In his ‘On Christian Doctrine,’ St Augustine writes: “We must show the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: whatever there is in the word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as metaphorical. Purity of life has reference to the love of God and one’s neighbor; soundness of doctrine to the knowledge of God and one’s neighbor.”
Sadly, Augustine did not invoke the above hermeneutical rule to call into question the divine commands to slaughter the Canaanites; nevertheless the rule stands.
An additional quotation in this line of reasoning:
“If there were [only] one meaning for the words [of scripture], the first interpreter would find it, and all other listeners would have neither the toil of seeking nor the pleasure of finding. But every word of our Lord has its own image, and each image has its own members, and each member possesses its own species and form. Each person hears in accordance with his capacity, and it is interpreted in accordance with what has been given to him.”
~ St Ephrem of Syria, Commentary on the Diatessaron 7.22. Trans. C. McCarthy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Also check out Maximus QThal 32.3, which I can’t access at the moment, but I once paraphrased/quoted as:
God is found in scripture bу contemplating its spirit distinct from its letter, for in doing so, “all that deceives and seduces the mind into countless erroneous opinions” is utterly removed.
“That we should imagine that anger, wrath, jealousy or the such like have anything to do with the divine Nature is utterly abhorrent for us: no one in their right mind, no one who has any understanding at all can possibly come to such madness as to think anything of the sort against God. Nor again can we possibly say that He acts thus out of retribution, even though the Scriptures may on the outer surface posit this.
Even to think this of God and to suppose that retribution for evil acts is to be found with Him is abominable. By implying that He makes use of such a great and difficult thing out of retribution we are attributing a weakness to the divine Nature. We cannot even believe such a thing can be found in those human beings who live a virtuous and upright life and whose thoughts are entirely in accord with the divine will—let alone believe it of God, that He has done something out of retribution for anticipated evil acts in connection with those whose nature He had brought into being with honour and great love.”
I love that those very familiar moral sensibilities—typically taken for granted as modern developments—are already and so plainly there in 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc- century figures (and, I don’t know, maybe have been for all human history).
There's also a key passage in St. Dionysius relevant here, but which I've never seen discussed. In letter 9 to Titus, He writes very explicitly that some of the narrative features and behavior of God in Scripture are incoherent and even "monstrous" if taken literally:
"We have thoroughly investigated for him all the expressions of the Oracles concerning God, which appear to the multitude to be monstrous. For they give a colour of incongruity dreadful to the uninitiated souls..Wherefore also, the many discredit the expressions concerning the Divine Mysteries. For, we contemplate them only through the sensible symbols that have grown upon them. We must then strip them, and view them by themselves in their naked purity...For, with what incredible and simulated monstrosities are its external, forms filled? What would any one say concerning the angers, the griefs, the various oaths, the repentances, the curses, the revenges, the manifold and dubious excuses for the failure of promises, the battle of giants in Genesis, during which He is said to scheme against those powerful and great men, and this when they were contriving the building, not with a view to injustice towards other people, but on behalf of their own safety? And that counsel devised in heaven to deceive and mislead Achab; and those mundane and meritricious passions of the Canticles; and all the other sacred compositions which appear in the description of God, which stick at nothing, as projections, and multiplications of hidden things, and divisions of things one and undivided, and formative and manifold forms of the shapeless and unformed..."
I honestly have no idea how those who hold to the "spiritual level never undermines or contradicts the literal/historical level" square what St. Dionysius says here (though I imagine most who make such claims are unaware of it, since it's a relatively obscure passage). Note how St. Dionysius even questions God's purported behavior in the story of Babel.
The people in Babel had explicitly rebelled against God’s command to be fruitful, multiply, and *fill the Earth*. They were instead gathering themselves together in one place.
In addition to a lot of other implications. What would be required to do that? Probably some sort of awful tyranny. Build a tower to the heavens? Trying to supplant God/get to heaven their own way not by doing what God wanted. Having a finite tower with all the people in it? Probably have to practice some sort of population control/eugenics. Probably other things as well idk, but Babel makes a lot more sense when you think about it.
