What are the most fundamental rules for interpreting the Bible? Here are some ways it is often formulated:
- A passage cannot mean now what it didn’t mean then.
- We must put a text in its cultural-historical context.
- The goal is to discover what the biblical author intended to say.
Every Bible college student learns these principles as soon as they begin studying, and rightly so. Otherwise people would interpret in ever more wild and wacky ways, making the Bible say anything imaginable.
So how do we react when a great theologian like St. Augustine throws these rules out the window without even pretending to follow them? To pick a famous example: when he comments on the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30-35, Augustine asserts that the Samaritan represents Christ, the robbers are the devil & his angels, the inn is the Church, and the innkeeper is the Apostle Paul.[1]
Bible scholars frequently use Augustine’s ‘Good Samaritan’ interpretation as a perfect example of the wrong way to do exegesis. They will say: how do we know the parable does not mean this? Because nobody who first heard that parable could possibly have understood it that way.[2] Paul had not yet converted to Christianity when Jesus told the parable, and nobody listening to Jesus knew who Paul was, probably – to give only one reason we know this.
But the problem is stranger. Augustine isn’t alone in doing this sort of interpretation. Irenaeus, Origen, and Ambrose do the same thing.[3] In fact, all the early church Fathers seem to read, not only this parable, but the whole Bible, in this same bizarre manner.
But the problem is stranger still. When Augustine and Irenaeus write about how to interpret the Bible, they establish (what look like) our own principles of exegesis! We must pay careful attention to the biblical author’s intended meaning, they tell us, and they accuse others of distorting the Bible’s meaning by ignoring its context.[4]
How should we understand this? Did they just fail to live up to their own principles? Ought they to know better? But these are not small mistakes. Did the influence of Greek philosophy blind them to how they were contradicting their own rules?
In what follows I’m going to try to defend/describe the Early Church way of reading the Bible. I prefer to give Early Church Fathers the benefit of the doubt when they say something that doesn’t make sense to me. Rather than assuming they’ve missed the point, I ask myself whether I might have missed the point instead. This is based on the principle that I may not have a complete grasp of the gospel yet.
Allegory & Exegesis: No Conflict
It’s hard sometimes for our modern minds to realise that for the early Church, a Bible passage didn’t need to have only one meaning. For them, it could have both a literal meaning and an allegorical meaning. The two types of meaning did not contradict or compete with one another. In fact, the Fathers believed you could only find the allegorical meaning if you had already grasped the literal meaning. In seeking a literal reading, one is concerned with the (human) author’s intention. But in seeking an allegorical reading, one is concerned with the (divine) author’s hidden meanings pointing to wonderful theological truths.
Many people who object to allegory make the mistake of thinking that allegory is trying to be exegesis. They rightly point out that allegory is pretty bad exegesis, that misses the author’s intention by a wide margin. But this is a category mistake. It is like saying that a paintbrush is a pretty bad hammer, or a vacuum cleaner is a pretty bad frying pan. Of course it is! But that’s neither what it was designed for, nor what it is trying to achieve. You can have both a hammer and a paintbrush without any competition arising between them when you are doing your DYI work. In the same way, we need not be against allegory if we are for exegesis, or vice versa.
That is why Augustine can insist on good exegetical principles and yet also do allegorical readings. Augustine often used the literal, exegetical meaning of the Good Samaritan Parable in his church sermons. Exegesis and allegory are simply two non-competing tools in his toolbox, and he uses different ones at different times to suit the occasion.
Where Did This Idea Come From?
Hang on, Barney. It’s not good enough that the Fathers were consistent with their own teachings. How do we know those teachings were the right ones?
The Fathers believed that, by doing allegorical readings of Scripture, they were following the practices they found in Scripture. The New Testament seems to interpret the Old Testament in both exegetical and allegorical ways at different times. For example, in Isaiah 53:2-12 the (human) author meant to refer to Isaiah himself, or else the people of Israel as a whole (that’s why it’s written in the past tense). But the apostle Peter discerned that, at a deeper level, it was referring prophetically to Jesus (1 Peter 2:24-25).
Or in John 11:50-52, Caiaphas’ authorial intention (the literal sense) was taken up into having a greater meaning than he ever realised, without ever contradicting what he originally meant.
Or in Numbers 20:11, Moses strikes a rock which pours out water, saving the lives of the Israelites in the desert. In 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul notices the parallels between the rock and Jesus.
There are many other Biblical examples but I’ll cut it short here. If you’re curious, check out Galatians 4:24, 1 Corinthians 9:9-10, John 3:14, among others.
The Philosophy Behind Allegory
How does this work, then? It’s one thing to see that allegory doesn’t contradict exegesis, and it’s another thing to recognise allegory as acceptable. But how does it make sense as a practice?
For the early Church, theology didn’t only encompass the Bible: it encompassed all of reality. Theology is about everything insofar as it relates to its Creator, who created it good, beautiful, with a reason and a purpose and a goal. There is no ‘random stuff’ without meaning: everything has meaning because it was created by a meaningful Creator.
So when we read the Bible, we are not reading guide to living in a hostile world. We are reading a text that that has the deepest possible connection to reality, that reveals the way things truly are, because the author of the Bible and the author of Reality are one and the same.
Therefore, it was natural for the early Church to suppose that the Bible had many levels of meaning. They could be broken down like this:
- The literal sense: the text of Scripture is a series of signs pointing to some physical reality.
- The allegorical sense: the physical reality (which we discover by finding the literal sense) is a sign that points to a spiritual reality.
For example, think of Song of Songs. The literal sense of Song of Songs is not about Christ and the Church; it is about sex and marriage. But sex and marriage are ‘about’ Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32). They point to the deep mystery and ultimate goal of every Christian.
In short: the text points to one historical reality (exegesis), and the history recorded by the text points to a deeper spiritual reality (allegory). You might notice that we cannot do good allegory unless we have first done good exegesis. We need to get the history right before we allegorise about it, or else our allegorising will have a false foundation!
How Do You Avoid Anarchy?
