augustine allegorical interpretation of scripture

Dr. D’Ambrosio cites one such exegesis by St. Augustine, who interpreted the parable of the good Samaritan in such a way that the man who fell among robbers was the … The first sentence is, “There are certain rules for interpreting the scriptures which, as I am well aware, can usefully be passed on to those with an appetite for such study to enable them to progress not just by reading the work of others who have illuminated the obscurities of divine literature, but also by finding illumination themselves.”[6] Augustine wants to empower and perfect future interpreters and teachers by passing on the rules of the game, so that they can interact with the divine text directly without having to receive everything blindly or secondhand. The Middle Ages was a time that was dominated by allegorical interpretation. In all the holy books, however, one ought to note what eternal realities are there suggested, what deeds are recounted, what future events foretold, what actions commanded or advised. Robin Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, p. 85 The first meaning is the ordinary historical or grammatical one; and the second meaning is the one the cultist brings to Scripture from the particular metaphysical system or religious system he is pushing.18. The senses of Scripture. Even Josephus has nothing of it.7, Two names stand out in Alexandrian Jewish allegorization: Aristobulus and Philo. Amillennialist Schaff is fair when he describes the great hermeneutical failings of Origen: “His great defect is the neglect of the grammatical and historical sense and his constant desire to find a hidden mystic meaning. Cassian (Collationes xiv.8), reinterpreting a for- Introductory Comment During the first centuries of Christianity, the Fathers of the Western Church, such as Jerome, Hilary, Ambrose and Augustine, tend to spiritually interpret the Holy Scripture, combining the Old with the New Testament, suggesting that Bible passages can be interpreted through a variety of prisms. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. 11:3. In my previous post on allegorical interpretation, I wrote about Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish interpreter who lived during the time of Jesus (d. A.D. 50). Augustine, On Christian Teaching Preface. (City of God 17.4), To be sure, we must not suppose that all the events in the narrative are symbolical; but those which have no symbolism are interwoven in the story for the sake of those which have this further significance. Allegorical interpretation of the liturgy was totally rejected during the period of liturgical reform, and even earlier by liturgists who tended towards rationalistic or reductionistic explanations (Fr. Augustine got around this by refusing to take scripture at face value – and instead accept it as allegorical And one will discover that Augustine … This remains the case today. (The Literal Meaning of Genesis 1.1.1), All these things [Jerusalem, Sarah and Hagar, the smitten rock] stood for something other than what they were, but all the same they were themselves bodily realities. In other words the literal reading is a sort of code, which needs to be deciphered to determine the more significant and hidden meaning. For example, Genesis 3 introduces a talking serpent, which many Christians understand to be Satan in disguise. Augustine. Proud member This is so much the case, that Peter Brown has said that “the last three books of his Confessions are in many ways the most strictly autobiographical part of the whole book.”[4] If you haven’t read the Confessions, the last three books are a relentless, kaleidoscopic, and dizzying interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis. 2 Roy B. Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications, 1991), 29. 23), Israel as a destroyed vine (Psa. Origen was a Hellenistic scholar who was thought to have been born in Egypt and educated in Alexandria around 185. Based upon the Platonic division of the human person into body, soul, and spirit, Origen’s three levels of biblical interpretation were divided into the literal sense, the moral sense, and the allegorical sense. “Literal is not opposed to spiritual but to figurative; spiritual is an antithesis on the one hand to material, and on the other to carnal (in a bad sense). The allegorical interpretation of Scripture can be traced back to Alexandrian Jews, notably Philo who lived during the time of Christ and who applied Greek philosophy to portions of the Septuagint translation of the Scripture in an attempt to remove or reinterpret those passages that attributed human characteristics to God (anthropomorphism) or that exposed the immorality of … (Confessions 12.14.17), For such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that, even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else, from boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and with talents greater than I possess, I would still be making daily progress in discovering their treasures. . They each and all fail to explain the facts and relations of the record, and treat John as a half-demented sentimental old man, trying to make a grand poem out of a few dim anticipations touching the earthly fortunes of the Church, which could have been better told in one well-written chapter. I've compile several quotations by Early Church Fathers showing their unified allegorical interpretation of the Genesis 1-2 narrative. The Rise of Allegorical Interpretation, “Continuity and Discontinuity: The Debate throughout Church History,”, “How Has Revelation Been Viewed Interpretively?,”, California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. 