Liberal Madness, Conservative Treachery, and Jesus: part III: Allegory

Liberal Madness: Allegory, What it is, What it’s not.

This is an article in a series. See below:

Church History: What Went Wrong? part 1
Liberal Madness, Conservative Treachery, and Jesus: part II
Liberal Madness, Conservative Treachery, and Jesus: part III: Allegory
Liberal Madness, Conservative Treachery, and Jesus: part IV: Allegory
Liberals, Conservatives, and Jesus: part V: Male and Female
Liberals, Conservatives, and Jesus, part VI: Politics and Religion

From the last post in this series, I entered into the subject of parabolic speech. This tack is necessary because we are going to talk about what is really going on in the Garden of Eden by assuming that it’s all parabolic, intended by God to hide and reveal something critical about us and our world, and something which that world, including our Christian divines, have not seen.

“Allegory” is one of those terms that many Christians assume is particular speciation of symbolism that is a corrupt form of interpretation, but their practice is that the non-specialized definition applies and is vital to most all of their interpretative assumptions.

The assumption in allegory, in accordance with the dictionary definition of allegory as applied to a literary form, is merely the use of concrete forms to refer to ideas.

• A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one¹.
• A story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation².
• A popular form of literature in which a story points to a hidden or symbolic parallel meaning. Certain elements, such as people, things, and happenings in the story, point to corresponding elements in another realm or level of meaning. The closer the resemblances between the two realms, the more detailed is the allegory. The best allegories are interesting, coherent stories in their own right and through the story provide new insight into the realm they depict (e.g., Pilgrim’s Progress and The Narnia Chronicles). Semitic parables, including the Gospel parables, have varying amounts of allegorical elements. Those with many corresponding elements in both realms are properly called allegories.³.

The last, from Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, goes on to imply that the difference between true and false biblical allegory, which are essentially parables, is that one was not intended by the author and the other was. But how do we know this?

It is obvious that this is an attempt by us to throttle the implications of allegory, which seems to have no means of bearing in rendering a meaning. Indeed this is true, that is without a single bearing operating under the operation of signification. We have to keep in mind that this is man’s natural sense of allegory, outside of a particular biblical influence, and since it is outside it is by definition unrestrained and subject to myriad problems.

In the fallen world we like having the authority to decide the meaning of an interpretative result. We arbitrarily choose the result, any result, as acceptable as long as it falls within the control of a Phyla meaning which is also fallen. The danger with allegory spoken of by our interpreters is a real danger. Allegory, as it stands, is quite the incorrigible child of interpretation. When the method is only “there is a spiritual meaning behind this symbol,” without any attempt to locate and set permanently a single spiritual Phyla into which this meaning is expected to come, what happens is that you use allegory to mean whatever you want. This usually means that, if you have some pet doctrine, just pull out allegory and the Bible will endorse it.

We have to remind ourselves that the danger is not allegory. The danger, like anything else, is dangerous only when it is not controlled by a single transcendent bearing given by God to control it. When it’s one that could just as well come out of the intellect and imaginations of Man who acts autonomously.

So, what is this Phyla of meaning, given by God, that controls allegorical results that prevent the chaos and absurdities that abound when trying to divine meaning outside of direct transcendent influence? What is that influence?

It’s not a “reason,” put into service for human systems and emotional control over the unknown, for sure. For example, the attempt to control allegory first by the intentionality principle of the author in a parable.  The intentionality principle falls as much under the idea of allegorical dissociation and lack of control from transcendence as is a certain interpreted meaning for a parable by allegory. Setting the intention behind a human author, and only when he plainly states “this is a parable,” is itself meaning for the purpose of people, not God. Its a principle possible declared to be divine, but can’t show its origin any more than telling a child “don’t talk to strangers.” This starts allegory down the road as locked to insular anthropocentric priorities by forcing a principle of steerage that makes sure any subsequent, single interpretation is informed by insular anthropocentric priorities.

Well, this takes us right back to the normal definition of allegory, that is still much like “parable:” basically a symbol, a natural thing that hides a deeper, more important thing. The biblical difference between good and bad parabolic interpretations is not assumed placed in the dishonest hands of man, and the difference discovered from directly trying to figure out what the author intended. The difference between good and bad comes from assuming that the author and the text,  taken as a unit, are using the same overriding interpretative priority that also is supposed to override our corrupt religious preoccupations and biases in interpreting the text. God decides, and we know this and what he has decided to dominate meaning by what is irresistibly the constant epistemic theme of scripture: the prophetic one.

If the prophetic subject is both the Holy magistrate over our interpretation and is also his main intention in parabolic speech, then the schizophrenia ends. Not necessarily excessive and extravagant interpretations, but the schizophrenia of trying to walk the middle line between here and way over there.

The bottom line is that since the Bible is a heavily symbolic book,  any other stratagem is our way of slapping around the allegorical principle of hidden meaning until it obeys and either makes it into a fiction or a religious talisman that gives up nothing remarkable without our naivete and personal bias.

So, yes, there are abuses and crazy results, but the crazy results are not only when allegory gives too much but gives too little. When the agenda at the root of the bad involves opening up the rules too wide so that the symbol can mean anything one wishes or tightening them up so tight so it renders nothing or only prosaisms. Both are by definition a rebellion against the idea of objective Transcendence speaking of itself consistently through but under the text. We at least should enough insight to see that the kinds of interpretations that we typically entertain as ultimate insights of the Divine are far from what should be expected of a “revelation” of transcendence.  It’s easy to remind ourselves that we are as responsible for our definition of what is allegorical, or parabolic, as we are of what we interpret as the meaning of a particular parable, but not so easy to remind ourselves that the result of both must be, if about followers of Christ, Holy.

