorite son, Joseph was hated by his brothers, who sold him into slavery in Egypt. There, his master Potiphar’s wife attempted to seduce him. But when he rejected her adulterous advances, she falsely accused him of attempting to violate her; as a result, he was cast into prison, condemned as a righteous man. He was subsequently vindicated as a wise and faithful servant of God, and exalted to the right hand of Pharaoh to reign over Egypt—distributing bread throughout the kingdom and to the surrounding nations during a time of great famine, including to his very kin who had once betrayed him. Jesus Christ, in comparison, was hated by the envious leaders of His own people, and betrayed with a kiss by His disciple into the hands of the Jewish elders of Jerusalem—spiritual Egypt. Seeking His destruction, they handed Him over to the Roman authorities, accusing Him unjustly of blasphemy and sedition against Caesar. Like Joseph—whose rejection of Potiphar’s wife led to her false accusation of attempted sexual violation, likely construed as a usurpation of his master’s authority, given his anomalous rise to power as a Hebrew slave in Egypt—Jesus too was unjustly condemned and crucified, descending into the prison of Hades. He was vindicated through His resurrection and, after forty days, ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven. From there, He sent down the Spirit to breathe life into His Body, the Church—and through the Church, to bless all the nations.
The events in Joseph’s life do not merely foreshadow those of Christ—they derive their meaning from Him. It is the incarnate life of Jesus Christ that constitutes the archetype—not only unveiling the divine pattern latent in the Old Testament types, but also bringing the eschaton into the very domain of time. In Him, the End enters history, and all things are recapitulated. As will soon be explored through the allegorical and anagogical senses, the life of Christ is both the fulfillment and the interpretive key of all Scripture, in whom all things—past, present, and future—are gathered. The types, once perceived in shadows, now stand as realities illumined in the light of the eternal Logos.
So goes allegory. So goes typology.
Though it would take far more space to unearth the many interwoven patterns of Christological typology in Scripture, I hope the preceding examples suffice to convey the contours of this interpretive tradition.
But such typological fulfillments do not appear as isolated pairs; they emerge simultaneously at multiple levels of meaning. In the case of Joseph and Christ, for example, there is also a further layer involving the nation of Israel: its descent into captivity under Roman rule, its death with the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, and its resurrection and fulfillment as the Church—spiritual Israel.
Even within the allegorical sense, there is a kind of upward progression, in which interrelated typological patterns unfold from earth toward heaven. Each phase of development is similar but not identical, together forming an arc that finds its rest in the final sense: the anagogical. Before turning to that highest sense, however, the third must first be set forth: the tropological, or moral sense—the dimension in which this spiritual ascent unfolds.
The tropological sense—also called the moral—concerns the embodiment of Scripture in the lives of the faithful, by which the incarnate Word is extended into the world. When human beings act with love and righteousness toward one another and tend creation in accordance with God’s purposes, the world becomes what it was meant to be: His temple. When humanity spurns these purposes, disintegration sets in, and chaos comes to full destructive flower. The Bible does not present morality as a system of arbitrary rules enforced by juridical threats, but reveals the concrete effects of sin—how it disorders both people and the world—and the healing power of righteousness, or love enacted in truth, toward the cosmic restoration of life and harmony. In giving the Law, God unveils the structure of reality—not to lay a heavy burden upon man, but to reveal the way to abundant life, fulfilled in him by the Spirit.
As the historical sense ascends into the allegorical, so the tropological is drawn upward toward the anagogical. This movement is the living dynamism of typological unfoldment, fueling the development of the allegorical patterns toward their concrete anagogical fulfillment. By ingesting Scripture and drawing out the allegorical from the historical, man, in further chewing the cud, extracts nourishment that animates wise and moral action. Through such faithfulness, the world is transfigured—drawn upward toward its eschatological consummation, in resonance with the anagogical, the final sense of Scripture. St. James, the brother of the Lord, exhorts: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (Jas. 1:22). Man and Scripture, both icons of the Word, converge spiritually to manifest Christ in the world. Rightly lived, the moral sense elevates the soul toward its telos in the anagogical—where all meaning finds ever-moving rest in Christ.
Finally, the anagogical sense is the fulfillment of all the others—lifting them to the eschatological summit of their meaning and rooting their ultimate significance in Christ: the union of God and man, who is all and in all, and whose perfecting Spirit indwells the human heart, transfiguring it into a wellspring of eternal life, from which love flows outward—gathering all things into the boundless communion of the Trinity.
The ascent of the first three senses into the anagogical is traced through St. John Cassian’s fourfold interpretation of Jerusalem: historically, it is the city of the Jews; allegorically, the Church of Christ; tropologically, the soul of man; and anagogically, the heavenly city of God. Building upon this foundation, a progressive unfoldment of the divine mystery is discerned.