Allegorical interpretation seems like such a stretch to me (i.e. feels like reading into a text that was never the author’s intent) and unnecessary (i.e. if you already know it’s virtuous to kill off evil inside yourself, why waste your time finding that already-held idea in old stories). But… the literal approach doesn’t work either for the reasons Nyssa states. So I could go with the evangelical option and just try to hold both options in tension (use the scriptures for both tropological, allegorical, and literal historical information when and as I see fit). But that doesn’t feel right either. So I feel like I’m only left with the Marcion option of throwing it all out. But… as a Christian, I don’t feel like that’s a great option either. Sigh. How do you all reconcile these 4 competing options as a modern person and believer? Help!
Understand what you can, and work on the rest, dont worry about the fact that you dont have a great or perfect understanding. I have found it most useful to hold both in tension and add the above approach. When I read the Fathers and the Saints, I cant see another option that is as superlative. I dont have to understand all of it right now.
This post is of huge importance and deserves to be widely read. (As it happens, I came across a passage where, I think, Eleonore Stump makes the claim you here call into question.)
Well, the idea that the literal sense is always primary is (with the disclaimer that I am neither the Pope nor a canon lawyer) official Catholic teaching, so it's not surprising that a Catholic philosopher like Stump would hold to that position.
This is excellent. I am so glad to have found this. I need to study on this further, and more deeply, but have had a hard time finding any sort of comprehensive works covering the technique of spiritual reading.
Yeah, I wish I knew more. FWIW, I was just recommended The OT in Eastern Orthodox Tradition by Pentiuc as a good relevant work, but haven't read it myself.
Have you read “Sin Revisited” by Solange Hertz? A great distillation of a bunch of desert fathers and doctors of the church. The cover of the current edition is pretty bad so dont judge it by that. It pretty wonderfully explains a bunch of things in the OT in a preeminently useful way. I found it more useful than Scupoli even, or Palladius. Both of whom I also recommend. Hertz is extremely accessible and great. Very cheap on amazon or from the publisher. Short book. 10/10 buy it.
Thank you for this post and all the excellent examples in the original and in these comments.
This is a really crucial point, and one that I find students very often struggle to fully understand. What's clear in ancient/Patristic exegesis is that yes they are indeed willing quite often to assert that a passage has no historical meaning in situations where that would be absurd, immoral, or impossible.
What's much trickier is helping people to see that they nonetheless approach allegory and typology with *rigour*. That is to say that allegories can't just be used willy-nilly to make scripture mean whatever we want it to mean. The potential to go a little too far from the needs of rigour is one of the causes of suspicion of Origen (whether fairly or not).
The problem, to my thinking, is that so many people in the modern world entirely equate rigour with historical literalism. To modern readers the truest kind of text is a facts-only Associated Press wire report on a series of events. We have become so disconnected from what it means to read a text deeply that many people are tempted to try and "defend" the Church Fathers by claiming they never set aside the historical meaning of texts; it is so hard for moderns to understand how the Fathers are being extremely careful and rigorous even even when saying "this didn't actually happen historically, the meaning is spiritual." We just have no real category for that anymore.
I am used to equivocating responses to these sorts of arguments that appeal to God’s justice: “God’s justice is so unlike ours that we cannot comprehend it.” Another variant is “whatever God does is just” and so the slaughter of the Egyptian firstborns is included in God’s justice.
Which is fine, as long as you're willing to accept that we don't (and can't) ever really know what's just or unjust, which seems to be me quite an exorbitant price to pay, epistemologically speaking. I think Hart's right in saying this entails a kind of moral nihilism, since any evil, no matter how monstrous, could turn out to be an expression of the unknowable justice of the unknowable God, or the arbitrary will of the voluntarist God. I mean, do we *know* that God didn't command Hitler to kill six million Jews for some incomprehensible reason of His own? Do we know God didn't command Putin to invade Ukraine? Can we really be sure any particular evil isn't an expression of God's incomprehensible justice?
When I was in college, the school chaplain created a minor stir by suggesting that Jephthah should not have sacrificed his daughter because we can know, for certain, that God hates human sacrifice so much that he'd rather an oath be broken than a child be sacrificed. Because this was a Reformed college (and Calvinism holds that human reason is so corrupted that we literally can't know right from wrong apart from direct commands from God), a lot of people were uncomfortable with the chaplain's certainty. Since then, I've come to think we can't afford to be anything less than certain. Justice is justice is justice and anything less is blasphemy. Yahweh is not Yog-Sothoth.
