Transfigured to greater brightness

… someone given the ability to perceive the depth of the law’s meaning, who passes through the curtain of literal obscurity and arrives at unutterable truths, is like Moses, who removed his veil when he spoke to God. Such a man has turned from the letter to the Spirit. The veil on Moses’ face is analogous to the obscurity of the instruction offered by the law, just as spiritual contemplation corresponds to Moses speaking to the Lord with face unveiled. He who throws away the letter and turns to the Lord when reading the law (and now the Lord is called Spirit) becomes like Moses, whose face shone with the glory of God’s manifestation. Objects placed near something brilliantly colored themselves become tinted through eflected light; likewise, he who fixes his gaze on the Spirit is transfigured to greater brightness, his heart illumined by the light of the Spirit’s truth. Then the glory of the Spirit is changed into such a person’s own glory, not stingily, or dimly, but with the abundance we would expect to find within someone who had been enlightened by the Spirit. (21, 52 – pp. 82-83)

Saint Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 21, 52 (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press), pp. 82-83.

 

The lived Word in history

In order to understand to some degree the culture of the word, which developed deep within Western monasticism from the search for God, we need to touch at least briefly on the particular character of the book, or rather books, in which the monks encountered this word.  The Bible, considered from a purely historical and literary perspective, is not simply a book, but a collection of literary texts which were redacted over the course of more than a thousand years, and in which the inner unity of the individual books is not immediately apparent.  On the contrary, there are visible tensions between them.  This is already the case within the Bible of Israel, which we Christians call the Old Testament.  It is only rectified when we as Christians link the New Testament writings as, so to speak, a hermeneutical key with the Bible of Israel, and so understand the latter as the journey towards Christ.  With good reason, the New Testament generally designates the Bible not as “the Scripture” but as “the Scriptures”, which, when taken together, are naturally then regarded as the one word of God to us.  But the use of this plural makes it quite clear that the word of God only comes to us through the human word and through human words, that God only speaks to us through the humanity of human agents, through their words and their history.  This means again that the divine element in the word and in the words is not self-evident.  To say this in a modern way:  the unity of the biblical books and the divine character of their words cannot be grasped by purely historical methods.  The historical element is seen in the multiplicity and the humanity.  From this perspective one can understand the formulation of a medieval couplet that at first sight appears rather disconcerting:  littera gesta docet – quid credas allegoria … (cf. Augustine of Dacia, Rotulus pugillaris, I). The letter indicates the facts;  what you have to believe is indicated by allegory, that is to say, by Christological and pneumatological exegesis.

We may put it even more simply:  Scripture requires exegesis, and it requires the context of the community in which it came to birth and in which it is lived.  This is where its unity is to be found, and here too its unifying meaning is opened up.  To put it yet another way: there are dimensions of meaning in the word and in words which only come to light within the living community of this history-generating word.  Through the growing realization of the different layers of meaning, the word is not devalued, but in fact appears in its full grandeur and dignity.  Therefore the Catechism of the Catholic Church can rightly say that Christianity does not simply represent a religion of the book in the classical sense (cf. par. 108).  It perceives in the words the Word, the Logos itself, which spreads its mystery through this multiplicity and the reality of a human history.  This particular structure of the Bible issues a constantly new challenge to every generation.  It excludes by its nature everything that today is known as fundamentalism.  In effect, the word of God can never simply be equated with the letter of the text.  To attain to it involves a transcending and a process of understanding, led by the inner movement of the whole and hence it also has to become a process of living.  Only within the dynamic unity of the whole are the many books one book.  The Word of God and his action in the world are revealed only in the word and history of human beings.

I know that I am very late in getting to this, but I thought that I had better get down to reading Pope Benedict’s address at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris. And, for anyone who hasn’t read it yet, and especially for anyone interested in the relationship between theology, Scripture, the search for God and allegory, it really is worthwhile. I must admit that I have rather mixed feelings about Pope Benedict (i.e. I was certainly never a member of the Ratzinger fan club), but in some areas I find him rather compelling and this is very good indeed.

 

The Return to Allegory: Some reflections on allegory and hermeneutics

Since beginning to focus more on the Fathers of the Church in the last couple of years, I have become conscious that their use of Scripture is something that I need to get a better understanding of. This relates both to the priority which they give to Scripture, and to their understanding and use of it. And it is also concerned with how allegory is related to contemporary readings of Scripture, most notably what one may term a hermeneutical tradition.