But isn’t it obvious that Augustine is importing his own theological views into a text which doesn’t talk about them? How do we avoid people ‘allegorising’ Bible passages to make them mean anything they want?
It is a mistake to think that allegorical interpretation lacks criteria to help discern good from bad. Just like the Early Church had rules for good exegesis, they also had rules for good allegory. Although they never appear in one place as a neat and tidy list, a few experts in the Early Church thought that these four rules were a great summary of the Early Church allegorical practices.[5]
- The Rule of Faith. A good interpretation must have Christ at the centre.
- The Rule of Charity. A good interpretation must build up love of God and love of neighbour.
- The Rule of Scripture. No interpretation is valid if it contradicts some other (literal) part of the Bible.
- Context of the Church. Interpretations gain credibility by widespread use and acceptance. It was more important that church leaders accepted an interpretation than laypeople, because leaders were responsible for protecting sound doctrine.
If we follow these rules, we are welcome to allegorise Scripture just like Paul, Peter, John, and the Fathers did! But I would recommend that we first learn their allegories before coming up with our own. It is an art that takes practice, just like any other.
Appendix 1: Controversial Ground
When I first published this post, I received a lot of push-back from Bible scholars who didn’t think that allegory should ever be acceptable. This blog was never intended as a place for advanced theological debate. I only meant to introduce the idea of allegory for people who had never heard of it. I am sorry to have promoted an idea that not every Christian thinks should be promoted. To try and make up for it, in this update I’m going to introduce the controversy as it stands.
Some Bible scholars believe that Augustine’s allegorising is nothing like the New Testament’s way of interpreting the Old, and the latter cannot therefore be a precedent for the former. They believe that the New Testament is doing ‘typology’ rather than allegory, (although the difference between these two terms is also disputed). For them, the difference between the Early Church and the New Testament is that the Early Church used the Greek philosopher Plato to help explain elements of their interpretation, and that this was a huge mistake; therefore we cannot consider Early Church interpretations of Scripture to be trustworthy, because they are based on a non-Biblical philosophical foundation.
Other scholars respond to the first group by saying that everyone has a philosophy arising from our culture and upbringing, and we are no different to the Early Church in that regard, except our own philosophical outlook is less influenced by Plato. They would suggest that modern biblical scholarship is drawing on the philosophies of the Enlightenment in how it interprets the Bible, just as the Early Church drew on ancient Greek philosophy. The debate quickly becomes a question of whether it is possible to read the Bible “neutrally” without any philosophical lens, or whether this is even what we should be trying to do, or whether one philosophical lens is better than another. I became so intrigued by this last question that I made it the subject of my Masters’ Thesis at Cambridge.
The debate is huge and I can’t hope to do it justice here. But ultimately, a lot of it comes down to how willing you are to trust the Early Church’s intuitions and assumptions when reading the Bible. Some people think they were basically on the wrong track from the beginning, and we need to start again today from a blank slate with our own improved methods. Others think that the Holy Spirit was still guiding the Church after the end of the writing of the New Testament, and that he also guided the reading of it before our own time. While for many years I held the former view, a while back I was persuaded over to the latter view which is the one I now hold.
Further Reading
Books and articles that argue for allegory:
Craig Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).
Hans Boersma, Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church (Baker Publishing Group, 2017).
Robert Louis Wilken, ‘In Defense of Allegory’, Modern Theology 14, no. 2 (1998): 197–212.
Peter Leithart, ‘Rehabilitating the Quadriga‘.
Books and articles that argue against allegory:
Iain W. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2017).
Rikk E. Watts, ‘How Do You Read? God’s Faithful Character as the Primary Lens for the New Testament Use of Israel’s Scripture.’ in From Creation to New Creation: Biblical Theology and Exegesis (Hendrickson Publishers, 2013), ed. Daniel M. Gurtner and Benjamin L. Gladd
[1] Here is a concise version of Augustine’s reading (taken from this website):
“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; Adam himself is meant; Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose blessedness Adam fell; Jericho means the moon, and signifies our mortality, because it is born, waxes, wanes, an dies. Thieves are the devil and his angels. Who stripped him, namely; of his immortality; and beat him, by persuading him to sin; and left him half-dead, because in so far as man can understand and know God, he lives, but in so far as he is wasted and oppressed by sin, he is dead; he is therefore called half-dead. The priest and the Levite who saw him and passed by, signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament which could profit nothing for salvation. Samaritan means Guardian, and therefore the Lord Himself is signified by this name. The binding of the wounds is the restraint of sin. Oil is the comfort of good hope; wine the exhortation to work with fervent spirit. The beast is the flesh in which He deigned to come to us. The being set upon the beast is belief in the incarnation of Christ. The inn is the Church, where travellers returning to their heavenly country are refreshed after pilgrimage. The morrow is after the resurrection of the Lord. The two pence are either the two precepts of love, or the promise of this life and of that which is to come. The innkeeper is the Apostle (Paul).”
[2] I attended a preaching course in 2010 and heard a conference presentation in 2012; Both speakers, who did not know each other, used Augustine’s Good Samaritan allegory as an example of poor exegesis. Also, to pick another random example, Craig Evans wrote ‘The parable is no allegory. It answers the question “Who is my neighbour” in the context of a discussion of Lev 19:18. It is not an allegory of Christology and the Incarnation.’ (‘Luke’s Good Samaritan and the Chronicler’s Good Samaritans’, in Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels. Vol. 3 The Gospel of Luke, ed. Thomas R. Hatina, 2010).
[3] For example, Irenaeus wrote this in the 2nd century A.D.:
“The Lord commended to the Holy Spirit His person who had fallen among thieves, on whom He Himself had compassion, and bound up his wounds, giving two royal denaria; so that we, receiving by the Spirit the image and superscription of the Father and the Son, might cause the denarium entrusted to us to be fruitful.” (Against Heresies III.3)
[4] For example, in Against Heresies VIII.1 Irenaeus writes:
“… they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skilful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skilful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king’s form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king.”