Just to make sure I am clear - I disagree with these “divine command” ethical arguments and read scripture allegorically/metaphorically/mythically where reason and conscience dictates caution against “plain reading.” A plain reading has rarely been sufficient to satisfy my curiosity, and moving beyond that mindset has opened scripture significantly.
See Colin’s reply. I understand what you are saying and we certainly always work for human rights and justice to the best of our own ability and at the same time realize that in everything we are to give thanks. The whole Orthodox faith revolves around these type id paradoxes we encounter in life
"Origen is quite clear on this, but I will not include him since he is viewed by many Orthodox as a heretic rather than a Church Father."
According to the 7th century book "Spiritual Meadow" by Saint John Moscos, Origen and Evagrius are both in hades because of the heresies they taught. Orthodox people who look very favourably upon Origen often do so because they have been seduced by the attractive falsehood of Universal Salvation.
There is no place in Holy Orthodoxy for supporters of Universal Salvation. They must be opposed unrelentingly until they either change their beliefs, or are completely defeated.
"Before God, I say to you that anyone who reads Origen and agrees with his depraved opinions will be sent to the lowest parts of Hell, where his inheritance will be worms and outer darkness, where the souls of the wicked suffer eternal punishment."
Unfortunate for Sts. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Gregory Nyssen, Macrina the Younger, Pamphilus of Caesarea, Isaac of Nineveh, etc.
And unfortunate for anyone who thinks God is actually the Good, and not an obscene voluntaristic movement of inscrutable will no different from Azathoth.
If Sts. Gregory The Theologian, Basil The Great, Gregory Of Nyssa etc. were Universal Salvation believers, the Church would have anathematized them. That they've all been revealed as Saints indicates that interpretations marking them as Universalists are misconceptions, perhaps intentional ones arising from those who don't love the Truth. That is all.
Also I had good laugh at your behaviour as described by this article:
This is an interesting interpretation and I have heard many say that the Bible should not be taken literally but I honestly don’t think we have only two options to either take it literally Or allegorically I think there is a third way actually. I think that the spiritual dimension is inclusive not exclusive and when both accounts are accepted with faith and trust in God, who is ineffable and incomprehensible, we can approach Scripture with an open heart and an open mind. We can as it were, be “ comfortable with mystery”. Because there are Ancient Fathers who have speculated and written down their thoughts are we to take them literally or allegorically or as human beings just like us, who are trying to understand the Word of God in such a way that it makes sense to them at the time in which they are reading it and with all of their own personal projections, presuppositions etc etc. Thank you so much for this. One more question tho are you literally in exile ???
I think your "third way" misses the point. Sometimes the spiritual dimension can't be inclusive of the literal dimension without offense to faith, reason, or both. To expand on the example from Gregory of Nyssa, if God really slaughtered the Egyptian firstborn, then he is literally not God, because such an action would be cruel, vengeful, and unjust, all of which are contrary to God's character and perfections. To believe otherwise is not to embrace "mystery," because there is no mystery about whether God is good or bad.
I am still not sure how to answer this…. I think that we both agree God is love and all He does is for our good not only personally but also collectively as humankind. This is the way we can live in this world and have the peace that passes all understanding. I think that hope, faith, mindset or Mind of Christ, is exactly the glue that holds our physical and literal world together with our spiritual and mystical communion with God. God is all in all. The fact that we can’t understand evil or suffering in this world is because we can not comprehend God. To me it is like a child who feels like they have been unjustly punished but instead of raging at their father they simply obey and think to themselves my Daddy loves me it will come out okay somehow. Whatever proofs or words or happenings that contradict that have to be wrong.
Why? Is this life all we have? I do not think so. Additionally, do not all men die someday? Who is the arbiter of that? God is. Fretting about the Egyptians in this case seems weird. Would any of them be better off in eternity had they lived? No idea. Probably not though, egypt was a pretty depraved place in a lot of ways. Which then leads into the spiritual sense of the story, which also makes sense. It can be both, and more.
"[E]gypt was a pretty depraved place in a lot of ways." Not by ancient standards. Actually, Egypt was one of the most morally and culturally developed civilizations in the ancient world. The Maxims of Ptahhotep predate the oldest books of the Old Testament by a thousand years, but its teaching wouldn't seem out of place in the book of Proverbs. The hymns and psalms of the Egyptians are extremely similar to the Old Testament psalms, both in form and content. The political system of ancient Egypt was based on the assumption that the Pharaoh had a duty both to the gods and to the people to deliver justice and flourishing (ma'at), not unlike the conception of monarchy asserted by the Hebrew prophets (though certainly less radical). Was Egypt also an absolute monarchy that brutally punished its enemies and mistreated its slaves? Sure. But that was true of every state in the ancient world, including the kingdom of Israel.
