Parables have been a main object of allegorization. What is allegorization? Some time, I’ll give the history of the process, and why it is a very fruitful and logically sensible way of interpreting texts. First moment, one will present not only the Alexandrian school, but its influence on Jewish textual practices, Philo as textbook case, Origen as one of the great allegorizers. Second moment, sometimes corollary of the first, the misuse of allegory, and the free-for-all allegorization, right up to our modern and less modern preachers, in whose hands and mouths allegorization became a political and moral weapon rather than an instrument of discovery and return to the text. Hence a third moment, with late XIXth century exegetes, and first of all with Jülicher and followers, who wish to escape the intellectually sterile world of allegory (the reason for this being that as the Christianized world, in its successful capitalist incarnation, has moved away, or thinks it has moved away from ancient modes of production and their accompanying fidelities or forms of group thinking, it becomes necessary to free also the individual as moral being and kantify him, or in other words, to enlarge one’s economic freedom to a freedom of thought in regard to a model in which the allegory is one-directional. A form of late cartesianism, with the usual suspension of the divine). We are now in a fourth moment: a return to allegory as an instrument of discovery (reasoning by analogy), but with the possibility that not only the one-directionality has been put aside for good, in favor of a multi-directionality (controlled: i.e. we know how to use the tools: history, sociology, anthropological questions, etc.), but that the terms of the analogies set up in the allegorizing moment are better understood as revelations. An important point about the parabolic form: it allows the listeners to confront the truth(s) of their situation indirectly, unthreateningly. For instance, in Luke 16.1–11,a frightening thought on the nature of God and hence on the nature of society is hidden yet approachable through the paradoxical form of the story of the unfaithful steward.
2 thoughts on “On allegory”
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“For instance, in Luke 16.1-11, a frightening thought on the nature of God and hence on the nature of society is hidden yet approachable through the paradoxical form of the story of the unfaithful steward.”
What is the frightening thought on the nature of God and society in this parable?
The dishonest steward’s master in Luke 16 is coming and the steward has lost his position. But he still has his master’s symbols of authority at his disposal for a few hours. So, hurriedly and illegally, he uses them to write off part of the debts of a village of sharecroppers, in the hope that the tenants will reciprocate later in food and shelter. This is in the story. But the implicit part is that he also knows that when his master arrives, the tenants (probably sharecroppers, given the debts) will thank the landlord profusely and bless him, before he has time to get to the accounts, making it impossible for him to go back on what has been done in his name and authority by the steward. We know the master congratulates the steward, an impossibility in normal circumstances. It means that the contract changes are accepted too. The story to my mind implies a daring view of God: that God as master may actually accept to see his hand forced into the forgiveness of sins, through the agency of less than reputable authority holders, because his love actually knows no limits. The absence of limits to this love, that is what I find frightening. As I find frightening, with the text, the God of Exodus 3.