Program / Course 17: Defending Scripture / Lesson 5.4
What you will learn
- Describe how Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Luther each handled difficult passages.
- Explain the tools of allegory, the rule of love, the division of the law and accommodation.
- Compare Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions of reading hard texts.
- Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each tool when used on a particular passage.
The big idea
Christians did not first meet difficult texts in the modern period. From the second century onward, interpreters developed tools for texts that seemed cruel, strange or contradictory: reading for deeper senses, testing a reading by whether it builds up love, dividing the Old Testament law into kinds, and recognizing that God speaks in ways adapted to human weakness. These tools remain in use. Each has a long history, each can be misused, and each reflects a particular view of what Scripture is. Knowing them helps a student read hard texts with the whole church and not alone.
Key terms
- Allegory
- A reading that finds a deeper meaning behind the surface of a story, such as taking the conquest of Canaan as a picture of the soul’s struggle with sin.
- Four senses
- A medieval scheme of the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (heavenly) meanings of a text.
- Rule of charity
- Augustine’s principle that a reading that does not build up the love of God and neighbor is not the right reading, whatever else it may claim.
- Moral, ceremonial and judicial precepts
- Aquinas’s threefold division of Old Testament law. The moral precepts bind all people, while the ceremonial and judicial ones were fulfilled or set aside.
- Accommodation
- Calvin’s term for God’s adapting his speech to human weakness, as a nurse lisps to a child.
- Law and gospel
- Luther’s distinction between what God demands and what God gives. He used it as a key to reading the Bible.
- Liberation hermeneutics
- Modern approaches that read the Bible from the standpoint of the poor and oppressed, for example in Latin American and African American traditions.
Background
The New Testament itself reads the Old in more than one way. Paul takes the story of Hagar and Sarah as an allegory (Galatians 4:24), and he reads the rock in the wilderness as Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4). The author of Hebrews reads the tabernacle as a figure of the heavenly realities. These readings gave later interpreters permission to look for more than the surface of a text.
Over time the churches developed different habits. The Alexandrian tradition, with Clement and Origen, favored allegory. The Antiochene tradition, with Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, stressed the historical sense with a modest use of typology. The medieval West drew on both. The Reformers reacted against excessive allegory and stressed the literal sense, while keeping Christ as the center. Modern historical study added new tools. This lesson samples the history rather than covering all of it.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Origen and the deeper sense
Origen, in the third century, argued in On First Principles that the Scriptures have a body, a soul and a spirit, corresponding to the literal, moral and spiritual senses. He taught that some passages, if read only at the level of the letter, are unworthy of God, and that God placed such stumbling blocks to push readers to look deeper. He applied this to commands about war and to the strange stories of the Old Testament.
This approach had great influence in the East and the West. It allowed Christians to receive the whole Old Testament as the word of God. Critics, then and now, have asked whether it allows an interpreter to say anything he wants. Origen’s defenders answer that his readings were disciplined by the rule of faith and the unity of Scripture, though some of his speculations were criticized by the church.
Step 2: Augustine and the rule of charity
Augustine, in On Christian Doctrine, gave a guiding principle: whoever thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures but does not by his understanding build up the double love of God and neighbor has not yet understood them. When a passage appears to command something cruel or to forbid something kind, Augustine says it is to be read figuratively. He also teaches that an interpreter should distinguish what applies to all from what was fitted to a particular time.
Critics note a risk. If love is the test, what counts as love is itself disputed, and a reader may call a reading unloving because he dislikes it. Defenders reply that Augustine joined the rule of charity to the rule of faith and the context of the passage, so that it is a check and not the only tool.
Step 3: Aquinas and the division of the law
Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, divided the Old Law into moral, ceremonial and judicial precepts. Moral precepts, like the Ten Commandments, express natural law and bind all. Ceremonial precepts concerned worship and were fulfilled in Christ. Judicial precepts governed Israel’s civil life and do not bind other nations, though they show principles of justice. This division gave Catholic and later Protestant readers a way to explain why Christians do not keep dietary laws or stone offenders while still honoring the moral law.