Even setting that aside, we're still stuck with the claim that God deliberately killed thousands of children as punishment for a crime someone else committed. I'm familiar with the argument that God, as creator, has a blank check to end life when and where he will. If inscrutable omnipotence were God's only attribute, that's fine. But it's not. God is also perfect love, and perfect justice, and to execute children for the crime of another is an act of hatred and injustice. It's no good to say "would any of them had been better off?" Human beings have teleological ends - to love God and love others - ends which were thwarted by that act. How can we claim that God loved the children of Egypt, if the deaths of the firstborn really happened? Obviously, he didn't. They were tools to punish Pharaoh - brought into existence just to be unceremoniously snuffed out to make a point. Were Osiris or Marduk or Zeus credited with such an action, Christians would take it as evidence that those gods were the cruel imaginings of a morally and theologically barbaric people. We can't grade God on a curve. It's theologically and apologetically disastrous.
So the maxims of ptahotep from a thousand years prior were good but are they followed in the time of Moses? Egypt is repeatedly referred to in scripture as a place of idolatry and as a metaphor for a number of things similar. Everyone dies someday, and God sorts out what to do with their souls, and, also being omnipotent and outside of time, he knows what they are and what they wouldve chosen to become. Some die at birth, others at 100. All of them could have lived longer, but this life is a temporary condition. Think of the example our Lord gives of the collapse of the tower of siloam. Entire nations get judged all the time, never for the crimes of the small children in them. If a volcano destroys a town, is God unjust and evil for allowing or willing it? If a flood drowns a child, or a thousand children, same question. If someone is born rich or poor or crippled? Is that justice? Maybe not, but maybe people are looking at it too narrowly. The egypt question isnt much of a question, it is more a pointed example of the same question that people ask about death generally. What makes it different than the red sea swallowing up a bunch of soldiers? I’m sure most of them were just following orders and trying to catch a bunch of rebellious slaves led by a meddling and troublesome wizard and their motivations for attempting to do so are entirely understandable. If God is a perfect scalpel at all times, there is less merit and lovability to those who follow and love him and eachother. The whole free will exercise doesnt really work as well. Idk if I am the greatest orator or explainer or whatever of all of this and I apologize for not being very good.
You're confusing Egypt as a theological metaphor with Egypt as a historical reality. I can tell we treat the historicity of Scripture quite differently, so I won't try to persuade you that none of the authors of the Old Testament actually had firsthand knowledge of Egyptian civilization, but it is something that I'm assuming.
As for God's providence and death, I think you're taking the exact opposite lesson from the story than Jesus intended to make. He's explicitly rejects the idea that these incidents reflect divine justice - and he says the same thing of the man blind from birth, who was born blind only so that he could be healed to display God's love. And that's exactly the problem with assuming God must have some inscrutable reason for every particular evil: in the Old Testament, God destroys to restore. It's a recurring theme throughout all the books of the OT; even vile, unbelieving Sodom will be restored in the end (Ezekiel 16:53). To destroy simply to destroy - whether that destruction is merited or not - is not the way of God.
Excellent and needed piece though I’d argue some did read it literally but not as we think literal, because they saw it through the prism of Christ. I wrote about this topic if your interested, trying to map the out the hermeneutical framework:
In his ‘On Christian Doctrine,’ St Augustine writes: “We must show the way to find out whether a phrase is literal or figurative. And the way is certainly as follows: whatever there is in the word of God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine, you may set down as metaphorical. Purity of life has reference to the love of God and one’s neighbor; soundness of doctrine to the knowledge of God and one’s neighbor.”
Sadly, Augustine did not invoke the above hermeneutical rule to call into question the divine commands to slaughter the Canaanites; nevertheless the rule stands.
That's great. Thanks, Fr. Al!
An additional quotation in this line of reasoning:
“If there were [only] one meaning for the words [of scripture], the first interpreter would find it, and all other listeners would have neither the toil of seeking nor the pleasure of finding. But every word of our Lord has its own image, and each image has its own members, and each member possesses its own species and form. Each person hears in accordance with his capacity, and it is interpreted in accordance with what has been given to him.”