[5] This list was produced by my friend Matthew J. Thomas, whose PhD topic was all about biblical interpretation in the early Church. It was then approved by Hans Boersma, an Evangelical theologian who is an expert in Early Church interpretation of Scripture.
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Great post, Barney! This is important stuff and we definitely need to be talking about it! One thing that I feel is missing is a consideration of theories of language/meaning, which is crucial for untangling the problems surrounding the ‘literal’ sense of Scripture today (especially in the USA). Despite the ways that Wittgenstein’s critique of referentialism impacted academia, I think that many (most?) Christians still primarily operate subconsciously within a theory of direct reference—our words refer or point to something real in the world. This makes sense when we consider the extent to which our culture is fixated on empirical data/evidence and eye-witness reports… But, when the Fathers interpreted Scripture they were generally more concerned about searching within the Scriptures than they were about looking out into the world for corresponding referents.
The Fathers’ ‘literal’ approach was, in a sense, actually more literal than ours today as it was truly a method ‘of the letters’ of Scripture and how the words related to each other (not just grammatically). But because of connotations now associated with the term ‘literal’ I think it may be helpful to move away from it. The Greek term ‘historia’ can, of course, be wrongly associated with the English word ‘history’, which is also an incomplete understanding. It’s interesting to note that after Origen, the term ‘allegoria’ became suspect among many of the Fathers and some, like Gregory of Nyssa, opted to use ‘theoria’ instead.
I also feel like the binary of literal/allegorical misrepresents the Fathers. You do, of course, helpfully mention ‘many levels of meaning’, but another important method of interpretation was that of typology, which doesn’t really fit into either the literal or allegorical category (there was also the Platonic/Origenist ‘moral’ sense, although not as widespread…).
A helpful introduction to all of this is Sanctified Vision by O’Keefe and Reno. They choose to categorize the strategies of the Fathers as either intensive, typological, or allegorical, but of course this is not to say that the Fathers had a systematic or ‘scientific’ understanding/approach to the text like many do today. In this sense I would also add to Matthew’s list the absolute need for interpreters to be faithful Christians themselves (otherwise they could not grasp the ‘hypothesis’ of Scripture, as so famously illustrated in Irenaeus’ analogy of the fox mosaic). This may seem obvious, but I think the Fathers would have had some very strong words to say to many of the leading, non-confessing scholars in the SBL!
Sorry for the length of this post! I hope my thoughts can be helpful and constructive!
Hi Calum, thanks for engaging with this post! You’re right that my argument could have been greatly enriched by some engagement with the linguistic turn in the likes of Wittgenstein. They have a great deal to offer in helping us to clear up misunderstandings. In my defense, I would say that this post was meant as a popular-level introduction to allegory, not a full-fledged account. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible.
You’re also quite right that there are more layers of meaning in the Fathers than just the literal and the allegorical. The quadriga, as it develops and solidifies in the middle ages, is hugely helpful in delineating the different ways we can read scripture. The main point of my post was to open the door to meanings beyond the literal meaning, for those to whom the literal meaning is still an end in itself. As a follow up I would happily go on to speak about further meanings, such as the anagogical and tropological.
You’re quite right that, for the Fathers, an interpreter of Scripture must be a faithful Christian him/herself. In many ways that is assumed by the fourth rule – that one must be within the context of the Church in order to interpret well.
I was wondering if you cared to engage with the above comment by Andrew Perriman? Your take is quite different from his and I would love to hear how you might respond to it.
Great points. I apologize for moving too far beyond a popular-level understanding. I guess I did get a bit carried away! I will do my best to engage with the other comment.
A nice revisionist piece, Barney! Some thoughts…
The New Testament authors are not doing formal exegesis or interpretation in the way that Augustine was.
Peter may simply have been using the language of Isaiah 53 to speak about Jesus.
Whether Isaiah 53 refers to Isaiah himself is debatable—I think more likely the exilic community is in view. But in any case, it’s not allegorical exegesis to say that the passage referred to Jesus. If this is what Peter thought, then he simply understood it as fulfilled messianic prophecy.
Is John’s interpretation really at odds with Caiaphas’ “prophecy”? Arguably, we should allow Caiaphas’ very pragmatic and historical statement to make sense of John’s explanation.
Isn’t Paul’s use of the rock story typological rather than allegorical? He is not exegeting the text, he is developing a self-conscious instructive parallel to make the point that the Corinthians cannot afford to be complacent.
Paul’s interpretation of the Abraham story in Galatians 4:21-31 is certainly much more like Augustine’s interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable. But it is not an instance of a systematic method; he highlights the rhetorical oddness of his reading (ἅτινά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμενα); and it forms part of a specific polemic against the Law. Extrapolate with care!
Well, yes, there’s 1 Corinthians 9:9-10. But Paul here explicitly discounts the literal interpretation of the text: “Is it for oxen that God is concerned?”
We could just say that Paul got it wrong, of course!
I don’t see John 3:14 as allegorical interpretation. John simply notes the superficial parallel between the two events. It’s typology at most.
Finally, whatever validity such allegorical interpretation had for the church fathers, we do not as a culture share their largely platonic worldview. I would not recommend trying to do patristic exegesis in a very different intellectual environment. It would lack integrity.
Hi Andrew! Sorry for the delay – thanks for this detailed engagement!
You’re probably right that there are subtle differences between Augustine’s form of allegorising and that of the New Testament authors. I certainly don’t mean to insist that they are identical in every respect. All I mean to point to is the way in which they pursue a meaning to the text over and above the original ‘literal’ meaning, but in a way that builds on it rather than renders it obsolete.
Henri de Lubac has issued a challenge to the modern distinction between typology and allegory (“’Typologie’ et ‘Allégorisme’.” Recherches de Science Religieuse 34 (1947): 180-226). Would you mind clarifying for me how you understand the distinction? In my current understanding, they are both ways of using a text after it has been exegeted, showing how they point to Christ as the summation and fulfilment of them. Is this wrong?
I confess I am not entirely clear about the implications of your final paragraph. We do not as a culture have a Christian worldview, and yet most Christians don’t see that as a reason not to think in a Christian manner. Surely what matters is whether Christianity (and Platonism) teach us true things about reality, not whether our culture accepts these things or not?