Father Louth speaks of a “fundamental distaste” for allegory in modern theology on the grounds that it is dishonest and distorts the original meaning of the text, yet I rather wonder to what extent this is universally true today, twenty-five years after this book was originally written.* Now I must hasten to stress that I am not a biblical scholar, nor have I ever been one, and I am moreover out of touch even with those academic contexts that I once inhabited. But, apart from a couple of undergraduate courses in a very distant past in which the dominant mentality would I suppose correspond to the sort of context that Father Louth is addressing, this soon gave way to another context with different concerns. While not directly involved with Scripture myself, I became aware of a variety of interpretative frameworks which did not necessarily situate the meaning of the text in the original intention of the author, but variously sought to locate it behind the text (socio-historical readings), in the text itself (literary readings) or in front of the text in the world which the text opens up for its readers (thematic or theological readings). It was the last possibility, especially as expressed by Gadamer and Ricoeur, and developed further by Sandra Schneiders in response to the question of what it means to interpret the Bible as Sacred Scripture, that I was most exposed to and found the most inspiring.

But I have found myself wondering at the relationship between this hermeneutical approach and the patristic use of allegory. There are clear similarities in that both allow the text to become freed from its original historical context in order to take on new meaning in new contexts. While the Fathers are working within a dominant Christological framework that sees the Old Testament finding its fulfilment in the new, and which provides a theological delimitation to their interpretation, Ricoeur and Schneiders are also clear that while a text can take on endless new meanings, it cannot take on just any meaning. Yet I am surprised, looking at Schneiders’ book** again now, years after reading it, that she doesn’t engage the patristic use of allegory.

I find Father Louth’s discussion helpful in both broadening and deepening my understanding of allegory in his focus not so much on the details of specific meanings or differences of method, as on the purpose of an allegorical reading being to hold us before the Mystery that is revealed to us in Scripture. It is here that the commonalities with the hermeneutical readings become apparent to me, and a reason why their relationship fascinates me. While I have the feeling that this requires further unpacking, that’s about all I’m able to say about it for now.  
 

* For the uninitiated, the book that I have been discussing is, Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) – to order the new edition, which I would highly recommend doing, go here.

 ** Sandra M. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text. Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture, (Harper San Francisco, 1991).

 

The fourth watch

Today’s gospel according to the Roman lectionary is Matthew’s account of Jesus walking on the water. I have been trying to follow some of the patristic commentary on the gospel of the day from the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series. I don’t intend discussing this in any length on this blog, but, given that I’ve had Father Louth’s discussion on allegory going through my head, I can’t help noticing how it at least  sometimes makes quite a lot of sense for understanding what the Fathers are about. Thus, in the passages below, the details about what the fourth watch means are different, but the fundamental structure is the same, providing an allegorical interpretation that roots the gospel account in a broader salvation history. It points both backwards, seeing Christ as the fulfilment of a process of revelation, and forwards, forwards, pointing to His promise to the contemporary and future Church. There is of course a lot more that one could say about the patristic interpretation of this passage which I have neither the time, the inclination or the competence for, but I’m noting this now because, well, it is quite nice to see theory elucidating actual reading practice!

In the meantime, however, the disciples are harassed by wind and by sea. Amid all the disturbances of the world, in conflict with the unclean spirit, they are tossed about. But the Lord comes in the fourth watch. For the fourth time, then, he will return to a roving and shipwrecked church. In the fourth watch of the night, the measure of his concern is found to be just as great. The first watch was that of the law, the second of the prophets, the third of the Lord’s coming in the flesh and the fourth of his return in splendour. But he will find the church in distress and beleaguered by the spirit of the antichrist and by disturbances throughout the world. He will come to those who are restless and deeply troubled. And since, as we may expect from the antichrist, they will be exposed to temptations of every kind, even at the Lord’s coming they will be terrified by the false appearances of things and crawling phantasms with eyes. But the good Lord will then speak out and dispel their fear, saying, “It is I.” He will dispel the fear of impending shipwreck through their faith in his coming.

Hilary of Poitiers,  On Matthew 14.4, quoted in Manlio Simonetti (ed), Matthew 14 – 28, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament Ib, (InterVarsity Press, 2002) 12.

