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The Letter and Spirit of Biblical Interpretation: From the Early Church to Modern Practice is unavailable, but you can change that!

For the better part of fifteen centuries, Christians read Scripture on two complementary levels—the literal and the spiritual—and their interpretation was regulated by the common doctrine passed down in the rule of faith. In the modern period, a gradual but significant shift occurred in Bible reading. The spiritual sense became marginalized in favor of the literal sense, which came to be equated...

even Scripture may serve as a source for heresy. Like 2 Peter, Tertullian exhibits not a little pessimism when it comes to the potential for false teachers to twist Scripture. Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. But even if a discussion from the Scriptures should not turn out in such a way as to place both sides on a par, (yet) the natural order of things
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