Biblical hermeneutics: Literal, allegorical, or both? (Part 4)

Now its time for the fourth, and last (at least for now), installment regarding literal vs allegorical interpretations.

For much of the history of the Christian church, especially the Western church, there has been a leaning towards literal interpretations of the Bible, with the only allegorical interpretations that were really made were those that were foreshadowing Christ. However, it seems to be that allegorical interpretation were also made, in addition to literal ones. Simply look at the prophecies that Matthew proclaims Jesus to fulfill in Matthew 2 and the context of the Old Testament quotations to get a glimpse of the more open interpretation style. And earlier in the church we see early church fathers, such as Origen, who rely heavily upon allegorical interpretations. Finally, today we see a resurgence of allegorical/figurative interpretations today, in part probably due to people having difficulty accepting Genesis 1-11 as historical but yet wanting to maintain the Bible as true. And the current trend of the Christian culture is aiming towards more open-ended interpretation.

(Note: Now let me say at this point that I have included more in the few posts about literal vs. allegory than I intended to initially. It has included more of the objective, exegetical mindset vs. the subjective mindset. Since that was not the original intent of these series of posts, I will leave some dead ends for now and pick them back up in another post that will be aptly titled)

So. What is correct? To not say really much and at the risk of sounding like I am trying to be on the fence, both. To clarify further, allegory is more important to interpretation than many allow for, and literal is more important than the opposing side allows for either. And a literal interpretation does not exclude the possibility of an allegorical interpretation. For instance, in Romans 5, Paul discusses Adam and Adam as a type of Christ. Paul seems to clearly conceive Adam as a historic character, but then he interprets the character of Adam and what is recorded of him and creates an allegorical interpretation to present a teaching about Christ. In Paul's mind, both the literal and allegorical interpretations of the account of Adam are valid.

Now this does not provide an further evidence that allegory is more acceptable than has commonly been given, as many of the texts of the Old Testament were interpreted allegorically to present a teaching about Christ, along with metaphorical. But if we look at Paul in Galatians 4, he uses an allegorical interpretation in order to present a teaching about the Old Covenant and New Covenant. Also, in Matthew 2:17-18 the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem was said to be a fulfillment of a text that literally was talking about the captivity of Israel by Babylon.

What we see here is that both literal and allegorical interpretations were used for topics other than Jesus Himself specifically. Now one might say, "but all those events are about Christ." And rightly so, they are. But Christian doctrine can not be separated from the Savior.

Now let me add a caveat to this. Just because we can make an allegorical statement does not mean it is doctrinally true for the Church. It may speak truth to the individual in some instances (and this I will address in a future post about objective vs subjective interpretations). There are correct allegorical interpretations and our perception of them, or the lack thereof, does not affect the truthfulness of them. Likewise, there can be "false" allegorical interpretations, but our perception of them does not make them true for the Church as a whole. This is not different than literal interpretations though.

Also, I think the allegorical interpretations can not be accurately seen without spiritual maturity. The author of Hebrews is a fan of presenting allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament to present teachings of Christ, but then says in one instance (Hebrews 5:11-14) it would be hard because they lack maturity. Paul also speaks of this in 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:2. Not just any Christian should try to understand the Bible allegory. Their spiritual understanding is weak and wrong interpretations could very easily lead them astray.

So conclude this series of posts. I do apologize for the lack of quality with this final post. I did this topic more as a topic to get my feet wet with this, and it instead turned a bit more complicated than I initially expected for this. So I expect that my reasoning may be hard to grasp at times and it feels like that I didn't quite prove my point. I feel that way myself and will revisit this topic in the future, I am sure. However, I have been a bit more anxious to get onto other topics, and thus the abrupt conclusion to this.