 

Let us focus on the meaning of this fourth watch in which the Lord comes to his disciples who were caught in the storm. The first watch of the night – that is, the present world – is understood to be from Adam to Noah, the second watch from Noah up until Moses, through whom the law was given. The third watch was from Moses up to the coming of the Lord and Savior. In these three watches the Lord, even before coming in the flesh, with the vigilance of the angels defends the encampments of his saints from the snares of the enemy – that is, the devil and his angels, who from the beginning of the world plotted against the salvation of the righteous. … The fourth watch marks the time when the Son of God was born in the flesh and suffered, the time he promised to his disciples and his church that he would be eternally watchful after his resurrection, saying, “I will be with you even to the consummation of the world.”

Chromatius, Tractate on Matthew 52.5, quoted in Manlio Simonetti (ed), Matthew 14 – 28, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament Ib, (InterVarsity Press, 2002) 12-13.

 

Louth on the Return to Allegory V: Restoring a lost unity

… the spiritual meaning of the New Testament is the literal meaning. In what Jesus was and did – at his baptism, in this instance, and even more in what that foreshadowed – we have not a symbol of something else, but that to which all the symbols refer. And the symbols are present in this passage – in the voice and the dove – as providing the frame, as it were, in which we can see the significance of the events: they ‘what was at work at the time and afterwards ceased’.  The spiritual meaning of the New Testament is the history of the Incarnate One, a history which is a ‘new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh’ (Heb. 10:20) – a way which we are all to enter upon and tread.

And it is, of course, our baptism and the life of faith, hope, and love to which it commits us that provide our entrance into the history of Jesus. So the themes that we have just outlined are naturally picked up in the baptismal liturgies of the Church and in the Church’s celebration of the feast of the Baptism of our Lord.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). 125.

In the rest of this chapter Father Louth proceeds to give an extended example of the way in which allegory can open up the theological significance of a biblical passage by examining the readings of  Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine of the Baptism of Christ. The Fathers regularly see this passage as a revelation of the Trinity, in which the Father is revealed in the voice, the Son in the man, and the Spirit in the dove. However, for all of our authors the manifestation of Son is central, for it is historical in a unique way, whereas the voice and the dove provide symbolical allusions which further open up the significance of this event. They become bearers of biblical meaning, which both interpret the passage for us and open the way for us to respond to it. Thus Cyril tells us that Christ “opened the heavens, which the first Adam had shut, showing how the power of baptism effects an ascent to heaven” (124) and he and other Fathers recall the role of the dove at the flood showing the link between the old covenant and the new.

Moreover Origen sees the gentleness, innocence and soaring nature of the dove as opening the way for our response to revelation given in prayer, namely, that we too are enabled to ascend to heaven on the wings of a dove, for in the manifestation of Jesus as Son of the Father our identity is also revealed and we too are given access to the life of the Father.

Louth discerns a similar approach in the sermons of Jeremy Taylor, a seventeenth century Caroline divine, in which we find the last echoes of the tradition of the Fathers in which allegory comes into its own in the liturgy.

He concludes with Augustine’s observation of the contrast between the complexity involved in interpreting the Scriptures and the belief that Scripture teaching nothing but charity. In the fall we have fallen from simplicity to confusion and multiplicity, yet

The Scriptures tell the story of God’s way of leading men back into unity, and the way has to be from the fragmented to the unified. The history of the Old Testament fashions a matrix, a kaleidoscope, which shares in our fragmentedness and yet harks forward to the simplicity of the One who will restore all things…

And it is allegory that enables us to discern this pattern, and not only discern it but by means of this pattern restore within ourselves the unity and simplicity lost by the Fall, and so come again to love. The heart of Scripture is the end of Scripture: the love of God in Christ calling us to respond to that love. (131)

 

Five loaves and two fish, or…

In the light of the foregoing (and to be continued) discussion of allegory, here is what Saint Hilary of Poitiers has to say about today’s gospel on the feeding of the five thousand.

When the disciples advised that the crowds be sent away into the neighboring villages to buy food, he answered, “They do not need to go away.” This signalled that these people whom he healed with the food of his teaching, teaching that was not for sale, had no need to go back to Judea and buy food. He ordered the apostles to give them something to eat.