I eagerly await further clarification from you!
I’m sure there are different ways of differentiating between typology and allegory.
To my mind, a text is allegorical. Either it is written as an allegory or the interpreter treats it—knowingly or unknowingly—as though it were written as an allegory.
No text is written or thought to have been written as a typology. Rather an interpreter perceives some sort of correlation between two texts or between a text and a state of affairs.
For example, I would say that Noah building a boat and surviving the flood (1 Pet. 3:20-21) is not an allegory of baptism but a “type” of baptism. Of course, if we think that scripture primarily has a divine author, then we may suppose that he inspired the telling of the story of the flood with baptism in mind. But that’s a theological rather than a literary judgment, isn’t it?
So crudely: texts are allegorical, interpretations are typological.
The last paragraph has to do with epistemology rather than faith. We don’t think in the same way that the Fathers did—deep down we are rational empiricists, or critical realists, or some such, rather than instinctively allegorising Platonists. So I don’t see how we can in all honesty apply the same rules of interpretation—other than as an interpretive fiction.
Thanks! Very helpful indeed! If I understand you correctly, your definition of ‘allegory’ requires that it be the author’s intention to write an allegory, whereas ‘typology’ requires that it NOT be the author’s intention. Do you think that it is appropriate for Christians to posit a divine author to the text of Scripture, alongside a human author of course, with neither excluding the other? In the distinction you draw between theological and literary judgments, what do you think is the place of theological judgments concerning Scripture?
I think I see what you’re saying about the difference between ourselves and the Fathers in terms of the structure of our way of thinking. But it seems to lead to a very important question: which structure is the right one? Or are they actually incompatible? If they are incompatible, which of them is better as a framework through which to interpret Scripture? Do you have any thoughts on this question? It seems to have massive consequences for our reading of the Bible so I don’t doubt you perceive its relevance.
To be honest, I see little point in positing a divine author distinct from the human authors of the various texts.
1. The biblical authors claim explicitly at times to convey the word of God: Moses claimed to have written down the commandments dictated by God, prophets speak the words of God to the people. But this authorised communication is embedded in texts that in various ways simply tell the story of Israel as the authors saw it.
2. For there to be a meaningful differentiation between the divine and human voices, there has to be some sort of divergence or contradiction: Isaiah said this, but really God meant that. That just seems an unhelpful and unnecessary complication. It creates more problems than it solves.
3. I would have thought that to say that scripture is “God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16) rules out allegorising or sensus plenior readings of the Jewish scriptures. God inspired the authors to write what they wrote, and they wrote it. Sometimes they recorded the direct speech of God to his people, but mostly they simply—well, not simply—chronicled in different genres, through complex authorial and redactional process, Israel’s historical self-understanding and experience.
I’m not sure I see any place for “theological judgments concerning Scripture”. I think that “historical-literary judgments” serve us perfectly well.
My personal view is that the modern historical-critical mindset generally is giving us a better understanding of scripture than the pre-critical, pre-modern, predominantly Platonist mindset of the Fathers, despite the greater historical distance. That in itself, of course, is a judgment that has to be asserted critically and with greater intellectual humility than I tend to demonstrate. But I think that the task facing the early church was such that they had no need to do what historical study now takes for granted—that is, to take into account as far as possible the Jewish historical and literary context of the texts.
Thanks for this reply, very clear and productive in helping me understand where you’re coming from! I hope you don’t mind if I push you to answer a few more questions though.
1. On what basis do you think Moses’ claim to “convey the word of God” can be trusted, if we leave aside any theological judgment concerning the text? Many other ancient documents claim to be conveying the word of God. Do we have any reason to take this claim at face value?
2. If we bracket out theological judgments, then am I misunderstanding you if I conclude that the canonical status of New Testament texts also needs to be ignored, since this is a theological judgment which was made over 300 years after their composition. As the great NT scholar William Wrede said: “”Anyone who accepts without question the idea of the canon places himself under the authority of the bishops and theologians of those centuries. Anyone who does not recognize their authority in other matters – and no Protestant theologian does – is being consistent if he questions it here, too.” To follow this logic through, we should treat the NT texts as having no greater authority than any other first century witness to early Christianity, nor should we make theological judgments of ‘heresy’ and ‘orthodoxy’ about things like the gnostic gospels, Ebionite texts, etc. since these are anachronistic and reflect later theological decisions of the church.
3. Do the concepts of divine and human authorship need to be in competition or conflict in quite the way you describe? Following the pattern of Genesis 50:20, we find that God’s intention can take up human intention into his divine purposes without nullifying or cancelling it. In the same way, my post has tried to emphasise that exegesis and allegory do not conflict or contradict one another. It is not a matter of “either/or” but rather two different angles on the same thing. In fact, allegory – or any kind of application of the text for today – requires good historical-critical exegesis in order to be faithful to the text.
4. Similarly, do we have to choose between premodern and modern readings of Scripture? Is there anything wrong with seeing them both as valuable contributions that enrich our reading of Scripture, without setting them in opposition to one another?
1. I’m not sure what the point of the question is. The issue was the literary one—how do we differentiate between divine and human authors? God doesn’t author anything directly—with the exception perhaps of the decalogue. People in the Old Testament claim on particular occasions to be conveying what they believe God has directly communicated to them. But otherwise, the Old Testament presents itself as a collection of human documents. To what extent any of it can be “trusted” is a different question.
2. An interesting comment. The way I look at it, the theological judgment of the Fathers regarding the canon is as much part of the narrative of God’s people as anything else. Being theological doesn’t make it absolute. Before it’s a theological judgment, it’s a historical judgment. It’s part of the story that we have been telling about ourselves. The assertion of authority is part of the story that we are telling about ourselves. The “authority of scripture”, strictly speaking, is a human construct—we have chosen to live and think as though the Bible has supreme authority. But saying doesn’t make it so. I think we are probably trying to locate authority in the wrong place. In reality, it’s the historical existence of the community that validates the text, not the other way round.