~ St Ephrem of Syria, Commentary on the Diatessaron 7.22. Trans. C. McCarthy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Also check out Maximus QThal 32.3, which I can’t access at the moment, but I once paraphrased/quoted as:
God is found in scripture bу contemplating its spirit distinct from its letter, for in doing so, “all that deceives and seduces the mind into countless erroneous opinions” is utterly removed.
Also from St Isaac’s Second Part II.39.2-3
“That we should imagine that anger, wrath, jealousy or the such like have anything to do with the divine Nature is utterly abhorrent for us: no one in their right mind, no one who has any understanding at all can possibly come to such madness as to think anything of the sort against God. Nor again can we possibly say that He acts thus out of retribution, even though the Scriptures may on the outer surface posit this.
Even to think this of God and to suppose that retribution for evil acts is to be found with Him is abominable. By implying that He makes use of such a great and difficult thing out of retribution we are attributing a weakness to the divine Nature. We cannot even believe such a thing can be found in those human beings who live a virtuous and upright life and whose thoughts are entirely in accord with the divine will—let alone believe it of God, that He has done something out of retribution for anticipated evil acts in connection with those whose nature He had brought into being with honour and great love.”
As someone who is exploring Christianity but is not convinced, thee references just filled me with hope. Thank you for sharing them.
I love that those very familiar moral sensibilities—typically taken for granted as modern developments—are already and so plainly there in 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc- century figures (and, I don’t know, maybe have been for all human history).
There's also a key passage in St. Dionysius relevant here, but which I've never seen discussed. In letter 9 to Titus, He writes very explicitly that some of the narrative features and behavior of God in Scripture are incoherent and even "monstrous" if taken literally:
"We have thoroughly investigated for him all the expressions of the Oracles concerning God, which appear to the multitude to be monstrous. For they give a colour of incongruity dreadful to the uninitiated souls..Wherefore also, the many discredit the expressions concerning the Divine Mysteries. For, we contemplate them only through the sensible symbols that have grown upon them. We must then strip them, and view them by themselves in their naked purity...For, with what incredible and simulated monstrosities are its external, forms filled? What would any one say concerning the angers, the griefs, the various oaths, the repentances, the curses, the revenges, the manifold and dubious excuses for the failure of promises, the battle of giants in Genesis, during which He is said to scheme against those powerful and great men, and this when they were contriving the building, not with a view to injustice towards other people, but on behalf of their own safety? And that counsel devised in heaven to deceive and mislead Achab; and those mundane and meritricious passions of the Canticles; and all the other sacred compositions which appear in the description of God, which stick at nothing, as projections, and multiplications of hidden things, and divisions of things one and undivided, and formative and manifold forms of the shapeless and unformed..."
I honestly have no idea how those who hold to the "spiritual level never undermines or contradicts the literal/historical level" square what St. Dionysius says here (though I imagine most who make such claims are unaware of it, since it's a relatively obscure passage). Note how St. Dionysius even questions God's purported behavior in the story of Babel.
Thanks, Ben. I'll have to track down the passage and think through it.
You can find it online here (though I'm no expert on how good/accurate of a translation this is):
https://ccel.org/ccel/dionysius/works/works.i.iv.ix.html
The people in Babel had explicitly rebelled against God’s command to be fruitful, multiply, and *fill the Earth*. They were instead gathering themselves together in one place.
In addition to a lot of other implications. What would be required to do that? Probably some sort of awful tyranny. Build a tower to the heavens? Trying to supplant God/get to heaven their own way not by doing what God wanted. Having a finite tower with all the people in it? Probably have to practice some sort of population control/eugenics. Probably other things as well idk, but Babel makes a lot more sense when you think about it.
Wonderful examples and exposition! Thank you. Also, your concluding point recalls this little essay.
https://firstthings.com/ad-litteram/
Yes, I believe that is where I first heard that point made.
