The Reasons Behind Allegorical Interpretation’s Fading Away in Modernity

It is a notable fact that the practice of interpreting Holy Scripture allegorically diminishes in proportion to the advance of modernity–until we reach now our present time, when allegorizing has been almost entirely abandoned.

Here, I want to try and explain the slow but ultimate death of allegorizing, by identifying two factors. One factor is increasing pressure upon the letters of Holy Scripture (and by consequence the literal sense) for the purpose of determining theological questions—pressure which arises in the context of Protestant-Roman Catholic disputes. The other factor is decreasing pressure to interpret allegorically at all, as a consequence of philosophical change—in short, the eclipse of peripatetic philosophy and/or Aristotelianism, in favor of eclectic and/or competing philosophies.

Speaking provocatively, we can call these two factors the rise of Protestantism and the fall of Aristotle; and they work together as a one-two punch. Yet these factors do not just explain the loss of allegorizing; they also render it extremely difficult to maintain today as a viable Christian practice in the aftermath of modernity (although, nota bene, it must be maintained). Thus, accounts which laud and attempts to recover patristic exegesis cannot just confront the loss of allegorizing, but must also deal with both these factors, if those accounts are to be more than empty praise and those attempts at all successful.

Before handling these factors further, however, we must explain what is meant by allegorizing. We can then consider each factor in turn and exhibit its relevance for the loss of allegorizing.

Allegorizing: The Disciplined Practice of Understanding Otherwise

In explaining what is meant by allegorizing, we face an immediate problem: allegory is said in many ways, i.e., it has many definitions. And what is worse, some of those definitions are overlapping—covering the same terrain, but mapping it in different ways.

We can give a quick sketch which would be recognizable by someone who studies scholastic medievals. In these figures, the allegorical sense can refer to (1) any or all senses besides the literal sense, which is taken from signifying letters/words; (2) the literal sense which arises from a metaphor, e.g., when God having a hand is written, but him being strong is to be understood; (3) the spiritual sense, taken from signifying realities (not letters), e.g., when the historical reality the Red Sea crossing signifies our baptism, signification which this reality had before it was written about in Exodus; or (4) a certain species of the spiritual sense (now itself a genus), namely the one which pertains to faith or what is to be believed. This last is the one used in the medieval quadriga, usually identified as the literal, the allegorical, the anagogical, and the moral/tropological senses, but involving both signifying letters/words (yielding the literal sense), as well as signifying realities (yielding the allegorical, anagogical, or moral senses, all species of the spiritual sense).

Again, this sketch is familiar to students of scholasticism; but for patristic scholars who think with the fathers, the allegorical sense just means any sense besides the one which would take the proposition more or less properly, by contrast to the literal or ad litteram sense, which takes the proposition so. A simple quotation from Augustine comes to mind: taking the proposition literally means understanding as the letter says; taking it allegorically, “understanding otherwise than the letter says.”[1] Remarkably, this is surprisingly close to colloquial uses of “literally” in English today—as when someone says, “When I said the fish was six feet long, I didn’t mean it literally!”

However, this renders the (patristic) allegorical sense a catch-all category, and this not only proves confusing to many (historically and today), but it also provides a covering for many exegetical sins (historically and today). For on this line, the so-called spiritual sense (taken from signifying realities, not letters/words) is housed under allegory, together with the metaphorical literal sense: both the scriptural proposition God having a hand and the historically significant reality the Red Sea crossing yield the allegorical sense. What is more, many fathers will retain more easily identifiable metaphors (sometimes understood/explained more as rhetorical figures) under the ad litteram sense. Thus e.g. the interpretation of God having a hand, namely him being strong, could still reduce to the ad litteram sense; but the interpretation of him being angered, e.g., him punishing us, would likely not reduce to the ad litteram sense—even though both are technically understood as metaphors, and both (from the scholastic perspective) yield only the literal sense.

Accordingly, there can be tension in dividing between ad litteram/literal versus allegorical interpretations. We cannot resolve that tension here, and the above gestures must suffice for us. Actually, just giving gestures (with awareness of complexities and variations, and ability to explain such!) will likely reflect better the complex phenomenon of patristic interpretation. One might find it difficult to class this phenomenon according to the scholastic ways of doing things. But when it comes to patristic allegorizing specifically, the basic rule of thumb will hold: any sense which takes the scriptural proposition at face value is the ad litteram interpretation; but any other has embarked upon doing allegory, whether that allegory derives from the letters or the realities themselves signified by such.

Following then the patristic way, which is our intention, allegorizing is the disciplined practice of understanding otherwise than the letters say—and I underline the disciplined practice, not the unhinged. Descending from what the letters facially say into the underlying depths of allegory is a controlled procedure, and it follows very strict and thorough-going rules—even rules for initially beginning that descent at all.

This definition of allegorizing in mind, we can advance to consider the two factors of its demise. Let us begin first with the fall of Aristotle, but advance to our point without haste.

