The question about what texts mean for us in the present as distinct from the question what they originally meant has again come into the focus of attention. This broadening of the focus is very important for understanding religious texts as texts about God's transforming relationship to people. This article considers the Biblical interpretation of the Church Fathers, and particularly their use of allegory, as this may inspire us to develop ways of interacting with the Biblical texts as

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... s texts meant to speak to our times. WHY ALLEGORISING WAS A GENERALLY APPRECIATED METHOD, HOW IT BECAME DISCREDITED, AND HOW IT HAS REEMERGED IN RECENT DECADES Allegorical interpretation has been a very important and respected way of inter preting the Bible from New Testament times until well into the nineteenth cen tury. Although concerns were raised about the method in the history of theo logy by the School of Antioch, Thomas of Aquino, and Luther (see Steiger 1999), Decock Allegorising: The relevance of an old method of interpretation 2 these intended to restrain its use rather than reject it outright. It was not until the time of Jülicher that allegorical interpretation was simply rejected. The fun damental reason for the appreciation of this method was its usefulness to draw out the full meaning of the texts, which can only be discovered in the light of Christ. Unlike in our historical critical view, history was seen as the divine human interaction whereby God through the Word was present as Creator and Saviour, from the beginning until now. It is to this history of the Logos with hu manity that the words of Scripture witness. According to Origen, for in stance, the very words of Scripture witness to this divine -human history: They do not arise out of an exclusively historical process, but rather have their origin in historicalspiritual process, in the historical moment of in spiration. The words are chosen both by the human writer and the Holy Spirit for one and the same purpose, to teach succeeding generations the mysteries of the Logos. The words themselves from the point of their origin already point to the Logos. It is the very literalness of Scripture which demands spiritual interpretation (Torjesen 1986:139).