3.04. The Second Error: Allegorizing the Text of Scripture

Chapter Four: The Second Error: Allegorizing the Text of Scripture The early apostolic fathers interpreted Scripture according to a "functional hermeneutic," meaning that they applied the text to their own situation, often without regard for its original context.34 For example, Clement included 166 quotations or allusions to the Old Testament in his Epistle to the Corinthians, seeking not so much to discover the Old Testament’s message on its own or even with regard to the work of Christ, but more so to offer types and other pictures of Christ as a basis for moral obedience.35 In the seven letters of Ignatius that are believed to be genuine, the Antioch bishop used almost fifty references to 1 Corinthians. In doing so, he characteristically took Pauline expressions from their contexts and used them in his own situations.36 In the latter part of the second century, the church was beset by Gnostic critics who challenged the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. For example, the heretic Marcion rejected the Old Testament in toto. In response, Justin Martyr expanded the "functional hermeneutic" of the early fathers to include a "typological hermeneutic."37 He linked the Old Testament and the New by adopting the view that the Old Testament in its entirety pointed to Jesus. Almost any person or event in the Old Testament profitably could be used to foreshadow the life or work of Christ.38 In fact, Justin saw the Old Testament as being "a specifically Christian book, belonging to the church even more than to the synagogue."39 This approach paved the way for the allegorical interpretive method suggested by Clement of Alexandria and perfected by his successor, Origen.

Clement became the leader of the Alexandrian school in AD 190. He saw the literal meaning of Scripture as being a "starting point" for interpretation. Although it was "suitable for the mass of Christians," God revealed himself to the spiritually advanced through the "deeper meaning" of Scripture. In every passage, a deeper or additional meaning existed beyond the primary or immediate sense.40 "The literal sense indicated what was said or done, while the allegorical showed what should be believed."41

Origen, Clement’s successor, took his approach to new levels. Origen (along with Augustine) has been considered the most nimble, creative mind of the early church.42 Schaff called him "the greatest scholar of his age, and the most gifted, most industrious, and most cultivated of all the ante-Nicene fathers."43 Origen was a pious man. He "rarely ate flesh, never drank wine; devoted the greater part of the night to prayer and study, and slept on the bare floor."44 He was tortured and condemned to the stake in the Decian persecution, and was saved from martyrdom only upon the death of the emperor.45 For his faith, then, Origen is to be commended. For his theology, however, he is to be severely castigated.

Schaff’s delicate suggestion that Origen’s "great defect" was the "neglect of the grammatical and historical sense and his constant desire to find a hidden mystic meaning" in the text of the Bible is sheer understatement.46 While Origen did not deny the literal meaning of the text, that most certainly was not his emphasis. Rather, he taught that Scripture has three different, yet complementary meanings: (1) a literal or physical sense, (2) a moral or psychical sense, and (3) an allegorical or intellectual sense.47 To Origen, much of the Bible, if read literally, was intellectually incredible or morally objectionable. An allegorizing interpretation was used to make objectionable passages palatable.48 However, as Bruce has observed: "this approach was largely arbitrary, because the approved interpretation depended so largely on the interpreter’s personal preference, and in practice it violated the original intention of the Scriptures and almost obliterated the historical relatedness of the revelation they recorded."49 Farrar similarly declared: When once the principle of allegory is admitted, when once we start with the rule that whole passages and books of Scripture say one thing when they mean another, the reader is delivered bound hand and foot to the caprice of the interpreter. . . .

Unhappily for the Church, unhappily for any real apprehension of Scripture, the allegorists, in spite of protest, were completely victorious.50 The dangers of an allegorical approach to interpreting Scripture are nowhere more evident than with regard to Origen himself. Origen taught the pre-existence of souls, universal salvation and a limited hell, doctrines for which he was posthumously condemned as a heretic.51 Despite his late condemnation, the damage had long been done. Through Augustine, Origen’s allegorical hermeneutic became the backbone of medieval interpretation of the Bible.

Augustine (AD 354-430), perhaps Christendom’s most preeminent theologian apart from the apostle Paul, was drawn to the Alexandrian approach to interpreting Scripture by Ambrose, his spiritual mentor. Building on Origen’s interpretive system, Augustine suggested a four-fold sense which would later be adopted by medieval theologians: (1) literal; (2) allegorical; (3) tropological or moral; and (4) analogical.52 However, later in life, he began to emphasize more strongly the literal and historical sense of Scripture.53 Stanton has even suggested that Augustine came to the view that the historical and doctrinal sections of Scripture should be interpreted by normal literal methods, while prophecy should be interpreted spiritually.54 In apparently backtracking from Origen’s purely allegorical method of interpretation, Augustine may have been influenced to some degree by the Antioch school of biblical interpretation, which arose in opposition to the Alexandrian school. The Antioch’s school’s two greatest exegetes, Theodore of Mopsuestia (AD 350-428) and John Chrysostom (AD 354-407), were "anti-allegorical," meaning they rejected interpretations that effectively denied the historical reality of what the scriptural text affirmed.55 Chrysostom, in particular, avoided treating Old Testament passages as allegories of Christ and the church and instead sought typological meanings when the text allowed for it.56

Chrysostom and the Antiochene school distinguished allegorical interpretation from typological in two primary ways. Typological interpretation attempted to seek out patterns in the Old Testament to which Christ corresponded, while allegorical exegesis depended on accidental similarity of language between two passages. Second, typological interpretation depended on a historical interpretation of the text. The passage, according to the Antiochenes, had only one meaning, the literal, and not two as suggested by the allegorists.57 The Antioch school, however, was an aberration. It could not halt the torrent of allegorism spawned by Origen and matured by Augustine.

Whether Augustine personally abandoned Origen’s allegorical hermeneutic later in life is open to debate. His legacy, however, at least through the medieval period, was the perpetuation of Origen’s allegorical interpretive method. Indeed, with Origen’s allegorical hermeneutic firmly in place, it became an easy jump to amillennialism.