Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol 6) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read the 'Fragments'.
My summary
This week we read some brief writings from Methodius.
We hear about:
(i) the allegorical interpretation of Jonah;
(ii) the meaning of the teaching of casting pearls before swine;
(iii) the creation of the world;
(iv) the power of humans;
(v) evil;
(vi) martyrdom.
What grabbed me
I think this will be the last book we do from the church fathers in the book club - the allegorical interpretations drive me barmy: 'The history of Jonah contains a great mystery. For it seems that the whale signifies Time, which never stands still, but is always going on, and consumes the things which are made by long and shorter intervals. But Jonah, who fled from the presence of God, is himself the first man who, having transgressed the law, fled from being seen naked of immortality, having lost through sin his confidence in the Deity. And the ship in which he embarked, and which was tempest-tossed, is this brief and hard life in the present time; just as though we had turned and removed from that blessed and secure life, to that which was most tempestuous and unstable, as from solid land to a ship. For what a ship is to the land, that our present life is to that which is immortal. And the storm and the tempests which beat against us are the temptations of this life, which in the world, as in a tempestuous sea, do not permit us to have a fair voyage free from pain, in a calm sea, and one which is free from evils. And the casting of Jonah from the ship into the sea, signifies the fall of the first man from life to death, who received that sentence because, through having sinned, he fell from righteousness: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And his being swallowed by the whale signifies our inevitable removal by time. For the belly in which Jonah, when he was swallowed, was concealed, is the all-receiving earth, which receives all things which are consumed by time.'
In reply to all of that, I ask, 'Says who?'
Next week's reading
Read the 'Oration concerning Simeon and Anna'.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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