5. (On Christian Teaching 2.9.14), The fulfillment and end of the law and all the divine scriptures is to love the thing which must be enjoyed and the thing which together with us can enjoy that thing… Anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them. In Bible study all of us are trying to find and grasp the meaning of the author we are reading… As long as each interpreter is endeavoring to find in the holy scriptures the meaning of the author who wrote it, what evil is it if an exegesis he gives is one shown to be true by You, light of all sincere souls, even if the author whom he is reading did not have that idea and, though he had grasped a truth, had not discerned that seen by the interpreter? However, many of his principles crop up elsewhere. Certainly the Spirit of God who worked through the author foresaw without any doubt that it would present itself to a reader or listener, or rather planned that it should present itself, because it too is based on the truth. Augustine, Confessions 3.5.6 The normal interpretation of literature is inherently literal. Rather, the Fathers used allegory to explore the theological meaning of Scripture, in light of the historical reality of the salvific work of Christ in space and time. . because of his desire to avoid [seeming] contradictions and blasphemies.8. 7. . The surface meaning lies open before us and charms beginners. 4. from 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God (Inter-Varsity Press, 1958), pp. 2. Consider this an introduction on the topic for your reading pleasure. Change ). The Fathers believed that, by doing allegorical readings of Scripture, they were following the practices they found in Scripture. Augustine’s personal history can also be viewed through the same lens. allegory history. A.D. 54) . Thus, interpretation steered his spiritual history, from heretic to skeptic to catholic. Everywhere the measure of time is counted by days, without mention of nights. At the same time it always reveals what is new to the renewed eyes of believers. Barth is way tougher. Augustine’s Exposition: An Example The following example of Augustine‟s exposition is from his collection of homilies from the Gospel of John titled “On this passage of John: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God,” and … Augustine’s interpretation of Scripture and his methods of interpretation set the church up for the next thousand years after him. What specific hermeneutic principles did St. Augustine use in his own interpretation of Scripture and how consistent was he in the application of those principles? Its emphasis on allegorical interpretation of Scripture, carried out within very loose parameters, was especially significant, and it remains of interest to philosophers for its subtle and influential. Allegorical interpretation, a third type of hermeneutics, interprets the biblical narratives as having a second level of reference beyond those persons, things, and events explicitly mentioned in the text. “His great defect is the neglect of the grammatical and historical sense and his constant desire to find a hidden mystic meaning. . Now if this were the case, the figures themselves could not possibly have been distinguished, inasmuch as the verities would not have been declared, out of which the figurative language is stretched. He explained that heAs a former Manichee, Augustine had believed a literal interpretation of the text led to ridiculous ideas about God. A separate presentation of Allegorical Interpretation has not yet been written, and therefore reference must be made to works treating of Scripture interpretation in general: Rosenmueller, Historia Interpretationis Librorum Sacrorum, iv. Augustine offered two allegorical interpretations of the meaning of the six days. ... with the adventurous difference that it does not matter whether the author of the particular passage intended an allegorical meaning consciously or not. 80:8-16), Nebuchadnezzar and Egypt as two eagles (Eze. Kazark. It began with Greek philosophy and is foreign to the way people in the Old Testament interpreted Scripture. Augustine at first rejected scripture because it did not conform to the Greek Stoics – especially Cicero. Philo (ca. Danny Coleman, The Danger of Allegorical Bible Interpretation; The dangers of allegorical interpretation, Part 1; Basically, when you interpret Scripture allegorically, you don’t allow the text to speak for itself in exegesis (obtaining meaning out of the text) but choose to impose another “deeper meaning” on the text – which we call eisegesis (reading something into the text). Augustine’s Development from Allegorical to Literal Interpretation. (City of God 16.2), What wonderful profundity there is in your utterances! We'll send you an email with steps on how to reset your password. Did his own allegorical style of writing work against his advocacy for texts having literal meanings? One may be able to get a sense of the words and exegete that authorial intention of a passage but if that has not led the reader to a greater love for God and neighbor that interpretation is in vain. On the one hand, he tended to interpret the Bible literally, but when it came to eschatology he interpreted that spiritually or allegorically. Some of them, like Origen and Augustine, were also educated people who were schooled in Greek philosophy and who were introduced to the writings of Philo. The allegorical method suggests that there is deeper meaning underneath the literal text. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Perhaps the author too saw that very meaning in the words which we are trying to understand. It is sometimes referred to as the quadriga, a reference to the Roman chariot that was … It found acceptance also with the Roman church and among the leaders of the Reformation. One of the beliefs that became dominate, especially in late-Medieval times, was the belief that every … (Sermon 4.9), It is a wonderful and beneficial thing that the Holy Spirit organized the holy scripture so as to satisfy hunger by means of its plainer passages and remove boredom by means of its obscurer ones. Perhaps the most famous instance of allegorical interpretation is Origen’s explanation of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Aristobulus, who lived around 160 B.C., believed that Greek philosophy borrowed from the Old Testament, and that those teachings could be uncovered only by allegorizing. ed. He even goes further in this direction than the Gnostics, who everywhere saw transcendental, unfathomable mysteries.”, “Aquinas put forward a threefold argument against allegory: (1) it is susceptible to deception; (2) without a clear method it leads to confusion; and (3) it lacks a sense of the proper integration of Scripture.”. And when the narrator mentioned them he was not employing figurative language, but giving an explicit account of things which had a forward reference that was figurative. As we will see as we progress, allegorical interpretation is frequently used by Christians who hope to avoid the plain implication of the teaching of Scripture. 4 “In the history of allegorical interpretation of Scripture it is not denied that there is a literal, historical, or grammatical sense to Scripture, but it is depreciated. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1970), 124. 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. It takes that which God has graciously revealed to the saints and subjects it to the dark vagaries of human imagination and speculation. The two pence given by the Good Samaritan to the innkeeper has the hidden meanings of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. 22 J. It is rare, for instance, to see a well-ordered or definitive work by an amillennial interpreter setting forth positively and consistently his prophetic interpretations. Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of Bible prophecy dominated the understanding of eschatology during the medieval period. 20 B.C. The Interpretation of Scripture by James I. Packer. Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 155-216) was influenced by Philo and proposed a system of interpretation where any passage of the Bible might have up to five meanings.9 Thereafter, Origin, who studied Platonic philosophy and is thought to have been a pupil of Clement, went so far as to say that Scripture itself demands that the interpreter employ the allegorical method. Pope Gregory the Great’s interpretation of the Book of Job is equally disheartening: ‘The patriarch’s three friends denote the heretics; his seven sons are the twelve apostles; his seven thousand sheep are God’s faithful people; and his three thousand hump-backed camels are the depraved Gentiles!’6. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Because the book of Revelation is categorized as apocalyptic literature and contains numerous symbols, it undergoes a great deal of abuse due to allegorical interpretation. St. Augustine, whom most consider the greatest of all the Church Fathers, spends the last three “books” of his Confessions interpreting the spare outline of the Creation recorded in Genesis. It is the ‘fleshly’ or the ‘superficial’ understanding of Scripture.”—Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation, 3rd rev. I’ve only read portions of his History of Doctrine so far. It found acceptance also with the Roman church and among the leaders of the Reformation. Allegorical interpretation of the Bible is an interpretive method that assumes that the Bible has various levels of meaning and tends to focus on the spiritual sense, which includes the allegorical sense, the moral (or tropological) sense, and the anagogical sense, as opposed to the literal sense. Augustine learned that the Old Testament could be interpreted in a figurative or allegorical sense in such a way that what Augustine had previously thought problematic and uncouth could now be read in a salutary … 1 “Literal is not opposed to spiritual but to figurative; spiritual is an antithesis on the one hand to material, and on the other to carnal (in a bad sense). Augustine had much to say about figurative and literal language. The future ethereal New Jerusalem was where all would be fulfilled, rather than in any renewed version of this world. Again using allegorical interpretation of Ps 121:1-2 “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. (Letter 137, 1.3), 1. Did his own allegorical style of writing work against his advocacy for texts having literal meanings? . These works had included such ideas as taking the days of Genesis 1 as 7 epochs of redemptive-historical history, and 7 stages of the Christian life.De Genesis contra Manichaeos 1.23.35-1.25.43, in Augustine, On Genesis, 62-68. Antiquity was associated with authority in the Hellenistic world. 17), wisdom as a housewife (Prov. [1] 1. These works had included such ideas as taking the days of Genesis 1 as 7 epochs of redemptive …

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