Responding to Owen Anderson
Owen Anderson has identified a tragic feature of modern spiritual life. Though we have plenty of access to the text of Scripture, “Bible literacy in the United States is at an all-time low,” and as a result “we may have entered a new kind of Dark Age.” This is at once a remarkable and horrible condition to be in. As Anderson observes, when biblical literacy was at a low ebb in the Dark Ages, there were some severe challenges to publishing the Word of God. Education and literacy were rare in general, and Scripture was not available vernacular languages. We have no such excuses today, and so the astonishing loss of biblical literacy in our time is much to be lamented: “Fewer people know the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, or even the basic storyline of Scripture. If people think of general revelation at all, it is handed over to the materialist scientist who assures us that it contradicts the Bible. How did this happen?”
Anderson’s answer to this question is only partly correct. He identifies three “veils” that hide Scripture from modern people. First, materialistic science asserts that “everything can be explained by natural causes alone,” a viewpoint that necessarily “dismisses divine action, purpose, or revelation.” This is the false metaphysical doctrine of naturalism, which conquered modern intellectual culture in the so-called “Enlightenment” of the eighteenth century in Europe. In the domain of natural science, metaphysical naturalism is expressed especially in evolutionary theory. In my judgement, Anderson is correct in his assessment that evolutionary theory is a veil over the text of scripture, especially the Book of Genesis. Most modern people assume that the Bible simply cannot contradict evolutionary theories in biology, even though the message of Scripture is opposed to evolutionary theory at many points.
In the realm of historical and literary scholarship, especially biblical scholarship, metaphysical naturalism appears in the “critical historical method.” This method of biblical interpretation is Anderson’s third “veil” over the text of Scripture, and here again he is right on target. Critical biblical scholarship is another prominent fruit of the “Enlightenment.” Anderson identifies the central assumption of this method, that “the Bible is just a human book and its current form is the result of centuries of editing, redaction, and error.” It is worth pointing out that this approach to Scripture is warranted not by the actual study of the biblical text, which claims to be a word from God through inspired prophets, validated by historical experience attested by eyewitnesses—a claim that fits quite well with the shape of the texts themselves. Critical scholars read the texts “against the grain,” justifying their approach by metaphysical naturalism is true, which implies that there is no such thing as a prophetic word from God, or indeed a God to give such a word. In such an intellectual environment, reading the Bible cannot be motivated by a desire to hear from God. It is more common these days to hear that reading the Bible is the best way to understand Shakespeare, who wrote in a time when people still thought the Bible was God’s Word. Little wonder, then, that we have plummeting rates of biblical literacy. Anderson correctly identifies a significant version of this problem, which is an assumption that understanding the Bible requires “understanding the wider culture in which it was written.” If believers cannot understand Genesis without a good grasp of “ancient Near Eastern contractual agreements,” then biblical literacy is out of reach for nearly everyone.
So far, so good. Anderson has identified two important ways that metaphysical naturalism veils the text of Scripture from the mind of modern readers. His second “veil,” however, is afflicted by a critical misunderstanding. This veil is “allegorization.” Anderson is quick to clarify that “the Bible uses symbols, typology, and parables.” What he has in mind is the practice of “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.” Anderson attributes this error to the misjudgment of “early Christian intellectuals” uncritically adopting Greek methods of reading myths. When he offers an example of this happening in the modern context, it is significant that he does not complain of preachers over-spiritualizing their texts, as we might expect to find in a sermon from Origen of Alexandria. Rather, he raises again the problem of materialistic science: “Genesis 1 is not seen as an account of the beginning of time and the days of creation, but as a poetic expression of spiritual truths that just happen to mirror evolutionary progress.” On Anderson’s view, “allegory” leads in practice to the same error produced by materialistic science and the critical historical method. All three “veils” cover the text of Scripture with the assumption of metaphysical naturalism, leading us to treat it as a merely human book, required like the rest of us to “follow the Science.”
As I have said, this view of “allegory” is a misunderstanding. To show that this is the case, I simply ask: “Which one of these is not like the other?” For two centuries, materialist science and the critical historical method have completely dominated intellectual life. For a faithful Christian to work as a biblical scholar at a major university, he or she must be ready to swim against these overwhelmingly strong currents. In all likelihood, such a faithful Christian scholar, who seriously maintains that the Bible communicates a meaningful message about spiritual realities will be scorned as an allegorist, especially if he or she takes this approach to the Old Testament. In today’s academy, nothing could be more discrediting to a biblical scholar.
This is because the naturalist metaphysics of the “Enlightenment” continues to rule our intellectual culture. When the biblical scholars of the “Enlightenment” developed their critical historical method, they were expressly setting themselves against the “allegorizing” of traditional exegesis. In doing so, they were not making the distinction that Anderson acknowledges, between irresponsible allegorizing and the Bible’s “symbols, typology, and parables.” No, the “Enlightenment” biblical scholars were consciously rejecting the foundations of traditional Christian orthodoxy by refusing to acknowledge any typology or symbolism that transcended the historical context of the original life-setting of the author. When they advanced this type of biblical scholarship, they were radicals. The only change since then is that this is now the establishment view.