The Westminster Confession uses a similar threefold division. Critics, including some Jewish and Protestant scholars, say that the Bible itself does not divide the law this way, and that the lines are hard to draw. Supporters answer that the New Testament itself treats parts of the law differently, as in Acts 15 and Mark 7:19.
Step 4: Luther and Calvin
Luther read the Bible through the distinction of law and gospel and by the question of what promotes Christ. He judged books and passages by whether they preached Christ, which led him to doubt James and Revelation at first, and to value Romans and John. Critics point to the subjectivity of this test, and later Lutherans have mostly kept the full canon. Luther’s own writings include harsh statements about opponents, and his use of the Bible in those cases is regarded by many Lutherans today as a failure to apply his own principle.
Calvin spoke of accommodation: God, he said, lisps as nurses do with infants, adapting his speech to our capacity. He used it to explain why Genesis speaks in ordinary terms of the sun, moon and stars, and why Scripture ascribes emotions and hands to God. He also held that the Old Testament and the New are one covenant of grace in different administrations. Later interpreters have used accommodation to explain morally difficult laws, though Calvin himself used it mainly for descriptions of God and of the natural world.
Step 5: Orthodox, Jewish and modern voices
Orthodox interpretation keeps the Fathers close and values allegory and typology as a reading of the whole Bible through Christ and the liturgy. Jewish interpretation has also dealt with hard laws. The Talmud limits the law of the stubborn and rebellious son in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 so severely that it concludes the case never occurred and never would (Sanhedrin 71a). This is an early example of a community restricting a harsh text by interpretation.
Modern readers add other voices. Liberation theologians read the exodus as God’s side with the oppressed. Womanist and feminist interpreters ask whose perspective a text presents and whose is missing. Historical critics ask how a text arose. Each approach reveals something, and each is criticized for importing its own concerns. The thing to learn from the history is that no one reads from nowhere, and the best readers say what they are doing.
- Which of the tools in this lesson have you used without knowing it?
- What are the risks of allegory, and what are its gifts?
- Is the rule of charity a good test for an interpretation? What could go wrong with it?
- How helpful is the division of the law into moral, ceremonial and judicial parts? What does it leave out?
- How do the Jewish limits on the rebellious son compare with the Christian approaches?
- Which voice, ancient or modern, do you find most helpful for a text that troubles you?
Examples
Origen on the wars of Israel
Origen, in his homilies on Joshua, reads the battles as figures of the Christian’s struggle with the powers that oppose the soul and sees Joshua as a figure of Jesus. For him the conquest has a meaning for the church that does not depend on a literal war. Critics say this avoids the historical sense, and defenders say it follows the apostles.
Stoning in the law and in the Gospels
In John 8, Jesus does not condemn the woman caught in adultery, and he tells the one without sin to cast the first stone. The story is itself disputed in the manuscripts, as the earlier lessons showed. Nonetheless, Christians have read it as a sign of how the law is to be applied, and Aquinas would treat the penalty as a judicial precept that does not bind the church.
Calvin and the sun
Calvin said that Moses spoke of the sun and moon as the two great lights because he wrote for ordinary people, not for astronomers. He did not think this made the Bible false. This approach to accommodation is relevant to later lessons on science.
Different perspectives
Catholic
The Catholic tradition uses the four senses, the analogy of faith and the guidance of the Magisterium. Aquinas’s division of the law remains influential. Dei Verbum reaffirms the unity of the two Testaments and the need for historical study, and the Pontifical Biblical Commission has addressed the problem of violence in the Old Testament.
Orthodox
The Orthodox church reads the Old Testament as a witness to Christ and values the Fathers’ typology. It emphasizes reading in the liturgy and says that private interpretation, unguided by the church, tends to go wrong. Hard texts are read in light of the life of the church and the saints.
Protestant (Reformation)
Luther and Calvin stress the plain sense and Christ as the center, and teach that Scripture interprets Scripture. They reject the elaborate medieval allegories while using typology. Reformed and Lutheran confessions divide the law into moral, ceremonial and civil parts.