The historical Jerusalem—where Solomon built the temple—embodies the sacred heart of Israel, whose divine purpose from the beginning was to bring forth the Incarnation: the union of God and man. Christ, who gave Himself for the life of the world, established the Church—a Body both human and divine, whose being spans from earth to heaven, from the manifest to the mystical.
Within this Body, the soul of man is drawn into communion with God by the indwelling Spirit. And it is out of the deified, living stones of humanity that, in the age to come, the Church is fashioned into the eternal, paradisiacal Garden-City—the glorified Body of Christ, the Bride prepared for her Bridegroom, in whom all things are gathered, and from whom the uncreated light radiates from within all.
Having briefly surveyed the four senses and glimpsed their integral unity, it is now fitting to examine more closely the structure of their interrelation. Though it constitutes the outermost semantic layer, the historical sense cannot be interpreted in naturalistic isolation, for creation itself is inherently symbolic—formed by God for a purpose, with a teleology woven into its very warp and woof. Indeed, the being of things is anchored in their transcendent purposes, toward which they are drawn—such that without this movement, their very being would dissolve. For this reason, the historical sense cannot be severed from the deeper order in which it is embedded.
Man is formed from the historical dust of the earth, yet he is called to ascend—moving tropologically through the typological firmament, into the heavens of anagogical eternity in Christ.
The seed of the literal sense sprouts into the allegorical, branching into the patterns and types woven into creation—transfiguring the historical sense and revealing the inner architecture of its symbolic pathways. The allegorical sense, in turn, blossoms into the garden of human life—unfolding in the tropological or moral sense through the meaningful and consequential enactment of man’s will: creative or destructive, wise or foolish. And the tropological sense comes to fruition in the anagogical—where all temporal meaning is fulfilled in eternity and every purpose converges in the unveiled Logos of God.
Indeed, the senses of Scripture interpenetrate one another, for the path of human life is situated within the historical world of sweat and blood, dust and ash—a world imbued with symbolic patterns and structure, transmuted by man either along the arc of its teleological fulfillment or deviating therefrom. Each person, therefore, moves either with or against the current of right tropology.
In this fallen world, vortices of distortion arise within these waters, inverting moral perception—so that fidelity is misjudged and punished as defiance, and deviation exalted as righteousness. If man labors to remain within the flow of divine love, in Christ he will ascend yet further up and further in, ultimately to the anagogical consummation of the cosmos as the divine Temple-Garden-City, having been made in the historical, enlightened in the allegorical, transfigured in the moral, and perfected in the anagogical.
The fourfold framework discloses not only the symbolic architecture of Scripture, but unveils the world itself as the patterned ground from which that structure arises—completing in the Logos the circuit of meaning between Scripture and cosmos. The Bible is not merely a book, but a kind of incarnation of the Word—a verbal icon through which Christ is revealed. Since man dwells at the spiritual heart of creation and is its crown, the fourfold framework also finds embodiment in him. The fourfold method of interpretation finds its highest expression in Christ Himself—not as One whose meaning, like a creature’s, is derivative, but as the very Meaning in whom both Scripture and cosmos hold together, and the interpretive key through which all their levels are rightly discerned.
Being the image of Christ, man too transcends the world while also being composed of the dust of its ground, the union of heaven and earth; he exists and has meaning across all four levels of interpretation, and they all, together in perfect harmony, point to Christ—the One through Whom the literal world was created. All typology points to Him. He is the goal toward which all wise and moral action strives, and the standard by which it is judged. He is the transcendent source and fulfillment of all things.
By seeking to understand one’s life in light of the Spirit of Christ shining through the Scriptures, one discerns within that life the same layered pattern of historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical meaning. Moreover, by exegeting one’s life as refracted through these levels, its significance may be mapped onto the symbolic architecture of creation itself—precisely because that structure is fractally contained within man, whose eschatological end and anagogical meaning are realized through his life in Christ. To know oneself—and who one is meant to become—is to know Christ.
The historical level of human activity, then, is the symbolic soil from which higher meanings grow, dependent upon it for their expression and apprehension. When persons act, it is evident that their actions bear meaning beyond themselves. Even the simple act of reaching for a glass of water is more than the historical movement of matter—it is motion infused with purpose: the thirst of the body, the impulse toward preservation, and the unquenchable longing for life.
Since such meanings are all interconnected, even the most elemental gesture discloses the soul’s inherent orientation—toward communion with others, and ultimately with God Himself, who is the source and summit of life. Reaching for a drink bears all this implicitly, as an act embedded within a world woven with symbolic meaning, wherein movement itself is sacramental. Within this typological web, the tropological or moral sense emerges as its living dynamism, in which historical action, shaped by the symbolic order, becomes either a movement toward communion with God—through Christ, in the Spirit—or a falling away. Through the tropological dimension, the soul ascends toward the highest sense: the anagogical, which anchors and unveils the eschatological purpose inherent in all the levels of meaning beneath it. And this purpose is Christ, the anagogical fulfillment of the world—its final meaning, its consummation, and its end.
