Many books present the Church Fathers’ methods of biblical interpretation as an academic artifact or a curiosity of intellectual history, superseded by our own critical insights. In Reading the Bible As God’s Own Story, biblical scholar Father William Kurz, S.J., presents them as a life skill for ordinary Christians.

The “genius of the early fathers,” he says, was their habit of giving “intense attention to details in the text” while always reading “each individual passage in the light of Scripture’s essential story line.” The Bible — especially as it was proclaimed through the liturgical lectionaries — told one grand story of creation, fall, and redemption, a story that was universal, yet intimately personal.

Kurz, a New Testament scholar at Marquette University, notes that the “common academic approaches” of his contemporary colleagues “limit interpretation to only those senses that were available to a reconstructed ‘original’ first-century audience.” The Fathers’ methods, however, allow for a “theological reading” of biblical texts — a reading that permits life application throughout the ages, as well as an intelligent and constructive response to the erroneous interpretations of heretics.

Kurz presents the Fathers’ methods through the works of two early Christian teachers, Irenaeus (second century) and Athanasius (fourth century), both of whom had to marshal a strong biblical theology to oppose emerging heresies (Gnosticism for Irenaeus and Arianism for Athanasius).

It’s a very useful book at an astonishingly low price.