Protestant (modern)
Modern Protestants use historical-critical tools and, in evangelical circles, careful attention to genre and context. Some use canonical or theological interpretation. Others use liberation, feminist and postcolonial approaches, which are controversial among more conservative groups.
Jewish
Jewish interpreters have long limited harsh laws by rabbinic argument and have preserved competing opinions. They hold that interpretation is part of the process of revelation and that the oral tradition guides the reading of the written text. Christians and Jews differ on whether Christ is the key to reading.
Why it matters
A person who reads a hard text alone for the first time may think that it is a modern problem. Learning how the church has read these texts places the reader within a conversation older than any of us. It also provides a set of tools with a record of use, and a clear sense of their limits. Students who know how Origen, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin handled difficulty are less likely to be swayed by a confident claim that is new only in appearance.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Allegory means denying that the events happened.
Correction: Most of the Fathers who used allegory also affirmed the history. Origen is an exception in some passages, and was criticized for it. Typology generally depends on the events being real.
Misunderstanding: The Reformers read everything literally.
Correction: They stressed the plain sense but used typology and accepted figures of speech. Calvin’s accommodation and Luther’s focus on Christ show that they did not read in a flat way.
Misunderstanding: Dividing the law into parts is a convenience invented to avoid hard rules.
Correction: The division has a long history and grounds in New Testament practice, but it is not stated in the Bible as such. Its critics make a fair point that the lines are not always clear.
Misunderstanding: Modern approaches have nothing to learn from the Fathers.
Correction: Many modern scholars, Protestant and Catholic, have returned to the Fathers for resources. The Fathers lacked some historical tools and had others that have been neglected.
Knowledge check
What is Augustine’s rule of charity?
Augustine taught in On Christian Doctrine that anyone who thinks he understands Scripture but does not build up the love of God and neighbor has not yet understood it. A passage that seems to command cruelty is to be read figuratively. The rule works together with the rule of faith and the context, and critics note that it depends on a shared sense of what love requires.
How did Aquinas divide the Old Testament law?
He divided it into moral, ceremonial and judicial precepts. The moral precepts express natural law and bind everyone. The ceremonial precepts concerned worship and were fulfilled in Christ. The judicial precepts governed Israel’s civil life and do not bind others, though they show principles of justice. The scheme was taken up by Catholic and many Protestant writers.
What did Calvin mean by accommodation?
He meant that God adapts his speech to human weakness, as a nurse speaks baby talk to an infant. He used it to explain why Scripture speaks of God in human terms and uses everyday language about the heavens. It does not mean that Scripture is false, but that it is fitted to those who hear it.
What is one way a Jewish tradition limited a harsh biblical law?
The Talmud discusses the law of the stubborn and rebellious son in Deuteronomy 21 and sets such strict conditions that it concludes the case never occurred and never would. This shows rabbinic interpretation limiting a harsh text in practice. Christians have used other means, such as dividing the law or reading it in light of Christ.
Think it through
- What do you think is the biggest strength of reading with the church across the centuries? What is the biggest risk?
- Which of the tools in this lesson would you use first on a hard text, and why?
- How can a modern reader learn from an older interpreter without agreeing with every reading?
Independent assignment
Three readings of one passage
In your own notebook, choose one hard passage from this module. Write 400 to 500 words giving three different readings from three of the voices in this lesson (for example Origen, Aquinas and a modern reader). For each, state the tool used, what it explains and what it leaves unexplained. Say which you find most helpful. Do not send this to anyone or post it anywhere.
Further study
- Origen, On First Principles (De Principiis) Read selectively Book 4 on the interpretation of Scripture.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Read selectively the questions on the Old Law in the first part of the second part.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Read selectively where Calvin speaks of God accommodating himself to human weakness.
- Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will Read selectively for Luther’s principles of interpretation.
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read the account of Augustine’s learning to read the Old Testament figuratively through Ambrose.
- Galatians 4:24 Paul’s allegory of Hagar and Sarah.
- 1 Corinthians 10:4 The rock was Christ.