What a book! It doesn't take long reading patristics to discover that they interpret the Bible entirely differently than we do today. In fact, most people find their interpretations to be wild and uncontrolled. They seem like unrestrained and fanciful proof-texting with little concern for context or historical situation. This work shows that is not the case. The reading of the early church Fathers was incredibly disciplined, but their controls were different than the modern criteria of historical-critical interpretation. "In the ancient rhetorical tradition, the gist of a literary work was called its hypothesis ... For Irenaeus, the key failure of heretical interpretation is that it does not identify the hypothesis of the Bible. It picks up details, exploits local correspondences, manipulates symbols, but in the end such a reading does not show how the beginning, middle, and end hang together ... the greater task is to see the place of all the pieces in a larger picture, to see the hypothesis by which the individual verses or portions of the Bible fit together with all the rest. In short, to read rightly, one needs to know the overall plan. Faced with inconclusive or fragmentary evidence, one needs to know the hypothesis that will give the proper ordering and guide understanding" (34-36). So, even though the Fathers engaged in typological and analogical interpretation, it was not without controls. But how did one learn the proper "gist" or "hypothesis" of the Bible? "No well-developed train of thought can emerge, ex nihilo, out of the minds of individuals, no matter how brilliant they may be" (125). One must listen to the tradition of the Church. "Irenaeus is appealing to a tradition of interpretation, tradition that has a settled body of doctrine just as modern science has a settled body of theory. He takes the tradition to make a rightful claim upon the interpretive imagination of scriptural readers because it is venerable and because it has a proven track record among the leaders of the church.  A reader who does not adopt the rule of truth, Irenaeus argues, 'would always be inquiring but never finding, because he has rejected the very method of discovery.' Adopting the rule of faith sets the reader down the right path; it offers an appropriate method by which to control interpretation" (125).  Hermeneutics, however, is not merely an intellectual endeavor; it is a spiritual one. "Augustine says that proper interpretation must be guided not only by true faith but also by 'good morals.' Indeed, to even divide faith and morals would have been unthinkable for the church fathers. Irenaeus criticizes his Gnostic adversaries for failing to adopt his hypothesis for the interpretation of scripture, and he frequently denounces them as engaged in all sorts of immoral behavior. The rule of faith was a rule for life as well as a rule for reading scripture and teaching its meaning. It was a spiritual rule that guided the whole person toward fellowship with God. Not surprisingly, then, the church fathers argued that a reader must have spiritual discipline to control exegesis" (128). What an amazing book and an amazing way to end the year.