Trinity, Economy, and Scripture

Didymus the Blind ran an episcopally sanctioned school in fourth-century Alexandria, wrote treatises and commentaries, defended the Nicene faith and drew Jerome and Rufinus to his lectures. Modern scholars have mostly studied him as an exegete, cataloguing his vocabulary and method. Jonathan Douglas Hicks argues that his reading of Scripture makes full sense only in light of his theology. His sharp disagreement with Theodore of Mopsuestia over Zechariah is more than a quarrel about method: Didymus reads the prophet through the comings of the Son and the Spirit to Israel, within one divine economy culminating in the Incarnation.

Hicks also argues that Didymus still has much to teach the Church, both in habits of reading and in a Trinitarian account of what Scripture is for. A careful, rewarding study for students of patristic exegesis and theological interpretation.