This book explores the church-centric interpretation of ancient biblical exegete Tyconius in his hermeneutical treatise Liber regularum, highlighting how his underlying ecclesiology shaped his hermeneutical enterprise

What comes to mind when you hear the term “primacy of Christ”? Perhaps that Jesus is number one, or that he is the Lord of the universe? Using the wealth of our tradition on Christ’s primacy, this book compels us to pause and search the profound depths of our basic Christian claim on the universal preeminence of Christ. Upholding the writings of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI as exemplary representation of how the early Christian awareness of Christ’s primacy helps us to interpret the present age, this book displays a symphonic harmony between our ancient Christian heritage and the ongoing conversations about the authentic interpretation of Scripture, the human person, the last things, and the church. Central to this symphonic harmony of our tradition is the use of analogy whereby the incarnation helps us to better understand the similarity between the created things and the mystery of God. To better understand how Ratzinger uses the writings of the fathers of the church to draw us more deeply into the depths of Christ is what the correctives offered to some scholars in this book intends to accomplish. What emerges is the ecumenical significance of Joseph Ratzinger’s contribution to the modern debate on analogy of being (analogia entis), identifying Christ’s primacy as the point of synthesis between analogia entis and analogia fidei.

In this volume, Karol Piotr Kulpa offers a coherent analysis of the reception of 2 Thess. 2:3-12 by Tyconius in his Liber Regularum and his reconstructed Expositio Apocalypseos . The author proposes and applies his own method for a reception history composed of historical, literary, and theological levels, which is constructive as well as analytical. In this way he writes a history of reception that not only finds its anchor in the past, but also builds bridges to theological questions of the present. In particular, the author identifies that motifs of homo peccati , mysterium facinoris , and discessio drawn from 2 Thess. 2:3 and 2:7 become Tyconius' "world-constructing verses" in his understanding of Scripture, and of the bipartition in the church's reality, in human nature, and in eschatological temporality. As a result, he offers a refreshingly 'ecumenical' reading of Tyconius, refusing to reduce his significance to that of a 'heretical voice' but re-envisaging him as a potentially authoritative theologian and exegete.