Theology
The experience of God as Person is essential to the development of theological understanding. Were it not for the concrete and interpersonal act of divine revelation, no one would have knowledge of God—or of anything concerning Him apart from His power and divinity as the Creator. Even this He made known as a gift of love. Theology is the rational inquiry into God and His works—of, in, and through creation—grounded in the living reality of communion with Him. Though ordered by reason, theology draws its life from divine self-disclosure. Since theological truth is communicated through language, it necessarily takes on a skeleton of rational form—though this may take diverse shapes, from the lyricism of hymns, poems, and prayers to the rigor of a dissertation, each capable of bearing and conveying profound truth.
The foundational mysteries of the faith—God as the eternal communion of three Divine Persons, the incarnation of the Word, and history as the process of cosmic salvation—are not discovered through human reason alone, but given by divine revelation. Yet through the guidance of the Spirit, the Church’s understanding and articulation of this truth often unfolds within the rational and philosophical discourse of man—transforming its linguistic medium into a vessel fit to bear what transcends it. Reason is not the ground of divine truth, but an instrument for apprehending the intelligible order of reality conveyed through language. Though other modes of knowing, such as contemplation or theoria, offer their own profound contributions, they do not diminish but synergize with the vital role of reason in theological understanding.
To speak analogically, and in connection to the Bible: theology is a tree, growing from the sacred seed of Scripture, nourished by the living waters of Tradition. This water is rich with spiritual nutrients, nourishing the Church’s deepening apprehension of theological truth and doctrine. Among these are the Divine Liturgy, hymns, prayers, the writings and homilies of saints and fathers, the deliberations of the Church’s councils, sacred iconography and architecture, and the wider ecclesial experience of life in the Spirit. Still, the Scriptures occupy a place of central importance, for within them is encoded a comprehensive and faithful theological vision of God and His works. Yet, like a holographic plate awaiting illumination, this vision is only fully revealed by the light of the Spirit shining through the Body of Christ, His Church. Neither the crown jewel, Scripture, nor the crown, Tradition, can be rightly understood apart from life in Christ, who wears them, and in His Spirit, who radiates His glory through them.
Philosophy
Philosophy is not a self-sufficient source of knowledge; properly employed, it is a means by which man refines his understanding of God’s revelation. When serving as the handmaiden of theology, it becomes an instrument through which man more clearly apprehends theological truth. Philosophy for the sake of philosophy is a cold, dead, ouroboric tower of Babel—coiling inward and consuming its own meaning. But in union with theology, it is vivified—drawn upward and opened to the light of divine wisdom.
Metaphysics—and more precisely, ontology—is the foundation upon which all other branches of philosophy depend and by which they are defined, in a manner asymmetrical to their mutual interdependence. This priority is not asserted at the level of method, but at that of metaphilosophy—since, on the one hand, any attempt to establish a theological ontology presupposes an epistemology rooted in divine revelation; but on the other, such an epistemology itself rests upon the actuality of the Triune God as its transcendent metaphysical ground. The Trinity, as the eternal communion of Divine Persons, must be fixed as the ontological anchor before one can proceed with secure footing in any other philosophical direction. Philosophy should doubtless be regarded as an organically whole tree, its branches inseparable in reality. But insofar as its parts may be viewed as distinct, ontology comprises the roots. Though the whole tree is the reality in question, and the roots by themselves do not constitute a tree—or make sense in isolation—they are revealed in their function as a structurally indispensable source of life and growth for every branch and leaf within its organic unity. For when a seed is planted in the earth, is it not the roots that first grow downward before the trunk and branches rise toward the sky, yielding fruit in due season?
This metaphilosophical framework yields a practical insight: that beginning with any branch of philosophy as an absolute starting point quickly entangles one in the vanity of unaided human speculation—the Sisyphean task of constructing a system from the ground up. Instead, one should, by faith, receive God’s self-revelation—according to the Scriptures and Tradition—as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternal communion. Only then can one advance toward a vision of communal ontology, discerning its cascading implications for every other branch of philosophy.
An Authorial Postscript On Approaching This Book
Though necessarily limited in scope, this preface has offered a brief word on three vast domains—Scripture, theology, and philosophy—not to explicate them comprehensively, but to trace the contours of the ethos within which the chapters to follow unfold.
The structure of this book reflects the very pattern it seeks to disclose—not a line, but a spiral: a form of recursive return, repetition, and deepening. Each chapter stands on its own, yet together they trace a single arc of rumination—gyrating theologically through Scripture, symbol, history, and the interior life of man in God, all the while gathering creation into the soul, and the soul into the heart of divine meaning.
Whether you read from beginning to end, from end to beginning, or follow some other path—guided by interest or intuition—my hope is that you will journey through curiosity, into a sharpening sense of mystery, and arrive, finally, at the culminating awe of God’s ineffable glory.
Translated by C.S. Gibson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 11. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co.,1894. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.<http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/350814.htm>.