“His great defect is the neglect of the grammatical and historical sense and his constant desire to find a hidden mystic meaning. His early book, On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees, catalogs and refutes many of these challenges. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. What specific hermeneutic principles did St. Augustine use in his own interpretation of Scripture and how consistent was he in the application of those principles? Augustine. As the opening quote illustrates, for Augustine, biblical interpretation is always abundantly practical. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1970), 124. It is rare, for instance, to see a well-ordered or definitive work by an amillennial interpreter setting forth positively and consistently his prophetic interpretations. As we’ve observed in the origination of this method of interpretation, there was a motive for its use. For a more constructive approach to allegory as a literary mode see Gerald Bostock, 'Allegory and the Interpretation of the Bible in Origen', in Journal of LiteratuR and Theology 1, (1987), !J9-5!J. sought to defend the Old Testament to the Greeks and, even more so, to fellow Jews. For example, in Isaiah 53:2-12 the (human) author meant to refer to Isaiah himself, or else the people of Israel as a whole … (On Christian Teaching 2.6.8), One should proceed to explore and analyze the obscure passages, by taking examples from the more obvious parts to illuminate obscure expressions and by using evidence of indisputable passages to remove the uncertainty of ambiguous ones. When Augustine described his later works on Genesis as “literal,” he intended to distinguish them from the allegorical approach of his earlier two-volume work on Genesis against the Manichees. Origen did not invent his interpretive techniques. M. IDDLE . Allegorical interpretation of the Bible is an interpretive method that assumes that the Bible has various levels of meaning and tends to focus on the spiritual sense, which includes the allegorical sense, the moral (or tropological) sense, and the anagogical sense, as opposed to the literal sense. For it is only the share of the plough that cuts through the earth; but the other parts of the plough are essential to make this operation possible. Augustine relied heavily on an allegorical hermeneutic in his first commentary. The Relationship Between Allegory and History, Now in my opinion it is certainly a complete mistake to suppose that no narrative of events in this type of literature has any significance beyond the purely historical record; but it is equally rash to maintain that every single statement in those books is a complex of allegorical meanings….In spite of that, I do not censure those who have succeeded in carving out a spiritual meaning from each and every event in the narrative, always provided that they have maintained its original basis of historical truth. It found acceptance also with the Roman church and among the leaders of the Reformation. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo,  p. 262 9:1-6), the Christian’s spiritual defense as armor (Eph. “Thus as great and brilliant a scholar as Augustine offers the following interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan: A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho = Adam Jerusalem = the heavenly city of peace from which Adam fell Jericho = the moon, and thereby signifies Adam’s mortality The allegorical method suggests that there is deeper meaning underneath the literal text. Augustine’s spiritual history was shaped by his understanding of the Bible. Building on Origen’s interpretive system, Augustine … Some might argue that we find clear uses of allegorical interpretation in the Bible, and therefore it’s valid. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. The different items and the various kinds of material which make it up—laws, promises, liturgies, genealogies, arguments, narratives, meditations, visions, aphorisms, homilies, parables and the … Laying Down Our Garments in the Road For God’s Move | conversant faith, The Greatest Type in the Bible | conversant faith. Now if this were the case, the figures themselves could not possibly have been distinguished, inasmuch as the verities would not have been declared, out of which the figurative language is stretched. I’ve only read portions of his History of Doctrine so far. On the one hand, he tended to interpret the Bible literally, but when it came to eschatology he interpreted that spiritually or allegorically. From an important passage on his "The Literal Interpretation of Genesis" (early fifth century, AD), St. Augustine wrote: “On the proper method of interpreting prophecy Tertullian stated: “Now to upset all conceits of this sort, let me dispel at once the preliminary idea on which they [heretics] rest their assertion that the prophets make all their announcements in figures of speech. However, many of his principles crop up elsewhere. 17 Henry Morris, The Revelation Record (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1983), 25. 4 “In the history of allegorical interpretation of Scripture it is not denied that there is a literal, historical, or grammatical sense to Scripture, but it is depreciated. No Christian, I mean, will have the nerve to say that they should not be taken in a figurative sense, if he pays attention to what the apostle says: All these things, however, happened among them in figure (1 Cor 10:11), and to his commending what is written in Genesis, And they shall be two in one flesh (Gn 2:24), as a great sacrament in Christ and in the Church (Eph 5:32). To find a hidden mystic meaning Log Out / Change ), 124 and his constant desire to a! And charms beginners his methods of interpretation, there was a Hellenistic scholar who was thought to been...: Conversions to Confessions, p. 28 2 he found answers to all their challenges, especially by of! Of Plato led him to emphasize symbolism and allegory with less motivation to defend in. `` literal '' interpretation, 3rd rev the figures author too saw that very meaning in the of! Then writing ceases to be Satan in disguise Genesis 3 introduces a serpent. 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