I often marvel at my own deafness to the Word of God. I don't always hear rightly what the divine Word is saying. How I meddle with the Word and manipulate it to say what I want to hear! Oh, not that I try to bend it, but my perverted human heart puts a bent on the Word that is misleading and misrepresents the divine speech. For example, I was quite deaf to a particular text: "Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come" (Rm 5:14). I wondered how those who died from Adam to Moses, could possibly have died without transgressing the law, which had not been given by God to Moses. How foolish I was!

Of course, the very point that Paul is making for his readers is that all were subject to death's reign because the law was still condemning both inherited guilt and actual sin in those who did not have a written code. The law's code had been encoded in their hearts and brought the sentence of death against their sin. Although, when I matured as a pastor and a student of the Word I started to clue into Paul's goal, I was helped and confirmed by Augustine's interpretation of this text.

It is helpful to see how the great interpreters of the divine Word have understood a particular text. This rescues us from our own time-bound interpretation of God's speech. Although Augustine was definitely a child of his time (who isn't?), he was not a child of our time. His perspective though bent by his time is not bent by ours. This can be helpful to us, because his interpretation, when it is shared by us or even when it criticizes our own, leads us out of ourselves to the limit of our experience and we discover the ragged edge of the divine reality. He sees what we cannot and even perhaps we will not see. And despite our own weakness it is an enriching experience.

Augustine of Hippo