A Response to Owen Anderson
I thank Dr. Anderson for his gracious response to my defense of allegory, and for his extensive treatment of the relationship between Christianity and philosophy. At this point in our conversation, I see two issues that are especially worth addressing. First, we need more clarity on the term “allegory.” Second, Dr. Anderson’s view of Christian philosophy involves some key historical judgments which are open to question.
Our exchange brings to mind an old joke. A journalist visits Princeton Theological Seminary and asks the faculty: “Are you fundamentalists?” They respond in horror, “No! You’d have to speak to the folks at Fuller Seminary.” The journalist visits Fuller, and they tell him to visit Westminster Seminary, and so on. The punchline comes when an institution finally says, “Yeah, we’re the fundamentalists!”
Allegory is a bit like this. The term is almost always used to describe a problem in someone else’s exegesis. When people accuse us (or our favorite preacher) of allegory, we do our best to find another term for our preferred approach. Something like this has been going on ever since the higher critics of the “Enlightenment” rejected traditional orthodoxy because it was founded on (what they called) allegorical exegesis.
Dr. Anderson defines “allegory” as “tak[ing] a story and import[ing] a set of meanings onto it from outside the text, often based on the interpreter’s own cultural assumptions.” The higher critics accused traditional Christian orthodoxy of doing exactly that to the Old Testament. Their historical methodology led them to reject the idea that the Old Testament was about Christ and the Church. They recognized textual patterns like typology, but because they rejected predictive prophecy, they always understood these patterns as evidence of a redactor or editor working after the fact. They dismissed any patterns that they could not explain in this way. To give an example, since 2 Samuel was not redacted after Jesus’s ministry, there is no possibility that David’s tears on the Mount of Olives (2 Samuel 15:30) are a glimpse of the sufferings of David’s son. Christians may like to put that “spin” on the text, but to the higher critics, it is just spin.
Dr. Anderson and I agree that the higher critics are wrong. The point of my first response was that we should be careful not to embrace their criticism of allegory. They accuse orthodox Christians of “importing meanings from outside the text,” even when we are simply reading the Bible for what it really is: a unified word from the living God. When we speak of Christ’s sufferings in 2 Samuel 15:30 we are not “Christianizing” a text that is actually about ancient Israel. Rather, we are perceiving an aspect of the text’s true meaning.
Most people who defend this spiritual reading of 2 Samuel prefer to call it typology. No one admits, “Yeah, we’re the allegorists.” Typology is a perfectly good term. It refers to the way that historical persons, events, and institutions take on a spiritual meaning through God’s providence and through prophecy. God gave David to Israel as a historical king, and also as a type of Christ, and he inspired prophets to deploy David typologically to reveal truth about the Messiah. Most modern interpreters who accept this view will still insist that they are practicing “typology” rather than “allegory,” the key difference being that typology remains within the human author’s intention. Now, the human author of 2 Samuel may have intended his narrative to carry a christological message, but that’s not easy to prove from the text. The connection is intensely clear, though, to readers who know the Garden of Gethsemane.
For centuries, the church has appreciated this kind of Christ-centered exegesis, and called it “allegory.” Aquinas said that the allegorical sense is founded on the literal historical meaning, providing insight into Christian doctrine. He also said that “nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 1, a. 10). In other words, Aquinas (and the tradition that he summarized) agrees heartily with Dr. Anderson that we should not import extra-biblical meanings into the text of Scripture. Rather, we ought to strive to discern deep truths in the text of Scripture, always depending on guidance from across the canon.
This is the point where Christian Platonism becomes important for exegesis. Before going on, I should provide a definition. “Christian Platonism” refers to the historical tradition of Christian philosophy that affirms core insights of Platonism as consistent with biblical teaching. Quoting Hans Boersma’s fine summary, these core insights are:
(1) The conviction that sensible objects correspond to eternal forms, in which they participate; (2) the notion that the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty is humanity’s ultimate aim; (3) the recognition that this-worldly objects are not ultimate but serve the pursuit of one’s return to God; and (4) the importance of a life of virtue as an initial participation in the goodness of God.
For exegesis, the first point, which is also known as “metaphysical realism,” is especially relevant. If spiritual exegesis (whether we call it “typology” or “allegory”) is not merely human “spin,” it must be genuine spiritual insight into reality. Platonist philosophy provides for this possibility, because it regards the sensible world as participating in eternal forms. Without this metaphysical viewpoint, we may be prepared to think of the narrative about David as a textual parallel to the Gospel narratives. Platonist thought encourages us to go further by considering the actual historical life of David as a symbol of spiritual truths stored up in Christ.
Of course, not all allegorical exegesis is good. Generally speaking, the Reformers’ criticisms were warranted. It is important to understand, however, that the whole way of speaking about the subject was shifting dramatically at that time, and it shifted again during the “Enlightenment.” The Reformers often interpreted Scripture “literally” in a way that fit the best allegorical exegesis of the prior tradition. Calvin’s comment on Galatians 4:24, cited in my first response, is an example. Modern higher critics did not neatly distinguish between typology and allegory. They rejected both Calvin’s style of exegesis and the older tradition.
