Free Republic

St. Augustine said that "the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old is fulfilled in the New." Like other Church Fathers he distinguished between the outer "literal" and the inner "spiritual" meaning of Holy Scripture. And like the others, he often preferred spirit to letter. The categories into which various Fathers divided the spiritual sense need not concern us here, only their zealous attempts to read the figurative meanings of the Bible. They saw the New Testament foreshadowed in the Old through several devices. Types are persons, things, or events taken as historical (Adam is a Type...

Is Mary's Queenship Biblical?By Edward P. SriMary’s title as "Queen of Heaven and Earth" is a great scandal to many non-Catholic Christians. After all, the Bible doesn’t mention anything about there being a queen in God’s kingdom. All this royal attention Catholics give to Mary—whether it’s singing "Hail, holy queen enthroned above" or portraying Mary in statues and paintings with a crown on her head—seems to many non-Catholics to detract from the royalty of Christ, who alone is King of Kings. Besides, how could Mary be a queen, since she is not the wife of the Jesus but only his...