The Fall of Aristotle: The Philosophy Necessary to Allegorize

As the disciplined practice of understanding otherwise, allegorizing Holy Scripture arises in the wake of two assumptions: (1) Holy Scripture returns true judgments; but also (2) various scriptural propositions, if understood literally, would be false. In line with this (and assuming that one is committed to Holy Scripture’s truthfulness), someone’s awareness of the necessity to allegorize corresponds exactly to his awakening to the fact that various scriptural propositions are false when taken literally.

This is important, so let us use a traditional example to illustrate the point: the various and sundry scriptural propositions that God is impassioned, e.g., him being angered, him being regretful, etc. Holy Scripture rather often says that God is angered. Yet only to the extent that one becomes aware that God being angered is false and him not being so is true, can one avoid becoming slain by the letter and instead practice ἀλληγορία. The question then is how can one become aware of this?

One could become aware, of course, by reading Holy Scripture in line with the Catholic faith and/or by following patristic or scholastic authorities. Thus, one knows that according to the Catholic faith, God being impassible (i.e., without passions—anger, regret, etc., being among them) is true; and one knows from St. Augustine that anger is not in God, or from St. Thomas that such is far from him. As the field of one’s intellect is populated with true negative judgments like these, one gradually approaches the concrete scriptural propositions with the allegorical posture necessary to achieve truth. You say to yourself: “All the various and sundry ‘God being impassioned’ scriptural propositions would be false, if they were understood as the other parts of the contradictions whose negatives I now hold (summed together as God being impassible). Accordingly, when I read them, I cannot understand them ad litteram; rather, I must understand them altogether otherwise, i.e., interpret them allegorically.” This is the sort of thought process that every allegorizer has.

Of course, in professional or academic environments (for lack of better terms), one ought not just proceed mindlessly through authorities—good and helpful as they are. One ought to proceed instead through rationes, intellectual arguments. And here we finally enter the philosophical terrain, and the actual point of our section.

We need to populate the field of our intellect with true negative judgments like God being impassible. (I continue to use this as a stock example, because it is a good one.) To be sure, this in itself is already a philosophical business, but there is more: we need to populate our intellect with intellectual reasons to hold these negative judgments as true (in scholastic terms, to assent to such judgments). Moreover, those reasons not only must be sufficient to make us hold the negative judgments as true, but they must be so sufficient that we can withstand intellectual reasons to hold the opposites. In fact, these reasons in favor of the negatives must be so sufficient that we even hold these judgments going directly against the grain of supernatural authorities which read explicitly the opposite, viz., all the concrete scriptural propositions which say that God is variously impassioned. In other (and Thomist) terms, these reasons must be demonstrative or scientific, resulting in the strongest sort of intellectual certainty and making for the firmest of minds. Only then can one hold the line unfazed and withstand the furious barrage of scriptural propositions. Although Holy Scripture says so frequently and frankly that it is, we still judge that it is not, holding this as true with the firmness of scientia which arises from demonstration, and which only is sufficient to refuse the letter and allegorize instead.

This last point is the crux of the issue. There are of course many reasons which incline one to refuse to understand ad litteram and allegorize. One could even proceed through authorities: we just trust Origen and follow his example, for example. Yet intellectually speaking, we need something more. After all, we are facing down scriptural propositions which (more often than not) give no intellectual reasons to take them allegorically, and which in fact give intellectual reasons to take them literally. For this, only scientific certainty about the truth of the negative judgment suffices: scientia, as Thomas Aquinas knew well, is the only intellectually sufficient principle for allegorizing Holy Scripture. We must acquire scientia about God being impassible, for only from this principle can we understand the scriptural propositions of him being angered as altogether otherwise.

We thus have the philosophical business of populating our intellect with philosophical judgments; and we have the same philosophical business of populating demonstrative or scientific reasons in favor of those philosophical judgments. At the risk of being simplistic, this philosophical business was commonly engaged within generally peripatetic or Aristotelian philosophy up until the dawn of the early modern period. It created sufficient intellectual pressure to allegorize Holy Scripture—whether that intellectual pressure was the somewhat automatic “God obviously has no passions,” or the high-scholastic and philosophically demonstrated “he definitely has none.”

However, rather quickly the philosophical environment radically changes. It is not our object to outline this fully, but only to say that the resultant eclectic and/or competing philosophies disable the principles of demonstration, and accordingly decrease the intellectual pressure to allegorize. And this decreasing pressure is the first of the one-two punch.

The Rise of Protestantism: The Polemics Forcing One to Literalize

The second is increased pressure to literalize, which arises in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, the practice of allegorizing among early moderns stands in inverse proportion to the advance of Protestantism.