3. Seriously, Barney? You think Genesis 50:20 can be used to justify tensions between divine and human authorship? The passage has nothing to do with the interpretation of texts. The brothers meant harm to Joseph but God meant it for good. The brothers are not here in the place of the human authors of scripture. They did a bad thing, but God used their bad intentions to save the family of Jacob. It could perhaps be used to justify human error or intentional deception in the writing of scripture—e.g., a disciple of Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians and falsely ascribed it to the apostle, but God has used his bad intention for his own good purposes. But that’s about all. Or am I missing something?
You say that historical exegesis and allegorical reading do not contradict each other, but you have to ask, surely, whether Jesus meant roughly what Craig Evans says he meant (for example) or what Augustine says he meant. Was Jesus telling the lawyer a story about himself, the devil, the church and the apostle Paul? Or was this what Luke was trying to get across?
How are we honouring our Lord if we force his words to “mean” something that they patently didn’t mean? What is to be gained by perpetuating such a blatant misunderstanding of Jesus’ teaching?
It’s not as though Augustine introduced some remarkable and indispensable insight by means of his perverse reading of the parable. It looks like a statement of the obvious from a position of hindsight.
4. The question here is: do they enrich our understanding of scripture or do they enrich our understanding of the mind of the pre-modern church? Mainly the latter, in my view.
Thanks very much for this helpful and illuminating reply. I especially like your points 1 and 2, both of which answer very well the question I was getting at. I totally agree that as Christians we have “chosen to live as though” the Bible had supreme authority. More accurately (as you say) we as individuals have chosen to live as if the historical community had supreme authority (and the community has chosen to submit to Scripture as the highest authority). One could expand this to a basic definition of faith. We have chosen to live as if life had value and meaning, as if there was a God, and as if Jesus rose from the dead, even though (as you point out) “saying doesn’t make it so”.
With this common backdrop, I would like to engage you on three points:
1. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF GIVING AUTHORITY TO THE HISTORICAL COMMUNITY?
Since, as we agree, the historical community validates the text and not vice-versa, is it worth asking whether the historical community validates anything else? Almost everyone then saw Scripture as having allegorical meanings, considered that Scripture teaches the divinity of Christ, insisted on an ecclesial structure of priests and bishops, affirmed some elements of a middle-Platonic worldview (but rejected many elements too). Do you think that they were wrong in these other things, but nonetheless right about the choice of the canon of Scripture?
2. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALLEGORY AND EXEGESIS?
The objections you raise to Augustine’s interpretation shows that I clearly haven’t explained myself very well in the above post. Let me try to be as clear as I can.
– Allegory is not exegesis, is not trying to be exegesis, does not have the same goals or principles as exegesis. Allegory cannot possibly distort or violate the author’s intention because it doesn’t pretend to convey the author’s intention. If it was, it would be right to condemn it as a perverse failure. Consider this analogy: a vacuum cleaner and a computer do not compete because they are not attempting the same task. To say “this vacuum cleaner is an awful excuse for a computer” is to fail to grasp what it was designed for. Allegory and exegesis do not compete because they are not asking the same question of the text. Allegory is not asking what the human author’s intention was. The exegetical reading does not exclude the allegorical reading, or vice versa.
– Everyone agrees, both today and in the early church, that if we ask exegetical questions of the text, we are concerned with the human author’s intentions. In this case it is very important (as you say) not to “force the words to mean something they patently didn’t mean” and if we imagine that this is what the author intended, then it is (as you say) a blatant misunderstanding. We rightly note that Jesus wasn’t telling the lawyer a story which included the apostle Paul in it. If an allegory pretends to be exegesis, then it is true to say that it violates the principles of exegesis and distorts the meaning of the text.
– Augustine was fully aware of the exegetical (what he called the ‘literal’) meaning of the Good Samaritan parable. He used it several times in his sermons. For him (as for the rest of the historical community) the exegetical meaning did not exclude any other possible meanings, nor vice-versa. In the comment above by Sam Fornecker, he quotes a section from Augustine which shows he understood the principles of exegesis just as we do.
3. WHAT IS THE POINT IN ALLEGORY?
Do you think anyone could ever say (or do) something which has a greater significance than they thought it did? Can speech or action ever have any significance that was not in the author’s conscious mind when they spoke/acted? Of course, allegory is only one example of this: there are political readings, feminist readings, sociological readings, all of which uncover dimensions of a text that were not clear to its author, but which are built on the platform of a correct exegesis of its author.
– The example from Gen 50:20 is about the human action (not writing, I admit), how it had a divine intention that the human agents did not intend. Joseph reads the story with hindsight and makes a theological judgment about its meaning. Do you think it might be acceptable to extend this principle to human speech as well as human action?
– Another example: in the LXX, “Joshua” is spelt the same way as “Jesus.” So when the historical community read the book of Joshua, they read (literally) that “Jesus led his people into the promised land.” Now, we may agree that the exegetical meaning of the text has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. How could it? He wasn’t born yet. If we exegete the passage historically/literally, we agree that the historical character Joshua led the Israelites into Israel. Do you think it is unreasonable to say that Joshua’s action can be taken allegorically to point to Jesus’ action in the New Testament? Or is the naming a pure coincidence with no significance at all?
– Another example: exegetically, Song of Songs has nothing to do with God’s relation to his people. But in Ephesians 5 Paul points to the way in which marriage is a sign of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Since Song of Songs is about marriage and romantic love, the historical community saw a deeper meaning in these words that went beyond exegesis, without nullifying or excluding exegesis. Do you think (a) that this violates or perverts the exegetical meaning, (b) that even if it doesn’t, we shouldn’t ever do this as there is no point in doing it?
1. We are in a position to make the same historical judgments about the ideas of the early church (or the church in any other period) as we do about scripture. A historical hermeneutic is probably going to leave us in two minds about the canon of scripture, at least at certain points. But the main historical consideration, as I see it, is whether and how the texts bear witness to the mind of the earlier believers.
