YOUNG@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA (Abigail Young) (02/08/90)
Anyone who is not interested in a discussion of literal vs figurative interpretations of Scripture in the first five Christian centuries, should probably discard this message now! Dear Kurt, I am sorry that it has taken me so long to reply to your original question, but I am working full-time inside academia but outside my field, and getting to the library to do the necessary research is not easy any more! First, to review the situation. It is undeniable that all the church fathers, east and west, throughout the patristic period (the era from the end of the apostolic age until the time of Gregory the Great, roughly the second to the sixth century) affirmed that everything in the Bible was true. But no-one affirmed that it was all literally true. Where Scripture was concerned, the fathers saw three possibilities: a passage might be literally true; a passage might be figuratively or spiritually true; a passage might be true on both levels. It is a misunderstanding to think that literal truth was more real or more 'true' than figurative truth. They are different kinds of truth, not different degrees of truth. One good analogy might be Paul's reasoning in 1 Corinthians 15: when he says in verse 44 that the resurrection body is spiritual not physical, he doesn't mean it is any less a real body. Different fathers had different criteria for deciding when a passage must be seen as having only a figurative meaning. The most accessible discussion available in English translation is by St Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine), and I would suggest that you read it. Some of the fathers of the Antiochene school practised a kind of interpretation in which more weight was placed on the idea that for things narrated as historic events to bear a figurative meaning they must have occurred in history. For instance, if Moses had not in fact crossed the Red Sea leading the children of Israel, the crossing of the Red Sea could have no figurative significance as a sign of baptism or the resurrection. This was a minority view during the period, and it is hard to say what events described in the Old Testament the Antiochenes would have placed in this category and what events they would not have placed in it. The patristic interpretation of the story of the creation in Genesis is very hard to discuss. Many fathers (eg, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Jerome) denied the literal historicity of the account in some way. Origen thought that what is described as happening in Paradise did not take place in historic time; Gregory thought God first created humanity spiritually and then human bodies: a popular patristic idea is that human beings had no bodies until after the fall, and that the coverings of skin God fashions for Adam and Eve are human bodies. Certainly for most of the fathers, Adam and Eve are not historical figures in any way we can understand until after they are expelled from Paradise. Neither Gregory nor Origen's works on Genesis are available in English: there is a French translation of Gregory's De Opificio Hominis (On the Fashioning of Man). Augustine tried four times to interpret Genesis to his satisfation and never felt he succeeded. De Genesi ad litteram (On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis) is his most successful attempt, although it is not recognisably 'literal' from a modern point of view. Augustine teaches that we cannot take the Creation story literally because of the nature of God: Creation for Augustine was a single act in the mind of God, and to believe it took place over six 24-hour days is as absurd as to believe that God had actual hands with which to form Adam from the dust or spoke in an audible voice like a human being. In order to tell about Creation to human beings, the story must be told in time, but it can't have really been that way.... The De Genesi is very hard to understand and there is no complete English translation I know of. I recommend a good short introduction to it by J J O'Meara, _The Creation of Man in St Augustine's De Genesi ad Litteram_ (Villanova Univ. Press, 1980). Because the modern fundamentalist vs non-fundamentalist debate is so foreign and anachronistic in the patristic world, there are not many books which discuss the question of literal vs non- literal (in our terms) as it pertains to the fathers. You will find some useful information in the Cambridge History of the Bible, vol 1, and in the early sections especially of Beryl Smalley's _The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages_. I wrote an overview of the history of biblical interpretation up to the 12th century as one chapter of my doctoral thesis, but until I finish converting it to a book in my (mythical) spare time, it is only available from University Microfilms in Ann Arbor Michigan, unless there is someone in your university who is so interested in the interpretation of John's Gospel in the 12th century that they have already ordered it! I can photocopy the chapter and mail it to you if you give me your postal address. Your best bet for actually seeing what the fathers themselves wrote is to read Augustine's On Christian Doctrine, unless you read French and/or Latin, in which case I can recommend some other material (studies, translations, original texts). Why did the fathers treat the Bible in this way? Why were they so unconcerned with an issue which virtually dominates modern discussions of the Bible that it is difficult to answer your question in the terms in which you phrased it? I have seen two reasons suggested. First, J. Pelikan in vol 1 of his The Christian Tradition points out that the early fathers especially had seen excessive literalism used to make the Bible seem absurd either by pagan opponents or by heretics who wished to bolster their positions or eliminate the Old Testament altogether as part of the Bible. So using the text, 'The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life' as their guide, they set about to reveal in their writings the spiritual or figurative meaning of the Bible. In this way, they saw themselves as rescuing the true meaning of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, from attack, preserving the integrity of the Bible, and suppressing heresy. The other reason is one which I suggested in my thesis: for most of the fathers, especially the Latin fathers, the purpose of Bible interpretation was intensely practical. Most of the 'commentaries' we have are nothing of the sort, they are series of sermons delivered over a series of Sundays at the local church. The practical purpose was to effect a change in the audience, to change their hearts in some way, inspiring those who were already Christian to live more Christian lives, bringing those who were still pagans or 'fellow-travellers' to accept Christ and join his church. The wedding of spiritual interpretation to rhetoric fit the bill best: to take a text, especially one which was unpromising on the surface, and peel away the outer layer, the letter which kills, to reveal the wealth of meaning which God had placed in every word, the spirit which gives life, was their goal. It wouldn't do for a modern audience: we don't think about the Bible and about meaning in the same way. But it worked for them: it helped them build a Christian Europe. I hope this answers your question, and hasn't driven anyone else away! Yours in Christ, Abigail