αλληγορεω, allegory (from Gal 4:24), is generally taken to mean the “spiritual sense” (remez, drash, and sod) rather than the plain sense (p’shat).

Biblical Allegory

For allegory, the arguments are often not that allegory is forbidden, for it can hardly be argued that the New Testament does not have rich examples of it. The usual warning is that plain sense and the spiritual sense are to be used to render a meaning with one or the other in the place of preference, with allegory serving the function of amplification or clarification.⁴

But when allegory is placed first, not last in priority, it has the positive benefit of always assuming the presence of a deeper meaning irrespective of human hermeneutical binding methods. It is only when what sits behind allegory in this is out of the insular mind and heart that subjectivism starts to rule the results, which has no particular priority other than self/sect-fulfillment.

By contrast, the historical-grammatical approach wants to put the plain sense as magistrate over the depth of meaning unless something very clear and compelling advises us otherwise. What is positive about this is that it wants us to be careful in applying allegory only by context, language, culture, and history, or “only when another sense other than the plain sense makes more sense.”  It’s intended as a control that spiritualizing lacks. The downside is that it makes it incapable of seeing allegory, or the parabolic, for how dominant it is, even going so far that NT may not be using the Old Testament to prove the Messiahship of Jesus except when stated or when no other alternative is found. This is a huge mistake, every bit as much as liberal spiritualizing.

When we think about this messianic priority first in God’s mind, we are reminded of the fact the fulfilled results of messianic prophecy was a sod so deep and mysterious that virtually no one was able to predict what Christ actually did and why he was going to do it (Mat 13:17, Luke 10:24, Eph 3:5, 1Pe 1:11). It did not matter to God that people were not prepared for it, but that this was his will and it must be known, understood and obeyed. So much so that even the angels had no clue (1Pe 1:12). And this messianic prophecy, both in utterance and fulfillment,  was not God’s attempt to be clear, but mysterious. The basic allegorical principle that must be maintained is that all Bible symbols apply to the physical fulfillment of a promise of a future act by the Messiah as it applies to what those acts mean, which is spiritual.

Sarah and Hagar are used in the historico-grammatical method to illustrate a way that allegory can be properly understood and controlled, but it only adds to its transcendent break.  The interpreters say that this is Paul’s attempt to be clear, not deep, about faith, using Hagar and Sarah as allegories only so that the idea of the priority of faith will rest in the mind easier than his “propositional logic.”⁵ But this can be thought reasonable only if “faith,” Pauls’s subject here, is not presuppositionally determined by a generalization bias in defining theological words. Indeed the “faith” concept, as used by these interpreters, and the whole of Christendom for that matter, is so generalized and not pointed to a single scriptural motivation. We open up the theological concept “faith” uncontrolled by a single divine intention and think we even out the sin, instead of compounding it, by the piety of taking Bible symbols and restrict meaning by a single rational intention. But what is good for the deeper meaning of theological concepts, and the motivators of faith is what is good for the meaning of the Parable of the Sower, and they all must be the same and of otherworldly origin.

What I am saying is that “faith,” the assumed dominant theme of this Abraham, Sarah and Hagar passage, is then being pushed gratuitously into a reverse allegorical or parabolic assumption as a meaning that means basically “faith in anything about the Bible you so wish.” This is what really want as a principle of interpretation. The fact is, however, that the passage in question very finely establishes a precise faith content, done so by intentionally using Sarah, Hagar, Mount Sinai and Jerusalem, and unintentionally, or unconsciously on the part of Paul, by using an overriding Divine prophetic hermeneutic.

 Galatians 4:22-31 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

• Abraham is the quintessential prophet of the coming prophetic faith in Messiah
• He had two sons, which are typical prophecies of a prophesied faith type in the Messiah
• Isaac was the son of “the promise,” the prophecy. Ishmael is the son of another kind of worldly faith.
• They are two covenants (a covenant is a prophecy, a promise by God of a future fulfillment). One is the Old, the other the New, represented by Mt. Sinai and Jerusalem
• Those of the faith in the Law, the unfulfilled promise, are in bondage. Those of the faith in the Messiah which is prophesied and fulfilled are in a kind of faith that makes them free of this bondage
• Paul cements this by quoting the messianic prophecy of Isa 54:1-5.
• Christians are “children of the promise.” This is also taken figuratively, not just children that are the result of a promise, but children who are distinguished in their faith as having knowledge and faith in messianic prophecy and its historical realization.
• Paul’s message is clearly paraphrased “be not children of any other kind of faith that is founded on any other reason, but cast this kind of faith out from you.”

My view is that what is not a priority here is “spiritualizing” or  “plain sense,” but that there are no such things when we speak of the biblical text as a real revelational document of things assumed far beyond such pedestrian prosaisms. The only thing we have is the prophetic historical phenomenon, which happens to function as an informational, supernatural, predictive agent of the declaration and fulfillment of hidden mysteries, and which is plainly spoken of as Jesus Christ himself. It’s not sensus plenior, or one which is up for grabs. It’s not a “plain sense” that renders religious bromides or one that get you everywhere and nowhere, its about one thing and that one controlling principle which is also its object of control: the oracular scriptural stream.

1. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/allegory ↩

2. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/allegory ↩

3. http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/allegory/ ↩

4. the Historical-critical is not a part of this, as it assumes that the Bible is like any other word of literature which meaning can only be determined if we know the intention of the author ↩

5. https://bible.org/article/hints-allegories-and-mysteries-new-testament-quotes-old ↩