If we are convinced that there are solid historical-critical reasons for assigning 2 Peter to the second century, for example, then the text bears witness to the outlook of the second century church—regardless of what we think of its canonical status. It is still part of the church’s testimony; it is still evidence for how the church was telling its story, working out its future, etc. It’s problematic, but there are problems with uncritically affirming it as first century apostolic testimony. I make this point only hypothetically.
2. The allegorical reading is not exegesis as we know it—and perhaps even as Augustine understood it—but it is still presented as an interpretation on the assumption that scripture carries meaning on multiple levels (literal, allegorical, moral, anagogical, and so on) and has strong typological correspondences built into it. This theory of scripture as sui generis sacred text arose in a particular intellectual environment and in that environment had some integrity.
As moderns, we do not share that intellectual environment, so to my mind—as I’ve said before—any serious attempt to revive the Patristic model of interpretation would be intellectually dishonest. We can do it for fun. We can play at being pre-moderns. We can do it as a knowing protest against the supposed sterility of historical-critical enquiry. But we cannot think the way Augustine thought.
And my argument is that the historical-critical method does not have to be sterile. It gives us everything that allegorical/analogical readings supposedly add to exegesis, without the need to resort to spurious, fanciful and biblically indefensible theories of scripture.
Having said that, and having actually read one version of Augustine’s take on the parable in context, I’m not sure that in this case he is offering an interpretation as such. Augustine clearly enjoys using the parable, and it seems likely that he is re-purposing the story, more or less self-consciously, in order to make his own point about the importance of giving alms. But it’s difficult to know for sure. There is a simpler application of the parable to Jesus here. Perhaps Augustine thought that the parable could reasonably be read as a story about Jesus’ love for broken humanity—not too far outside the realm of historical plausibility—but then “playfully” elaborated on the idea as a secondary parable of salvation.
3. You say: “Of course, allegory is only one example of this: there are political readings, feminist readings, sociological readings, all of which uncover dimensions of a text that were not clear to its author, but which are built on the platform of a correct exegesis of its author.”
Readers can make of texts what they like—we live in a free country. Sometimes ideological readings will correct traditional readings, but the test of that is historical exegesis. More often than not they tell us more about the reader than about the text—in my view.
I don’t understand what you mean by “built on the platform of a correct exegesis of its author”. But I would say that if a text has meanings that were not apparent to its author, this must still be assessed historically. Perhaps Jesus and Luke weren’t aware of all the “meanings” of the parable of the Good Samaritan. But they were still first century figures working within the limited historical setting that they shared. I would expect further levels of meaning to make sense within that context. Augustine clearly did not share that context.
You ask: “Do you think it is unreasonable to say that Joshua's action can be taken allegorically to point to Jesus' action in the New Testament? Or is the naming a pure coincidence with no significance at all?” Do you have any evidence that first century readers interpreted Joshua’s action in that way? The only New Testament references to Joshua are literal (Lk. 3:29; Acts 7:45; Heb. 4:8). But in any case, surely the question is why Jesus was given the same name. The “coincidence” lies not in the Old Testament but in the New.
Finally, yes, I think the allegorical reading of the Song of Songs violates the proper meaning of the text. That violation has had a damaging impact on the church’s views on marriage and romantic love. It has made it harder for modern believers to appreciate the relevance of the Old Testament for understanding Jesus as the fulfilment of Israel’s story. And probably a whole load of other things. The allegorical method muddies the waters. It makes it harder rather than easier to understand scripture.
Greetings from Dresden! This thread is really interesting and I am keen to continue such a worthwhile conversation, especially because it is fuelling many other chats with friends at the moment.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the witness to the mind of earlier believers is the primary purpose of studying the biblical text, correct? If so, do we have a basis for prioritising 2 Peter, for example, above the epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, and the gospel of Thomas? They are also witnesses to the mind of the early Church. For that matter, Marcionism is a powerful witness to the mind of the early Church – is there any reason for considering Marcion less of a witness to the early Church’s mind than, say, Tertullian of the same period?
If, as you say, we cannot think the way Augustine thought, then I suppose we likewise cannot think the way the apostles Paul, Peter, or John thought, or anyone else who contributed to writing the canonical New Testament texts. Is it, then, dishonest to attempt to revive their model of thinking for today? Or are we only seeking to understand how they thought, without any attempt on our part to think similarly? If so, then what is our purpose in seeking to understand the texts which were (much later) considered canonical New Testament texts?
If, as you say, we are moderns and do not share the intellectual environment of late antiquity (either in its Jewish or Hellenistic or Roman brands), then is it only wrong for us and us alone to interpret Scripture allegorically? Is it permissible for less modern-minded folk, such as members of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, or the church in Africa, China and South america, interpret without the constraints of modernity hanging over them? Or if they do, would you consider such interpretations to be false and distortions of the text, just like if we did the same?
I’m afraid I’m not talking to anyone about it. But then I’m not in Dresden!
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the witness to the mind of earlier believers is the primary purpose of studying the biblical text, correct?
Roughly, yes. We read it in order to understand what story those who knew Jesus and had come to believe in his resurrection were telling. We need to understand the New Testament story in particular because it presents itself as a decisive, transformative episode in the history of the people of God.
If so, do we have a basis for prioritising 2 Peter, for example, above the epistle of Barnabas, etc.?
That would depend on our view of 2 Peter as a historical text. A better question to ask would be whether we have a basis for prioritising Mark or 1 Thessalonians or Hebrews above texts from the post-apostolic period. Texts written in the first century will give us a clearer and more reliable impression of the story that the early believing community was telling about itself.
For that matter, Marcionism is a powerful witness to the mind of the early Church – is there any reason for considering Marcion less of a witness to the early Church's mind than, say, Tertullian of the same period?
The current recovery of the Jewish-apocalyptic context of the New Testament and the rejection of the modern evangelical-Reformed paradigm is one way in which we have been re-running the Marcionite debates. On that basis, Tertullian would probably also need reassessing.
