Allegory and its critics: Alexandria and Antioch

Program / Course 4: Biblical Studies and Hermeneutics / Lesson 5.2

What you will learn

• Define allegory and explain how it differs from typology.
• Describe Origen’s approach to Scripture and the reasons he gave for it.
• Describe the Antiochene emphasis on the historical sense and its idea of theoria.
• Explain why the contrast between the two schools is useful but easily overstated.

The big idea

Allegory finds a hidden or symbolic meaning behind the words of a text. In the early church, scholars in Alexandria, led by Origen, used allegory widely to uncover the spiritual sense of Scripture. Teachers in Antioch objected that this could drift away from the history and the plain sense, and they stressed the historical sense along with a higher vision grounded in it. The contrast helps to explain later debates, though modern historians warn that both schools shared more than the labels suggest.

Key terms

Allegory

From Greek words meaning to speak otherwise. A way of reading that treats the words of a text as signs for another, often spiritual, meaning.

Literal sense

The meaning of the words in their ordinary sense and context, including figures of speech the author intended.

Spiritual sense

A meaning beyond the literal that refers to Christ, the church or the soul. Traditions define it differently.

Historia

A Greek word for the narrative or historical sense of a text, used by Antiochene writers.

Theoria

A Greek word meaning insight or vision. In Antioch it named a higher meaning that is seen through the history and not in place of it.

Exegetical school

A group of teachers sharing a method of interpretation, associated with a city such as Alexandria or Antioch.

Philo of Alexandria

A Jewish philosopher of the first century who read the Torah allegorically, in conversation with Greek thought.

Background

Allegory was not invented by Christians. Greek thinkers read Homer allegorically, to find deep truths behind stories of the gods that seemed crude. Jewish writers in Alexandria, especially Philo, adopted similar methods in reading the Torah. When Christians arrived in the same city, they inherited both the tools and the questions. The New Testament itself has a place for the practice: Paul says of Hagar and Sarah, “Which things are an allegory” (Galatians 4:24).

The practical problem is easy to understand. The Old Testament contains laws and stories that can puzzle or trouble a Christian reader, such as detailed sacrificial rules or accounts of violence. Allegory offered a way to find edification in these passages, and to show that every part of Scripture speaks of Christ and the Christian life. At the same time, it carried a risk that the reader’s imagination would become the master of the text.

Alexandria and Antioch were two great centers of Christian learning in the Greek speaking world. Over time, scholars have grouped the writers of each city by method. The grouping is useful as a first map.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Meet Origen

Origen of Alexandria, who lived in the third century, was the most learned biblical scholar of his age. He compared the Hebrew text with Greek versions in his Hexapla and wrote commentaries and sermons on most books of the Bible. In his work On First Principles, he explains that Scripture has three levels, which he compares to the body, soul and spirit of a person: the plain sense, a moral sense and a spiritual or mystical sense. He held that the Spirit placed in the text certain stumbling blocks, passages that cannot be taken literally, to prompt the reader to look for a deeper meaning.

Origen’s work was influential and also controversial. Many later Christians honored him for his learning and devotion. Others criticized some of his teachings, and a number of them were condemned after his death. In interpretation, his critics said that his method sometimes overrode the plain sense. His defenders said that he held the literal sense in honor in most places and used allegory to serve the faith of the church.

Step 2: Meet the Antiochenes

Teachers in Antioch, including Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and, in a related way, John Chrysostom, stressed the historical and grammatical sense. They held that the events of the Old Testament really happened and had meaning in their own time. They criticized allegory that dissolves the history. Theodore in particular limited the number of psalms he read as directly about Christ, as he held that many speak first of David and Israel.

Yet the Antiochenes did not give up higher meanings. They spoke of theoria, a vision that sees a further meaning in the events themselves, such as a king’s rule seen as a pattern of the rule of Christ. The key difference was that theoria was tied to the history, as the type is tied to the real event, while allegory was said to cut the tie.

