Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
Sacred Scripture has for its object everything knowable and embraces all disciplines — physics, ethics, metaphysics, history, geometry — either formally or eminently, serving as queen and mistress of all sciences. Origen describes it as an intelligible world constituted by four elements.
Preface and Praise of Sacred Scripture
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Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
— Origen describes Scripture as an intelligible world constituted by four elements: history (earth), moral understanding (water), natural science (air), and theology (fire/ether).
"Divine Scripture is an intelligible world, constituted by its four parts, as by four elements; whose earth is, as it were, in the middle like a center, namely history; around which, in the likeness of waters, the abyss of moral understanding is poured"
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Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
— Physics is handed down in Genesis, Ecclesiastes, Job; Ethics in Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus; Metaphysics in Job and Psalms; History from Genesis through Maccabees.
"Physics, even in its primeval form and from its very origin, is handed down in Genesis, in Ecclesiastes, in Job; Ethics, through the briefest maxims and sentences in Proverbs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus"
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Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
— All liberal disciplines and sciences serve as handmaids to Scripture as their queen; this sacred science encompasses all things.
"all the liberal disciplines, all languages, all sciences and arts — which are each contained within certain limits — serve as handmaids to Sacred Scripture, as to their mistress and queen"
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Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
— St. Basil compares Scripture to a fully stocked workshop supplying medicines for every disease; the Church drew constancy, wisdom, faith, humility, and renewal from it.
"St. Basil rightly compares it to a most fully stocked workshop, which supplies medicines of every kind for every disease"