Allegorical Reading

One hears complaints about allegorical reading of Scripture. Origen is the acknowledged master of such a reading strategy. But there is a presupposition going into such judgment — that the goal is to read Scripture and interpret it. What if the goal is not to interpret Scripture, but to interpret reality, using Scripture as an interpretive medium?

What if Scripture is primarily a storehouse of literary and theological motifs that are powerfully and uniquely suited to convey a special class of truths about God, about human life, about the Church, about salvation, about religious problems, about the proclivities of the human soul throughout our myriad pasts and futures? What if the task were then to convey those special truths, about how things are, using the guise of Scripture to do so, in various ways suited to various times and tempers? And thereby to lend insight, understanding, and authoritative weight into those truths because of the very medium through which they are expressed? Would such be a misuse of Scripture? Would such be a wrong interpretation “of” it?

Let’s take a concrete case. Think for a moment about the problem of the Christian Church’s appropriation of  Jewish Law. What is the Church’s relation to the Law? A network of complex thoughts immediately enters our mind when we consider this question. Would it be helpful to “see” all those thoughts resolved into a clear picture by means of a metaphorical vision? A metaphorical vision drawn from Scripture?

Now hear Origen —

I think Pharoah’s daughter can be regarded as the Church which is gathered from the Gentiles… This Church, therefore, coming from the Gentiles finds Moses in the marsh lying cast off by his own people and exposed, and gives him out to be reared. He is reared by his own family and spends his childhood there. When, however, “he has grown stronger” (Exo. 2.10), he is brought to her and adopted as a son. We have already frequently argued in many places that the Law is referred to as Moses. The Church, therefore, coming to the waters of baptism, also took up the Law. The Law, however, had been enclosed in a “basket” and smeared with pitch and “bitumen” (Exo. 2.3). The “basket” is a kind of covering woven together from twigs of papyrus or even formed from the bark of trees. The infant placed within this basket was seen exposed. The Law, therefore, was lying helpless enclosed in coverings of this kind, besmeared with pitch and bitumen. It was dirty and enclosed in cheap and offensive meanings of the Jews until the Church should come from the Gentiles and take it up from the muddy and marshy places and appropriate it to itself within courts of wisdom and royal houses. The Law, however, spends its childhood with its own people. With those who are not able to understand it spiritually it is little, an infant, and has milk as its food. But when Moses comes to the Church, when he enters the house of the Church, he grows stronger and more robust. For when the veil of the letter is removed “perfect and solid food” (cf. Heb. 5.12-14) is discovered in its text.

~ Origen, Homily on Exodus

There is no need to read anti-Semitism into Origen’s commentary, for anyone can treat God’s Law well or poorly, including Christians (of various parties), Jews (of various parties), and pagans. What God gives can be misunderstood, covered over with pitch, veiled, made ineffective and powerless as an infant by anyone.

There was indeed debate in the early centuries of the Christian era between Christians and Jews about how to to read Scripture, “the Law and the Prophets.” See for example Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. Origen’s point is the necessity to seek out true reading, to unveil what is given by God for the good of our souls. In a short comment just previous to the passage quoted above, Origen called the two midwives who attend Hebrew births “a figure of the two testaments.” He says, “Souls, therefore, which are born in the Church are attended by these testaments, as if by midwives, because the entire antidote of instruction is conferred on them from the reading of the Scriptures.”

The point is not just to read and interpret the words of Scripture for their own sake, but to receive “the entire antidote of instruction” which is conferred on us from or through the reading of the text. The texts are midwives only. They must give birth to living souls.

Origen’s further claim is that the Christian Church is able to penetrate the heavy layers of sticky darkness and murk that lay over the Law, and therefore over the possibility of giving birth to sons of God, by shining forth the light of Christ. Christ is the key to unlock the Scriptures, the “Law and the Prophets.” He is a cure and antidote to what ails us, Physician of souls. He removes the veil, not only from a text, but from the way to life itself.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”