If, as you say, we cannot think the way Augustine thought, then I suppose we likewise cannot think the way the apostles Paul, Peter, or John thought, or anyone else who contributed to writing the canonical New Testament texts.
The point here is that we are trying to understand the apostles, not replicate their way of thinking or of interpreting scripture. It seems to me that the back-to-allegorisation argument is doing more than simply understanding Augustine, et al. It is arguing that we can adopt—perhaps selectively—their hermeneutics, their methods of interpretation. That’s more than we’re doing with the apostles.
If, as you say, we are moderns and do not share the intellectual environment of late antiquity…, then is it only wrong for us and us alone to interpret Scripture allegorically?
It would be hazardous to pass judgment on other cultures. I am also much less interested in proscribing allegorical interpretation than in promoting historical interpretation—not least because I think that good narrative-historical interpretation makes scripture a much more powerful text for the church in the West after Christendom than pre-modern methods. It’s hardly for me to tell people they shouldn’t allegorise.
Can I draw your attention also to Sam Fornecker’s discussion of 2 Tim 3:16 and divine authorship above ^^
Hi Barney, thanks again for this wonderful post! I appreciate in particular that you note the canons of interpretation observed by the fathers. It brought to mind a passage from De Doctrina Christiana, which I thought worth sharing.
‘When, again, not some one interpretation, but two or more interpretations are put upon the same words of Scripture, even though the meaning the writer intended remain undiscovered, there is no danger if it can be shown from other passages of Scripture that any of the interpretations put on the words is in harmony with the truth. And if a man in searching the Scriptures endeavors to get at the intention of the author through whom the Holy Spirit spake, whether he succeeds in this endeavor, or whether he draws a different meaning from the words, but one that is not opposed to sound doctrine, he is free from blame so long as he is supported by the testimony of some other passage of Scripture. For the author perhaps saw that this very meaning lay in the words which we are trying to interpret; and assuredly the Holy Spirit, who through him spake these words, foresaw that this interpretation would occur to the reader, nay, made provision that it should occur to him, seeing that it too is founded on truth. For what more liberal and more fruitful provision could God have made in regard to the Sacred Scriptures than that the same words might be understood in several senses, all of which are sanctioned by the concurring testimony of other passages equally divine?’ (De Doctrina Christiana, lib.iii c.27 §38)
I would point out a few things of note in this passage.
First, ‘When again…’. Augustine seems to be presupposing that not every text is legitimately capable of a sensus plenior. This, I suggest, ought to be kept in mind alongside Augustine’s earlier rule, that whatever cannot refer either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine ought to be regarded as figurative (DDC, lib.iii c.27 §38).
Second, ‘Even though the meaning the writer intended remain undiscovered.’ Augustine seems to be presupposing that allegorical interpretation works harmoniously, indeed inseparably, from authorial intent. This is crucial, for it indicates that, at least for Augustine — who stood between exegetes like Chrysostom (an Antiochene exegete) and Origen (an Alexandrian if ever was one!) — ‘authorial intent’ was an acceptable (and more usually than not, an achievable) objective in the minds of many church fathers. I’m sensitive to giving Augustine the status of a golden mean here, but it is worth noting.
Third, ‘in harmony with the truth.’` Augustine seems to be presupposing that allegorical interpretations are only valid insofar as they are harmonious with the ‘truth.’ I suppose by ‘truth’ he means the ‘truth’ of DDC, lib.i c.10 §10: ‘Wherefore, since it is our duty fully to enjoy the truth which lives unchangeably,’ the truth who is ultimately the Holy Trinity (cf. DDC, lib.i c.5 §5). This is a significant dogmatic constraint.
Fourth, ‘the author, through whom the Holy Spirit spake.’ Here, I think, is the ground for discovering the authorial intent: the Scripture are not like books written by profane authors (DDC, lib.ii c.42 §63), since they have the Spirit for their author. It is, in fact, the fact that Augustine presupposes the Spirit’s authorship of the Scriptures that warrants his regula scripturae: the man who proposes another meaning than that which the Spirit expressly spoke ‘is free from blame so long as he is supported by the testimony of some other passage of Scripture.’
Fifth, ‘and assuredly the Holy Spirit, who through [the author] spake these words, foresaw that this interpretation would occur to the reader, nay, made provision that is should occur to him, seeing that it too is founded on truth.’ Augustine has already refused to extricate the Spirit from the authorial process. Now he suggests that any reading which fits the criteria of the point above — which is harmony with the self-communicative act of the Holy Trinity that is Scripture — is in fact a product of the Spirit’s authorial intent. This is a reminder that when we speak about ‘literal’ meaning, we are not talking about a literalistic reading (that would be ridiculous — ‘I am the door’ would mean he is made of wood and swings on hinges), but determinate meaning. Hence, an important point about what patristic allegorical interpretation did not do: the fathers did not charge the biblical text with obscurity or unclarity that in fact arises from the experience of the human knower. Rather, Augustine at least seemed to think of the clarity of Scripture neither as an abstract property nor as a pervasive quality of Scripture, but as a particular function that has been bestowed upon the text by the Holy Spirit in order that it should fulfill its purpose — which, after all, is a communicative one meant to lead to the knowledge and enjoyment of the Triune God. Patristic allegorical reading seems to me to have been possible, if I can put it this way, because the fathers located the co-opting of human authorship into God’s self-communicative action in the annexing of human authorship itself. (Not worrying, like Barth, about injuring God’s freedom by grounding revelation in a worldly ‘entity’ rather than the divine event of grace, in which the Bible becomes the Word of God.) I”m sure that’s simplistic and one-dimensional, but I think there’s some truth to this.