But was Jesus unaware there was nothing to give? Did he not know the disciples possessed a limited amount of food? He could read their minds, so he knew. We are invited to explain things by reasoning according to types. It was not yet granted to the apostles to make and administer heavenly bread for the food of eternal life. Yet their response reflected an ordered reasoning about types: they had only five loaves and two fish. This means that up to then they depended on five loaves – that is, the five books of the law. And two fish nourished them – that is, the preaching of the prophets and of John. For in the works of the law there was life just as there is life from bread, but the preaching of John and the prophets restored hope to human life by virtue of water. Therefore the apostles offered these things first, because that was the level of their understanding at the time. From these modest beginnings the preaching of the gospel has proceeded from them, from these same apostles, until it has grown into an immense power. …

Having taken the bread and the fish, the Lord looked up to heaven, then blessed and broke them. He gave thanks to the Father that, after the time of the law and the prophets, he himself was soon to be changed into evangelical food.

Hilary of Poitiers, On Matthew 14. 10-11, quoted in Manlio Simonetti (ed), Matthew 14 – 28, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament Ib, (InterVarsity Press, 2002) 7-8.

 

Louth on the Return to Allegory III: holding us before the mystery of Scripture

… what one discovers in allegory, according to Augustine – and he speaks for all the Fathers in this – is the faith of the simple believer. The use of allegory in relation to Scripture, seen from such a point of view, is not an attempt to solve problems, contingent difficulties, but a means of ensuring that we do not evade the fundamental ‘ontological difficulty’ which opens us to the ultimate mystery of Christ contained in the Scriptures. The difficulty in Scripture arises from the depth of its signification, and forces us to find a point of stability, or is rather a warning that we have yet to find it. It is the difficulty of not being sufficiently at home in the tradition, not having an unerring instinct as to what resonates and what merely makes a noise. And what we need here is no method – there is none – but rather erudition, learning, experience: the experience of living close to the heart of tradition, of being able to hear His stillness, to quote St. Ignatius – a familiarity with the response that Scripture has inspired in the Church throughout its life.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). 112.

Father Louth sees allegory as intrinsically related to the mira profunditas of Scripture, the conviction of the depth and richness of Scripture that is expressed in multiple senses. He quotes Newman who describes Scripture as unsystematic and various, an unexplored and unsubdued land, which cannot be easily mapped and catalogued. Scripture presents us with complexity and difficulty.

Yet we can distinguish between the type of difficulties that Scripture presents. Louth cites George Steiner’s distinction between contingent, modal, tactical and ontological difficulties in literature. Whereas the first three can be resolved or otherwise adapted to, ontological difficulties cannot be resolved but call into question our very anticipations. They recall Marcel’s distinction between problem and mystery: “ontological difficulty is something very like the mysterious – there is no answer, only engagement.” (111)

The proper use of allegory in relation to Scripture, Louth argues, is not to resolve contingent difficulties but rather

allegory is a way of holding us before the mystery which is the ultimate ‘difficulty’ of the Scriptures – a difficulty, a mystery, which challenges us to revise our understanding of what might be meant by meaning; a difficulty, a mystery, which calls on us for a response of metanoia, change of mental perspective, repentance. (111)

This is not to deny that allegory has been used by the Fathers to solve problems, or indeed that there are problems that other methods, including those of historical criticism, can help us to solve. But once these are solved they are precisely that, solved, whereas the mystery that allegory holds before us is on a different level. It is not something to be solved but something that continues to question us.

 

Allegory and ultimate mystery

…what one discovers in allegory, according to Augustine – and he speaks for all the Fathers in this – is the faith of the simple believer. The use of allegory in relation to Scripture, seen from such a point of view, is not an attempt to solve problems, contingent difficulties, but a means of ensuring that we do not evade the fundamental ‘ontological difficulty’ which opens us to the ultimate mystery of Christ contained in the Scriptures. The difficulty in Scripture arises from the depth of its signification, and forces us to find a point of stability, or is rather a warning that we have yet to find it. It is the difficulty of not being sufficiently at home in the tradition, not having an unerring instinct as to what resonates and what merely makes a noise. And what we need here is no method – there is none – but rather erudition, learning, experience: the experience of living close to the heart of tradition, of being able to hear His stillness, to quote St. Ignatius – a familiarity with the response that Scripture has inspired in the Church throughout its life.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 112.