Step 3: Weigh the contrast

The picture of two opposed schools is helpful and also easily overdone. Modern historians point out that Alexandrians took the literal sense seriously, as Origen’s textual labors show, and that Antiochenes used typology and found Christ in the Old Testament. Both groups wished to explain the unity of Scripture and to protect the church’s faith. Some writers do not fit either school neatly. Chrysostom preached from the plain sense and also used typology, and Augustine, in the West, used wide spiritual interpretation and also insisted on the literal sense as the base.

It is also worth noting how the later church judged the two. The council of 553 condemned certain writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and many of Origen’s teachings were also condemned, though the grounds were theological and not simply methodological. The church thus drew on both streams while setting limits on each.

Step 4: See what is at stake

The debate is about how to keep faith with the text while finding in it the fullness of Christ. If the literal sense is ignored, the text can say anything. If the literal sense is the only sense, many readers feel that the Old Testament is closed to Christian use. Later traditions tried to answer with careful rules: the fourfold sense of the medieval church, the Reformers’ return to the plain sense, and the modern attention to the author’s intention. Those are the subjects of the next module.

1. Does this reading depend on the words of the text or on something added?
2. Would the original author or hearers recognize the meaning proposed?
3. Does the reading honor the historical event or ignore it?
4. Is the reading controlled by something outside the interpreter’s imagination, such as the New Testament or the faith of the church?
5. Would another reader reach the same reading from the same text?
6. What difficulty in the text is the reading trying to answer?

Examples

Different perspectives

Orthodox

Orthodox tradition honors both the Alexandrian and the Antiochene fathers. It reads Scripture in the light of Christ, with the help of spiritual interpretation found in the fathers, and also respects the historical sense. The great preacher Chrysostom is a major teacher of the Eastern church.

Catholic

The Catholic Church has held that the literal sense is the foundation of the spiritual senses. The Catechism, citing Thomas Aquinas, states that all the senses of Scripture are based on the literal. This position keeps something from each school: the plain sense as the base and the spiritual senses as growth from it.

Protestant

The Reformers criticized the excesses of allegory. Luther and Calvin urged a return to the plain sense and the grammatical and historical reading. Calvin also criticized Origen’s allegories, while accepting Paul’s use in Galatians 4 as a special case. Later Protestants have debated how far to follow the New Testament’s lead in finding Christ in the Old.

Jewish

Jewish tradition has its own streams of allegorical and symbolic reading, from Philo to later mystical readers, alongside the rabbinic stress on plain sense and law. Jewish readers often respond that Christian allegory takes texts away from their meaning for Israel.

Modern scholarship

Historians such as Frances Young and Henri de Lubac have studied the patristic methods closely. Young stresses that ancient readers were guided by literary conventions of their time. De Lubac, a Catholic, argued that the spiritual interpretation of the fathers is a resource for the present church.

Why it matters

Allegory is one of the most charged words in the history of interpretation. Some modern readers dismiss it as fanciful and some admire it as profound. A fair student needs to know what the early Christians were trying to do, how their critics responded, and how the church sorted the issue. These debates return in every age, whenever believers ask how to read an ancient text as a living word.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. What is the strongest reason to read a difficult Old Testament passage spiritually, and what is the strongest objection?
2. How can a reader guard against allegory that serves the reader’s own ideas?
3. Why do you think Paul called the Hagar and Sarah story an allegory?
4. What does it say about the early church that it kept both streams of interpretation?

Independent assignment

Compare two readings

Choose a short Old Testament passage that raises a difficulty, such as a law about sacrifice or a story of conflict. In your notebook, write one paragraph of 120 to 180 words reading it in an Antiochene way, by attending to the history and its meaning in its own time. Write a second paragraph of the same length reading it in an Alexandrian way, by seeking a spiritual meaning for Christ or the soul. Then write 100 words on which reading you find more persuasive for this passage and why. Keep your work in your notebook.

Further study

• Origen, On First Principles (De Principiis) Read the preface and Book 4 on the interpretation of Scripture.
• John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood Read to meet a leading teacher of the Antiochene tradition.
• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read the account of how Ambrose’s spiritual reading helped Augustine with the Old Testament.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Read Part 1, question 1, article 10, on the senses of Scripture.
• Galatians 4:24 Paul’s use of the word allegory.
• Genesis 16:1 The story of Hagar.
• Matthew 5:29 Plucking out an eye.