Allegorical interpretation seems like such a stretch to me (i.e. feels like reading into a text that was never the author’s intent) and unnecessary (i.e. if you already know it’s virtuous to kill off evil inside yourself, why waste your time finding that already-held idea in old stories). But… the literal approach doesn’t work either for the reasons Nyssa states. So I could go with the evangelical option and just try to hold both options in tension (use the scriptures for both tropological, allegorical, and literal historical information when and as I see fit). But that doesn’t feel right either. So I feel like I’m only left with the Marcion option of throwing it all out. But… as a Christian, I don’t feel like that’s a great option either. Sigh. How do you all reconcile these 4 competing options as a modern person and believer? Help!
I feel that. Scripture is hard.
Understand what you can, and work on the rest, dont worry about the fact that you dont have a great or perfect understanding. I have found it most useful to hold both in tension and add the above approach. When I read the Fathers and the Saints, I cant see another option that is as superlative. I dont have to understand all of it right now.
This post is of huge importance and deserves to be widely read. (As it happens, I came across a passage where, I think, Eleonore Stump makes the claim you here call into question.)
Well, the idea that the literal sense is always primary is (with the disclaimer that I am neither the Pope nor a canon lawyer) official Catholic teaching, so it's not surprising that a Catholic philosopher like Stump would hold to that position.
This is excellent. I am so glad to have found this. I need to study on this further, and more deeply, but have had a hard time finding any sort of comprehensive works covering the technique of spiritual reading.
Yeah, I wish I knew more. FWIW, I was just recommended The OT in Eastern Orthodox Tradition by Pentiuc as a good relevant work, but haven't read it myself.
Have you read “Sin Revisited” by Solange Hertz? A great distillation of a bunch of desert fathers and doctors of the church. The cover of the current edition is pretty bad so dont judge it by that. It pretty wonderfully explains a bunch of things in the OT in a preeminently useful way. I found it more useful than Scupoli even, or Palladius. Both of whom I also recommend. Hertz is extremely accessible and great. Very cheap on amazon or from the publisher. Short book. 10/10 buy it.
Thank you. This is an excellent starting point for developing a fuller understanding of Biblical hermeneutics.
Thank you for this post and all the excellent examples in the original and in these comments.
This is a really crucial point, and one that I find students very often struggle to fully understand. What's clear in ancient/Patristic exegesis is that yes they are indeed willing quite often to assert that a passage has no historical meaning in situations where that would be absurd, immoral, or impossible.
What's much trickier is helping people to see that they nonetheless approach allegory and typology with *rigour*. That is to say that allegories can't just be used willy-nilly to make scripture mean whatever we want it to mean. The potential to go a little too far from the needs of rigour is one of the causes of suspicion of Origen (whether fairly or not).
The problem, to my thinking, is that so many people in the modern world entirely equate rigour with historical literalism. To modern readers the truest kind of text is a facts-only Associated Press wire report on a series of events. We have become so disconnected from what it means to read a text deeply that many people are tempted to try and "defend" the Church Fathers by claiming they never set aside the historical meaning of texts; it is so hard for moderns to understand how the Fathers are being extremely careful and rigorous even even when saying "this didn't actually happen historically, the meaning is spiritual." We just have no real category for that anymore.
I am used to equivocating responses to these sorts of arguments that appeal to God’s justice: “God’s justice is so unlike ours that we cannot comprehend it.” Another variant is “whatever God does is just” and so the slaughter of the Egyptian firstborns is included in God’s justice.
Which is fine, as long as you're willing to accept that we don't (and can't) ever really know what's just or unjust, which seems to be me quite an exorbitant price to pay, epistemologically speaking. I think Hart's right in saying this entails a kind of moral nihilism, since any evil, no matter how monstrous, could turn out to be an expression of the unknowable justice of the unknowable God, or the arbitrary will of the voluntarist God. I mean, do we *know* that God didn't command Hitler to kill six million Jews for some incomprehensible reason of His own? Do we know God didn't command Putin to invade Ukraine? Can we really be sure any particular evil isn't an expression of God's incomprehensible justice?
When I was in college, the school chaplain created a minor stir by suggesting that Jephthah should not have sacrificed his daughter because we can know, for certain, that God hates human sacrifice so much that he'd rather an oath be broken than a child be sacrificed. Because this was a Reformed college (and Calvinism holds that human reason is so corrupted that we literally can't know right from wrong apart from direct commands from God), a lot of people were uncomfortable with the chaplain's certainty. Since then, I've come to think we can't afford to be anything less than certain. Justice is justice is justice and anything less is blasphemy. Yahweh is not Yog-Sothoth.