Ironically, Anderson blames the problem of allegory on Greek philosophy. Not only did Greek intellectuals (in his account) develop the allegorical method of misreading ancient texts, but they also propounded a philosophy that took “a low view of material existence.” There are some complex issues here, and it is important to see the whole playing field. There was more than one current in Greek philosophy. It seems likely that Anderson has in mind the leading stream, that of Platonism, which is often accused by moderns of devaluing material existence. Platonist philosophy affirmed the existence of God (though, without divine revelation in Scripture, it could not offer much true knowledge of him). It also affirmed the reality of spiritual entities like the human soul. It rejected skepticism by tracing the possibility of human knowledge up to a realm of spiritual ideas. Leading early Christian philosophers like Justin Martyr and Augustine regarded this Platonist philosophy as very friendly to the Christian Gospel, though it needed to be corrected according to Scripture, especially in its view of creation and eschatology. This “Christian Platonism” became the normal intellectual framework for faithful Christians, and its roots in the historical convergence of Greek philosophy and the Hebrew Scriptures was regarded as a prime example of divine providence in preparing the world for the Gospel.
Platonist philosophy was directly opposed to the materialism and skepticism of other Greek philosophies. This was a major reason that Christians found Platonist philosophy amenable for the purpose of preaching and discipleship. Over a millennium later, when the philosophes of the “Enlightenment” endeavored to rehabilitate the old Greek materialistic philosophy, they set out to reject this entire tradition. This is why Adolf von Harnack, the doyen of German liberals, worked tirelessly to argue that the tradition of Christian orthodoxy was not the consistent outworking of biblical revelation, but the bastard offspring of Greek philosophy mingled with the Gospel.
To correctly understand our modern plague of biblical illiteracy, we need to carefully discern who is an enemy and who is a friend. Anderson has correctly identified materialist philosophy and the historical critical method as enemies. It is important to see that these are both inextricably bound up with the “Enlightenment” philosophical project, and that these are both opposed to any allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Perhaps the enemy of our enemies is, after all, a friend.
Thoughtful readers will no doubt object that the Reformers were opposed to allegory long before the Enlightenment. This is an essential point, for the Reformers did indeed have serious objections to some elements of the earlier tradition. John Calvin, for instance, objected to interpreters seeking “deeper mysteries, which cannot be extracted but by beating out allegories” in order to make “speculations which appear to be ingenious.” This statement is part of his comment on Galatians 4:24, where the Apostle Paul famously asserts that the narrative of Hagar and Sarah is to be interpreted “allegorically” as a framework for distinguishing the true Gospel and the false in the Galatian churches. It is crucial, however, to see that Calvin did not adopt the approach of most modern biblical scholars. He does not claim that Paul invented an allegorical interpretation of this history, using the text of Genesis for his own purposes, without respect for its original meaning. Rather, even after criticizing “allegory,” he says that “a mystical interpretation of this sort was not inconsistent with the true and literal meaning,” because “the history” recorded in Genesis “contain[ed] a figurative representation of the two covenants in the two wives of Abraham, and of the two nations in his two sons.” In other words, the literal meaning of what Moses wrote refers truthfully to a history providentially ordered by God in order to yield a further meaning that is correctly discerned in Paul’s “allegorical” interpretation. This is a far cry from the critical historical method. It is also the sort of exegesis that was considered faithful and biblical until “Enlightenment” scholars branded it as “pre-critical” and “allegorical.”
Recovering a balanced perspective on allegory is a vitally important task for teachers in the modern church. We simply must escape the “Enlightenment” framework that traps exegesis in the parameters of naturalistic philosophy. We need to learn again to see what the church fathers and the Reformers saw in Scripture: God speaking to us about spiritual realities in ways that go beyond normal human authorship. The historical critics are wrong. The Bible is not “just like any other book.” Anderson says the very same thing about our approach to science: we cannot let materialistic philosophy constrain our study of the natural world. “Real science—when done rightly—should lead us to awe before the Creator, not away from Him into materialism.” The very same point should be made about biblical exegesis: Real Scripture study—when done rightly—should lead us to awe in the presence of the God who governs history, his Son whose coming is the substance of scriptural teaching, and his Spirit who spoke through the prophets.
It may reassure readers to know that the “allegory” that I am commending is already familiar to most faithful Christians as “Christ-centered” exegesis. The historical and philosophical issues may be complicated, but most serious believers know that Isaiah 53 is about Jesus. My point is that this basic insight is reinforced, not contradicted, by our long inheritance of Christian Platonism and spiritual exegesis. The materialism of the “Enlightenment” is opposed to both of these inheritances, with the result that we cannot see Jesus in texts where God clearly intended to reveal him. Recovering a confident and clear vision of Christ in the whole Bible will be the quickest path to a renewed biblical literacy in the spiritual darkness of the modern world.
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