Prosopological exegesis: a few brief and random remarks

For me personally, employment of prosopolgical exegesis is following a time-honoured exegetical tradition from Tertullian (who uses it to great effect in crafting a grammar for Trinitarian discourse that is foundational to Nicene Trinitarianism) down to Reformed and evangelical authors like John Gill, Andrew Fuller, and C.H. Spurgeon.

It is a key way of being a catholic recipient of what is called the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy.

It undergirds my whole approach to the Song of Songs, for example, and it encapsulates reasons why I believe the 20th century exegesis of that text, in seeing it only as a human love story, is totally off base.

And, of course, as this tradition from the Fathers reveals, the use of prosopological exegesis does not obviate the use of types of interpretation, including typological exegesis.

Finally, it seems obvious to me that the idea a text can only have one meaning is not supported by New Testament exegesis of the Old (a big discussion in itself that I have been thinking about since classes with my New Testament mentor, Richard Longenecker, and reading his Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period).