This is not to pick on Protestants, despite the fact that earlier figures (e.g., Luther or Calvin) certainly have choice words for allegorizing (or allegorists like Origen); that later figures (e.g., Whitaker) generally hold that allegorizing is a Jesuitical ploy (on this, more below); and that broadly speaking, allegorizing itself has never really taken root in Protestantism. Still, we see a similar decrease of allegorizing in Roman Catholicism, although admittedly less sharp or severe. One might retort that the ancient practice is only smuggled now under other forms (e.g., typology), especially in Protestantism; but examination will quickly prove that these “other forms” are frankensteinian monsters: patristic allegorizing butchered, sawn up, parts reconfigured, sewed back together, and then the whole “animated” again with the necessary bolt of lightning. No, patristic allegorizing does not survive. The question though is why.

In order to determine why, we need to recall that no allegorical interpretation can be used to solve doctrinal disputes. An oft-quoted saying from Dionysius is relevant here: theologia symbolica non est argumentativa, symbolic theology is not argumentative. What this saying means is that propositions which are intended/understood allegorically are not intellectually probative for either part of a contradiction. Said otherwise, for determining theological questions like whether God is or is not wise (i.e., which part of this contradiction is true?), allegory does not incline someone in favor of either part; only the literal sense argues.

Expanding this, remember how, for example, scholastics determine theological questions, namely either (1) by way of an intellectual argument, or (2) by way of auctoritas, an authority (roughly, a prooftext). To determine whether God is or is not a body, I can give philosophical demonstrations (SCG I, 20), or I can offer an authority, e.g., this proposition from Christ, viz., “that God is spirit” (ST I, q. 3 a. 1, sc. 1). Either one (although differently) determines the negative as true.

This latter method is relevant for us, particularly when a theologian is deploying the concrete propositions found in Holy Scripture. Of course, every theologian knows that it is extremely easy to convince someone to hold a certain part of a contradiction by citing to them Holy Scripture, but that it is extremely hard to conclude one part of a contradiction as true from a certain proposition in Holy Scripture. Most of Holy Scripture is what we would call today natural-language sentences, which are obviously argumentative of a sort, but their form (from a theologian’s or logician’s perspective) is improper: they are not suitable, for example, for syllogism. (Earlier scholastic theologians like Anselm are especially grappling with this.)

Accordingly, determining questions through scriptural authorities is rendered difficult in proportion to the impropriety of the concrete proposition. Yet when we enter altogether improper territory, namely when the proposition must be understood allegorically, then we cannot use this authority at all to argue. Syllogisms do not work when the predicate of a premise is equivocal (recall this was a point which Duns Scotus was very worried about against St. Thomas). If God being strong is contested, then I cannot argue from the scriptural proposition that God has a hand—although the latter was indeed put for the former. In fact, not only is God having a hand not conducive for arguing true conclusions, but it is conducive for arguing false ones—as, for example, that because God has a hand, therefore he is a body. And just as the proper response to the latter argument is “metaphor argues nothing,” just so would be the response to someone who used the former argument: God having a hand cannot conclude him being strong.

All this has been necessary throat-clearing for again our actual point. And that is that in Protestant-Roman Catholic debates, we have a sudden set of contradictions which are contested as to which part is true. More, we are in a context where both opponents must proceed more and more only through authorities, and namely those of Holy Scripture—as “authorities from canonical writings [the theologian] uses properly, but arguing from necessity; whereas authorities of others learned of the church, [the theologian] argues properly, but only plausibly,” Thomas reminds.[2] Yet all scriptural propositions which are understood allegorically cannot be used in any of these contests. This accordingly increases pressure to literalize, on account of the need to proceed (if I may) sola Scriptura.

As a concluding aside, there are two interesting historical points which are confirmation of the above. The first is the fact that from the Protestant perspective, allegorizing undercuts the perspicuity and authority of Holy Scripture to itself be the judge in determining theological questions. It is then treated under these very topics, in standard Protestant textbooks (e.g., Turretin in his Elenctics). The second is the suspicion that allegorizing, if/when used, is a Jesuitical ploy to seemingly (but in fact fictitiously) conclude their part of contradiction from Holy Scripture. This suspicion is so ubiquitous among Protestants that one can find it expressed by almost any mainstream Protestant theologian in the early modern period (William Whitaker, in his Disputations of Holy Scripture, is one important proponent of this). From the Protestant side, allegorizing is viewed as a threat to the Reformation project.

Conclusion

We have attempted to identify the two factors that undercut allegorizing and eventually induce its demise, and especially to exhibit why those two factors are actually relevant and exercise such aggressive force. This is not to say that these two were the only factors, of course; but both philosophical changes and the polemical context bear directly and negatively (although in different ways) on the practice of allegory.

Today there are calls for a return to the fullness of patristic methods of interpretation, allegorizing being among them. Yet recovering this tradition today is not just a matter of copy/pasting interpretive techniques. There must also, and perhaps firstly, be the concern to remove the actual impediments for those techniques to exist and be used. Recovery of allegorizing assumes the prior recovery of the philosophical systems which once rendered it necessary, as well as adjustment to the place and use of scriptural authorities in the context of polemical debate.

Seeking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through prayer