Just to make sure I am clear - I disagree with these “divine command” ethical arguments and read scripture allegorically/metaphorically/mythically where reason and conscience dictates caution against “plain reading.” A plain reading has rarely been sufficient to satisfy my curiosity, and moving beyond that mindset has opened scripture significantly.
I figured. I was meaning more to reply to the arguments you mentioned, as I've seen them brought up frequently too, especially by apologists.
See Colin’s reply. I understand what you are saying and we certainly always work for human rights and justice to the best of our own ability and at the same time realize that in everything we are to give thanks. The whole Orthodox faith revolves around these type id paradoxes we encounter in life
Wow!!! Yes exactly!!!
"Origen is quite clear on this, but I will not include him since he is viewed by many Orthodox as a heretic rather than a Church Father."
According to the 7th century book "Spiritual Meadow" by Saint John Moscos, Origen and Evagrius are both in hades because of the heresies they taught. Orthodox people who look very favourably upon Origen often do so because they have been seduced by the attractive falsehood of Universal Salvation.
Your last statement is entirely wrong.
Such an elaborate case you make.
Saint John Moscos shouldn't have eaten right before bed, or perhaps eaten a little more, who can say.
There is no place in Holy Orthodoxy for supporters of Universal Salvation. They must be opposed unrelentingly until they either change their beliefs, or are completely defeated.
Happily you are wrong, but defend unrelentingly a perverse and idiotic view of God all you wish. He that is filthy let him be filthy still.
"Before God, I say to you that anyone who reads Origen and agrees with his depraved opinions will be sent to the lowest parts of Hell, where his inheritance will be worms and outer darkness, where the souls of the wicked suffer eternal punishment."
-The Life Of Saint Pachoimus, Chapter 44
Unfortunate for Sts. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Gregory Nyssen, Macrina the Younger, Pamphilus of Caesarea, Isaac of Nineveh, etc.
And unfortunate for anyone who thinks God is actually the Good, and not an obscene voluntaristic movement of inscrutable will no different from Azathoth.
If Sts. Gregory The Theologian, Basil The Great, Gregory Of Nyssa etc. were Universal Salvation believers, the Church would have anathematized them. That they've all been revealed as Saints indicates that interpretations marking them as Universalists are misconceptions, perhaps intentional ones arising from those who don't love the Truth. That is all.
Also I had good laugh at your behaviour as described by this article:
https://jaydyer.substack.com/p/a-reply-to-ridiculous-things
This is an interesting interpretation and I have heard many say that the Bible should not be taken literally but I honestly don’t think we have only two options to either take it literally Or allegorically I think there is a third way actually. I think that the spiritual dimension is inclusive not exclusive and when both accounts are accepted with faith and trust in God, who is ineffable and incomprehensible, we can approach Scripture with an open heart and an open mind. We can as it were, be “ comfortable with mystery”. Because there are Ancient Fathers who have speculated and written down their thoughts are we to take them literally or allegorically or as human beings just like us, who are trying to understand the Word of God in such a way that it makes sense to them at the time in which they are reading it and with all of their own personal projections, presuppositions etc etc. Thank you so much for this. One more question tho are you literally in exile ???
I think your "third way" misses the point. Sometimes the spiritual dimension can't be inclusive of the literal dimension without offense to faith, reason, or both. To expand on the example from Gregory of Nyssa, if God really slaughtered the Egyptian firstborn, then he is literally not God, because such an action would be cruel, vengeful, and unjust, all of which are contrary to God's character and perfections. To believe otherwise is not to embrace "mystery," because there is no mystery about whether God is good or bad.
I am still not sure how to answer this…. I think that we both agree God is love and all He does is for our good not only personally but also collectively as humankind. This is the way we can live in this world and have the peace that passes all understanding. I think that hope, faith, mindset or Mind of Christ, is exactly the glue that holds our physical and literal world together with our spiritual and mystical communion with God. God is all in all. The fact that we can’t understand evil or suffering in this world is because we can not comprehend God. To me it is like a child who feels like they have been unjustly punished but instead of raging at their father they simply obey and think to themselves my Daddy loves me it will come out okay somehow. Whatever proofs or words or happenings that contradict that have to be wrong.
