In Defense for Pneumatic Allegory
When Fundies Hate Patristic Exegesis
Fundamentalism Cries Against Patristic Exegesis
The profound issue that fundamentalists (or aka fundies) tend to have is a blind seriousness of their own religion, whereas an immediate hostility towards progressing or improving their own theology of the Bible despite evidence suggesting otherwise. One’s philosophy towards the Bible should be understood in realistic and honest manners, but fundies possess a misleading and exaggerated perception of the Bible due to religious indoctrination, due to constant phobia of deception and the unknown, and sluggish thought resulting from naive simplicity. Fundies often try to oppose better alternative frameworks of understanding the Bible; for instance, spiritual allegory, and they dismiss it as being a distortion of the faith, satanic or liberal agenda, and even try to find ways to counter it like using straw-man fallacies. They’ll call people like me a Marcionist without even knowing what that really means. Today, I am here to simply refute the many claims that fundamentalists tend to assert or use to brainwash their own community, and deny better alternatives like spiritual allegory and Christian discernment.
Fundie Objection #1: “Spiritual Allegory is Depraved Eisegesis”
This same objection can be replicated by me but in opposition to literalism. Even with a literal reading of the Scriptures, people still insert their biases into the text and assert theological nonsense. This same objection isn’t a fair analysis of pneumatic allegory, because it presumes that the mind is inherently and totally depraved, which is utterly ignorant and naive to assume. Yes, the mind can be distorted for an instance, but even the literal reading of the Scriptures, there can be distorted messages from a naive and literal exegesis. Some suggest that God (as a Spirit) is a literal male, some suggest that the Earth is flat, and others suggest that infanticide committed in the Bible is morally just because God said so. However, everyone based on their own biases will suggest that the Bible doesn’t affirm this or that, but it’s all based on a bias, subjective, and literal interpretation of the Bible; hence, we have fundies arguing over the text without appealing to sapient logic, honest exegesis, and Christian tradition. This same objection against spiritual allegory is extremely ridiculous since depraved eisegesis is inevitable in a fundamentalist and literalist framework.
Because fundamentalism fails to use proper logic, external contexts, and patristic tradition, then it is an easily fallible system based on naive simplicity. Now, when it comes to being breathed or moved by the Spirit, the usage of pneumatic allegory becomes faithfully exegetical to the image of Christ and faithfully philosophical to the criteria of the Good. Pneumatic “exegesis” isn’t called eisegesis, because it possesses a fixed criteria rather than being a simple emotive preference. Pneumatic exegesis is based on sapient philosophy, mystical experience bearing ethical/logical perks, the revelation of Christ, and patristic tradition continuing this method or example. To be led by wisdom and revelations of the Divine Spirit, is a better methodology for the believer than submitting wholly to an invented religious dogma for the Bible; in fact, being led by the Spirit in the operations of wisdom and self-attested revelations is more scriptural than a sola or prima scriptura viewpoint (Ephesians 1:17; Wisdom 9:16, 17; Philippians 2:5; 1st Corinthians 2:13–16). But of course, the question remains from the fundies, “Why be a Christian if the Bible isn’t inerrant?” Because I didn’t become a Christian from an unrealistic and ineffective view of the Bible. The biggest proofs for Christianity would be its own sapient philosophy, mystical experiences, and historical examples from the patristic faith progressing the world into better Ages. But when the Church wandered away from its true tradition and approach of God, it became one of the biggest threats of the world. One of these Christian devices from the true tradition of the Church that were thrown away was pneumatic allegory, which led to the moral justifications of genocide, infanticide, and even hostile dogmatic indifference to others (i.e. God condemns you because you don’t know or trust the Gospel as the so-called “obvious” truth). Interestingly, the Early Fathers read Paul’s teaching “the letter (scripture/grammatos/γράμματος) kills but the Spirit gives life” as suggesting that the literal exegetical justification offers spiritual detriment but reading the Scriptures or Grammatos by the Spirit offers life to one’s individual faith. In fact, Paul suggests in 2nd Corinthians 3:6 that the Spirit renders us competent of the new covenant instead of this whole submission to the letter or the Scriptures. So then, we should strive to be inline with the Spirit in the operations of wise philosophy and mystical communion, rather than being devoid of them and fixated on the letter. Though the Bible contradicts itself, it also corrects its own errors in text when such is fathomed from a Christological mind rather than a fundamentalist mind. Indeed, naming the Bible “the word of God” is a misleading presupposition, and is likely a dangerous understanding of the Bible.
By the way, 2nd Timothy 3:16 doesn’t affirm textual inerrancy [link].
Fundie Objection #2: “Intellectual Laziness of Denying the OT”
Christian websites like GotQuestions.com and Reasonable-Faith apologetics attempt to defend horrendous depictions of God and obvious, literal contradictions of the Old Testament. One of these suggest that allegorizing the Old Testament in reference to horrendous and problematic stories are lazy attempts to deny the Old Testament, except trying to justify moral and illogical atrocities condoned by God is rooted in naive reasoning, fideism, and false humility. The pneumatic allegorization of the Old Testament passages that are illogical and immoral is considered very Christian, faithful to early church tradition, and philosophically sapient. But defending these passages as being consistent with God’s own nature is very heretical, blasphemous to Christ’s image, and falters away from true patristic tradition. The false humility propagated by fundies is to justify God as being coherent to obvious evil and nonsensical notions. Denying the literal message of the Hebrew Scriptures and replacing it with a better message of pneumatic thought in like manner to Christ is very Christian, rather than defending a faulty but progressive and diverse thought-process of Judaism concerning the image of God. When the Scriptures, in some instances, do not bear an inspired message within the text, it is the duty of the spiritually mature Christian to breathe exegetical inspiration into the literal sense of the texts, so that he or she may grow spiritually and edify the faith of everyone else. For this is what Paul said to the Corinthians: thus, saying unto them:
13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are absurd to him, and he is not able to *deduce* them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Fundie Objection #3: Typology & the School of Antioch
The problematic assertion among any kind of fundie is to claim typology as being totally distinct from pneumatic allegory, but Christological typology is a form of allegory. They’ll argue that typology has more merit in appearance within the biblical texts than moral or eschatological allegory, but regardless, outsiders of the faith would still be unpersuaded with either typology or tropology since the plain reading is neglected. But for one to distinguish typology from pneumatic allegory is a total ignorance of true Christian thought. Typology is often conflated with strict historicity of truth, but Christian typology rooted in historical events can be just as valid as being rooted in mythical literature; nevertheless, there’s no evidence that the Hebrew Scriptures have total historical merit (some but not every detail of it). Typo-logical prophecies, however, could simply be expressed in words or through literature without any reliance upon strict historical value. At the end of the day, Christianity arose not because of the origins of Judaism, but simply because Christ engaged our world and harnessed some elements of truth from both Judaism and Greek thought.
The School of Antioch, according to fundies, is seen as evidence for justifying a literalist orientation and strict philosophical acceptance for the Hebrew Scriptures; however, this school is both a minority stream and comes from a later tradition that denies true patristic tradition. Nevertheless, the Antiochenes still possessed a typological use of allegory, so even they weren’t purely literalist. The School of Antioch weren’t fond of Origen’s excessive use of allegory for the Hebrew scriptures, so they resorted to a nigh-literalist approach which is to their detriment (I’ll explain later). It was started by Lucian of Antioch and Diodore of Tarsus, but the offspring of this school suffered from limiting Christ’s textual predictions, suggesting that the Hebrew scriptures don’t really point to Christ, critiquing the Apostle Paul’s usage of the Old Testament, and even adopting primitive worldviews of the earth (i.e. flat earth cosmology). Christian victims (from the school of Antioch) of these primitive worldviews while denying the accurate worldview of the Earth were John Chrysostom, Diodore of Tarsus, and even Theodore Mopsuestia. These are the logical and patristic consequences of having a literalist orientation towards the Hebrew scriptures, which is a gross deviation from true patristic tradition and Paul’s scriptural examples. There is no evidence from early patristic tradition and Paul’s own letters that we should take a nigh/prima/total literalist orientation towards the Hebrew scriptures. This Anitochene deviation from Church tradition leads to problematic views like denying Paul’s spiritual exegesis and adopting a faulty cosmology, which are two strict “Jewish” attempts in denying Hellenistic influence. Judaism and Hellenistic thought are two gifts from God, but these two are combined and founded upon the Divine Logos, who is the true representation of God.