Sixth, ‘several senses, all of which are sanctioned by the concurring testimony of other passages equally divine.’ By ‘concurring testimony,’ I take Augustine to mean something like what Kevin Vanhoozer and John Peckham mean by the idea of ‘canonical sense’ (Vanhoozer’s term). If resistance to Augustine’s exegetical method consists in a sense that he read scripture out of sync with redemptive history, then this demonstrates that that suspicion would be unfounded. The role of the canon in the economy of salvation is to draw the Church’s attention to certain texts, in which it confesses that certain human writings have been annexed to the self-communicative purposes of the Triune God, which have been and are being acted out in history. Webster’s article on the canon is particularly helpful here. ‘To speak of the canon is to speak of that means of grace through which the revelatory self-presence of God in the form of sanctified texts reaches the obedient and attentive community, which responds to that presence by an act of assent and acknowledgment.’ (Webster, ‘The Dogmatic Location of the Canon,’ in Word and Church, p.42). To make ‘canonical sense’ of a passage is to ascertain its meaning in the context of the redemptive history of which it claims to be part. This ensures the presence of typology — which differs from allegory in that it traverses the canon along an historical axis, reaching from anticipation in the Old Testament to fulfillment in the New. Augustine certainly went further than typology, but it is not clear to me how Augustine’s hermeneutic would in anyway undermine broader rules about canonical and redemptive-historical context that ensure the stability and even necessity of typological readings. This, I take it, is what Vanhoozer means by this statement: ‘If there is a sensus plenior, then, it is on the level of God’s gathering together the various partial and progressive communicative acts and purposes of the human authors into one ‘great canonical Design.’ (Is There a Meaning in This Text? P.314)
Of course, I would take all this with a grain of salt. I’m no Augustine scholar. Thanks again for this post Barney! I’ll look forward to chatting more as other comments emerge…
This is a super helpful analysis, Sam! Thanks for the rich contribution. I particularly appreciate the point about much of it hanging on the Spirit’s authorial intent, and the need for every allegorical interpretation to be read within the context of canon. Vanhoozer’s canonical sense is very helpful here.
It is interesting that so much seems to hang on the concept of divine authorship of Scripture. This is something that my friend Andrew, below, has denied the need of. He insists that it is enough to say that God spoke to Moses (for example) and Moses wrote down what God said. He invokes 2 Tim 3:16 in support of his view that there is no biblical reason to posit divine authorship as an additional feature above human authorship. Do you have any thoughts about this?
Hi Barney, that’s a great question.
First, I want to interpret Andrew’s comment as sympathetically as I can. I think, Andrew, you are saying that God handed the biblical words verbatim, wholly and reliably, to the biblical authors, who transcribed them perfectly and authoritatively by his guidance. This appears to guard the integrity of the literal (i.e. determinate) sense of Scripture, and places our focus on the text qua text. It assumes divine ‘authorship,’ in the sense that the one who comes up with the words and dictates them is God. This view reflects a high view of the Scripture’s authority, and seeks to honor them as such. These are priorities with which I fully identify.
Now, my feedback. My basic caution is this: the interpretation of theopneustos is simply not the place to apply Occam’s razor. That way madness lies. Those who are batting for team ‘biblical authority’ (a group I count myself among) ought to be unsettled by the idea of strictly human authorship. Once the idea is traced out even a little, it raises seriously problematic implications about the God/world relation that are undoubtedly unbiblical. My point is that you can’t avoid the speculative questions; you have to answer them as biblically as possible. Plain and intelligible answers — like dictation theory — don’t avoid speculation. They mask it. But ‘you shall know them by the fruit that they bear.’
For example, when Paul says theopneustos, is he saying that God dictated to human authors what he wanted them to write? Surely we are not suggesting that the heavens opened and a voice audibly spoke to the prophets and apostles. This is not how the OT characterizes prophetic inspiration; and the NT makes far too big of a deal of the ‘epiphany’ texts to assume that essentially the same thing could happen and we would have no mention of it. So that is a no-go.
But since we still want theopneustos to mean that God directly dictated the words to the human authors in time, are we then suggesting that this dictation (which wasn’t audible), was more like an inner monologue that simply drove the authorial process? In this case, we are suggesting what is called dictation theory, in which God obliterates the cognitive wherewithal of the biblical authors, and uses them simply as mouthpieces or puppets.
Once we have said this, it seems to me that we have accomplished two things. First, we have achieved the theological error we at first set out to avoid, by essentially characterizing the inspiration of the Scriptures in the same terms as the bequeathal of the Quran. Yikes. Second, we have meandered into errors about the God/world relation—proposing, inadvertently but by a necessary consequence, that God’s will and human freedom are locked in a zero-sum game. Respectfully, I do not see how dictation theory (which is how I would classify your view) can get away from this.
Of course, equally serious problems attend ‘weak authorship’ views, in which God simply nudges the process along, like a boy scout helping a little old lady across the road. But I have to go lead a Bible study so unfortunately I’m poking holes rather than filling them… for which I apologize. Andrew, do please respond. I would be eager to hear your thoughts!
Sam, I’ve no idea how you reached the view that I was saying that “God handed the biblical words verbatim, wholly and reliably, to the biblical authors, who transcribed them perfectly and authoritatively by his guidance”. My point was only that if we think that the historical authors were in any sense “inspired”, we have to respect the historical meaning of the texts and not subject them to unhistorical allegorisation.
I wouldn’t argue for a doctrine of divine dictation at all. There are places in scripture where individuals claim to be speaking words that God has given them to speak. Scripture is not much interested in explaining how that works, but it seems to me that the prophets simply give utterance to what they understand the mind of God to be. “Verbatim” rarely comes into it: there is one “text”, not two—not an original and a copy. The texts as a whole are the work of human authors, subject to all the complexities and vagaries and limited perspectives that came with the writing of ancient texts.
I think it likely that by describing the sacred writings as theopneustos Paul was not so much signalling a theory of inspiration as emphasising the practical usefulness of the scriptures for instruction and “training in righteousness”.
These lines from Psalm 147 may shed some light on the significance of the word: “He will send out his word and will melt them; he will blow his breath, and waters will flow. In declaring his word to Jacob, his statutes and judgments to Israel, he did not deal thus with every nation, and his judgments he did not explain to them.” The word of God breathed out governs the life of Israel.
Hi Andrew, thank you for clarifying for me. Clearly I misunderstood what you were saying, rather magnificently! I have nothing to add other than what I have already written above in the post about Augustine, points four and five.