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