The Enlightenment and the Reformation
Theological discernment often involves careful thinking about history. That is certainly the case with respect to hermeneutics, because the entire modern approach to exegesis was promoted under a certain view of history. The original higher critics viewed themselves as heirs of the Reformation. They claimed to follow the Reformers’ devotion to the literal sense, over against medieval dogmatism. Superficially, there was some truth to this. Roman Catholics had the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and these liberal Protestants did not. That does not mean, however, that liberal Protestants were actually the true heirs of the Reformation.
This point bears some emphasis, because Dr. Anderson has warned against prioritizing medieval re-enchantment at the expense of “the Reformation and early Enlightenment.” There are some important historical questions here. The Reformation was, in many respects, a very medieval phenomenon. Also, can the “Enlightenment” be successfully divided into an early stage that was consistent with the Reformation, and a later stage that did everything in its power to reduce Christendom to rubble? We should take that question seriously. We should certainly not grant that Protestant liberals and higher critics were correct to regard themselves as the heirs of the Reformers.
Alexandria and Antioch
The leading Protestant liberal historian, Adolf von Harnack, famously asserted that Christian dogma is “in its conception and development a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the gospel.” In this “Hellenization thesis,” he extended the historical reasoning of the “Enlightenment” back into the early church. Harnack portrayed himself as an heir of the Reformation. In fact, he thought the Reformers should have gone further and rejected the corrupting influence of Greek philosophy. Some readers will no doubt be inclined to agree, but there’s a catch. Harnack identified philosophy’s corrupting influence, especially in the creeds that defined orthodoxy, and the doctrinal systems affirmed in the Reformation confessions.
If Harnack had presented his analysis as a wholesale rejection of Christian orthodoxy, it would have been too extreme to be taken seriously. Instead, he blamed the corruptions of Greek philosophy on the “school of Alexandria,” which was devoted to allegory. (This is the same “school of Alexandria” that Dr. Anderson blames for the compromise of Christian Platonism.) Harnack and other liberals positioned themselves as loyal to the rival “school of Antioch,” which was committed to literal exegesis. Their framing was plausible because Alexandria was a great center of Greek learning, and because the city’s greatest Christian son, Origen, was indeed a poster child for allegory, Greek philosophy, and serious doctrinal errors.
There are huge problems with this framework, though. First, it leaves out the Latin tradition, including Augustine. Second, some of the greatest heroes of Christian orthodoxy were from Alexandria, including Athanasius, the hero of the Arian controversy, and his successor Cyril, the hero of the Nestorian controversy. Shall we dismiss these great men as “Alexandrian” allegorists? Third, the supposed “school of Antioch” was actually a group of men distinguished by doctrinal error. Donald Fairbairn has done excellent work on this point. The leading figures identified as part of this school were Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, the key influences on Nestorius. The “two schools” image calls to mind the mild rivalries between modern Reformed seminaries, but in fact the controversy of that time was a life-or-death struggle for the Christian faith. In short, the “two schools” framework does not fit the history. We should discard it, not allow it any influence in our theological discernment.
The Preparation of the Gospel
My final historical point goes back to the dawn of Christianity. Christ and his apostles lived in the context of Greek civilization, overlaid with Roman government, and dotted with Jewish diaspora communities. Paul said that God sent his son “in the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4), which means that the timing of Christ’s incarnation was part of God’s wonderfully orchestrated providence. The Church has long thought of this orchestration as “The Preparation of the Gospel.” The Westminster Confession (1.8) acknowledges the spread of the Greek language as part of the preparation: “the New Testament [was written] in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations).” We should not forget that the Greek language spread through the wars of Alexander the Great, motivated partly by his zeal for Greek culture.
Part of that Greek culture was Platonist philosophy. Justin Martyr and Augustine both praised the Platonists as among the best non-Christian Greek thinkers. They saw that it was far more amenable to Christianity than (for instance) the materialism of the Epicureans. For both men, Platonism was a stop on the way to Christian conversion and a continuing intellectual influence thereafter. That is not to say that they adopted Platonism wholesale. Their loyalty to Scripture led them to reject common Platonist views on the material world and the nature of God. (Again, I refer readers to Hans Boersma’s explanation.
Dr. Anderson seems to think that Platonism could not possibly have been a preparation for the Gospel, because the Platonists were wrong about many things. That is the wrong expectation, though. Even if Platonism was right about only a few things, it is reasonable to consider it a preparation for the Gospel, especially when we compare it to the alternatives on offer at that time, including unreflective polytheism and blatant materialism. We should follow the example of Paul, who found it convenient to include lines from two hymns to Zeus in his sermon at Athens (Acts 17:28). Obviously, these hymns to Zeus are not pure examples of true religion. They do not give a full account of God’s glory revealed in nature, but they came closer to the truth than others in that context.
Conclusion
In our modern era, “Enlightenment” naturalism has blinded many to the message of Scripture and eased many Christians into compromises with evolutionary theory, Marxist political thought, a secular vision of medicine and therapy, and a consumerist approach to worship. With false philosophy blinding so many to the glory of God, we need a renewed proclamation of biblical truth. To that end, we could use another preparation for the Gospel.
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