Fundie Objection #4: Marcionites for being Allegorical?
The final straw-man fundies dare assert would be to suggest those who allegorize the Old Testament to become more inline with the image of Christ as Marcionists; however, this objection is very far from the truth and was not Marcion’s heresy. Marcion’s heresy wasn’t about dividing the OT god from Jesus, but to simply rationalize these as two separate divine entities. From the critiques of Tertullian, Irenaeus, and even Origen, none of them suggested that the God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures from a literalist orientation was to be considered as strictly philosophically true. Neither the descriptions of God from Clement of Rome, nor from Mathetes’ epistle to Diognetus (both taught of the Apostles), would be considered coherent or bound to a literalist exegesis of the Hebrew writings. Marcion was simply a literalist whom held the doctrine of two divine entities with polar opposite ethical natures.
The allegorical tradition didn’t start with Origen, Clement, or any native of Alexandria after the Apostles, but it started with Philo, whom Paul and the Pharisees imitated as a result. The School of Alexandria followed this example from the Hellenization of the Jews and the Apostles in spiritualizing the Hebrew scriptures, which wasn’t limited to typology as the Church of Antioch was, but also fulfilled the eschatological and tropological modes of spiritual exegesis. This tradition continued with Jesus, through the Apostles like Paul and Peter, then Clement of Rome who followed their footsteps, then pseudo-Barnabas, then Melito of Sardis, then Irenaeus of Lyons with Justin Martyr, then Clement of Alexandria with Origen in the same era as Tertullian and his pupil Cyprian of Carthage, then Ambrose of Milan and his admirer Augustine whereas St. Basil and his brother Gregory, leading up to Paulinus of Nola and Maximus the Confessor. According to Origen’s quote of Celsus, his opponent admits that early Christians would resort to allegorical readings of the Hebrew scriptures when it presented problematic and horrendous passages (Contra Celsum 4.38, 48). Origen bases his allegorical exegesis on the writings of Paul, and even so, Ambrose and Augustine who argue that Paul exemplifies spiritual exegesis for others to imitate as well. As Paul says, “God made us competent for a new covenant, for the scriptures kill but the Spirit gives life [when spiritualizing the letter].”
Also, to those who suggest that Paul strictly harnesses typology, so as to affirm their strict literalist view of the Old Testament deity, it is a completely ignorant claim. Paul’s use of spiritual exegesis found in Galatians 4:21–31 is not typology due to it not prefiguring Jesus’ deeds, but it is an example of tropology (i.e. moral allegory) because Paul is providing moral guidance for the Galatians to be children of the Spirit rather than to be enslaved by the dictates of Moses. The main intent behind Paul’s reading of Abraham and his wives isn’t to prefigure Christological events to the Galatians, but to morally guide them away from being adherents of the law since it formerly motivated him to persecute the Church. Biblical (inerrant) literalism is founded upon a tainted view of God, encouraged by soft epistemic/moral nihilism, based on a later deviation from Christian tradition, and it’s a severe indoctrination. Pneumatic allegory is determined by the gospel revelation of Christ, sapient philosophy, mystical experience, and exemplified through patristic tradition starting from Paul and Peter, and extending even unto St. Maximus the Confessor.
“The Old Testament achieved and maintained its status as Christian Scripture with the aid of spiritual interpretation. There was no early Christian who simultaneously acknowledged the authority of the Old Testament and interpreted it literally.” — Jaroslav Pelikan