Why? Is this life all we have? I do not think so. Additionally, do not all men die someday? Who is the arbiter of that? God is. Fretting about the Egyptians in this case seems weird. Would any of them be better off in eternity had they lived? No idea. Probably not though, egypt was a pretty depraved place in a lot of ways. Which then leads into the spiritual sense of the story, which also makes sense. It can be both, and more.
"[E]gypt was a pretty depraved place in a lot of ways." Not by ancient standards. Actually, Egypt was one of the most morally and culturally developed civilizations in the ancient world. The Maxims of Ptahhotep predate the oldest books of the Old Testament by a thousand years, but its teaching wouldn't seem out of place in the book of Proverbs. The hymns and psalms of the Egyptians are extremely similar to the Old Testament psalms, both in form and content. The political system of ancient Egypt was based on the assumption that the Pharaoh had a duty both to the gods and to the people to deliver justice and flourishing (ma'at), not unlike the conception of monarchy asserted by the Hebrew prophets (though certainly less radical). Was Egypt also an absolute monarchy that brutally punished its enemies and mistreated its slaves? Sure. But that was true of every state in the ancient world, including the kingdom of Israel.
Even setting that aside, we're still stuck with the claim that God deliberately killed thousands of children as punishment for a crime someone else committed. I'm familiar with the argument that God, as creator, has a blank check to end life when and where he will. If inscrutable omnipotence were God's only attribute, that's fine. But it's not. God is also perfect love, and perfect justice, and to execute children for the crime of another is an act of hatred and injustice. It's no good to say "would any of them had been better off?" Human beings have teleological ends - to love God and love others - ends which were thwarted by that act. How can we claim that God loved the children of Egypt, if the deaths of the firstborn really happened? Obviously, he didn't. They were tools to punish Pharaoh - brought into existence just to be unceremoniously snuffed out to make a point. Were Osiris or Marduk or Zeus credited with such an action, Christians would take it as evidence that those gods were the cruel imaginings of a morally and theologically barbaric people. We can't grade God on a curve. It's theologically and apologetically disastrous.
So the maxims of ptahotep from a thousand years prior were good but are they followed in the time of Moses? Egypt is repeatedly referred to in scripture as a place of idolatry and as a metaphor for a number of things similar. Everyone dies someday, and God sorts out what to do with their souls, and, also being omnipotent and outside of time, he knows what they are and what they wouldve chosen to become. Some die at birth, others at 100. All of them could have lived longer, but this life is a temporary condition. Think of the example our Lord gives of the collapse of the tower of siloam. Entire nations get judged all the time, never for the crimes of the small children in them. If a volcano destroys a town, is God unjust and evil for allowing or willing it? If a flood drowns a child, or a thousand children, same question. If someone is born rich or poor or crippled? Is that justice? Maybe not, but maybe people are looking at it too narrowly. The egypt question isnt much of a question, it is more a pointed example of the same question that people ask about death generally. What makes it different than the red sea swallowing up a bunch of soldiers? I’m sure most of them were just following orders and trying to catch a bunch of rebellious slaves led by a meddling and troublesome wizard and their motivations for attempting to do so are entirely understandable. If God is a perfect scalpel at all times, there is less merit and lovability to those who follow and love him and eachother. The whole free will exercise doesnt really work as well. Idk if I am the greatest orator or explainer or whatever of all of this and I apologize for not being very good.
You're confusing Egypt as a theological metaphor with Egypt as a historical reality. I can tell we treat the historicity of Scripture quite differently, so I won't try to persuade you that none of the authors of the Old Testament actually had firsthand knowledge of Egyptian civilization, but it is something that I'm assuming.
As for God's providence and death, I think you're taking the exact opposite lesson from the story than Jesus intended to make. He's explicitly rejects the idea that these incidents reflect divine justice - and he says the same thing of the man blind from birth, who was born blind only so that he could be healed to display God's love. And that's exactly the problem with assuming God must have some inscrutable reason for every particular evil: in the Old Testament, God destroys to restore. It's a recurring theme throughout all the books of the OT; even vile, unbelieving Sodom will be restored in the end (Ezekiel 16:53). To destroy simply to destroy - whether that destruction is merited or not - is not the way of God.
So good. Gregory of Nyssa's theology is sublime!
Excellent and needed piece though I’d argue some did read it literally but not as we think literal, because they saw it through the prism of Christ. I wrote about this topic if your interested, trying to map the out the hermeneutical framework: