The Function of Allegory

Just this year I learned the difference between inductive and deductive Bible studies: while deductive studies enter a passage with a preconceived idea of its meaning, inductive studies allow the passage itself to determine its meaning (with help from historical context). The allegory which Origen lavishly uses in his commentary on Lamentations strikes me as the perfect example of a deductive study. He didn't approach the book with an "open mind," but rather he chose passages from it which supported his ideas of Christian theology and applied allegory in order to make the connections clearer. Allegories should be used with caution: too often, they reflect only the commentator's ideas, obscuring the author's intended meaning. The only time allegory is an appropriate method of Bible interpretation is when the author wrote in allegory, and in such cases the connections are obvious to most people. In a video about Bible interpretation that I watched last fall, Dr. Kenneth Bailey uses the story of the prodigal son to illustrate this point. Almost anyone who reads or hears the story (a son asks for his inheritance early so he can go off on his own, only to squander all he's worth and come back years later begging his father to let him be a servant in his own house) and knows anything about God is able to see that the father represents the merciful God who forgives his children (the son) in spite of their sins (Luke 15:11-32).

On the other hand, Origen's interpretations of Lamentations imply that Jerusalem symbolizes the soul, and the destruction and captivity of Jerusalem symbolize demons (73). While this is a somewhat plausible suggestion, it is far from fact and is at most an implicit addition to the primary meaning of the text. Jeremiah, the author of Lamentations, wrote the book soon after Jerusalem--the real city--was destroyed, so one should assume that when he writes that Jerusalem was destroyed, his main intention is to say that the city of Jerusalem was destroyed. Origen himself even uses historical context in his interpretations, but he believes that the scripture has two levels and that the concrete fact of the first level is superceded by the deeper meaning he discovers with his "laws of elevated interpretation," or allegory (78). I argue that as soon as one enters the realm of allegory, all things become uncertain. Any conclusions drawn by this method depend more on the interpreter than on the text. Dr. Bailey demonstrated this in the aforementioned video by using an elaborate allegory on the Gospels to "prove" that Jesus was a Nazi: you can make almost anything work by saying, "A symbolizes B, and C symbolizes D, so clearly..." I think that some of Origen's conclusions have a very shaky foundation. They fit well with Christian theology, but they have little to do with Lamentations itself. For example, he likens the "multitude of people" in Jerusalem to "theoretical insights" and the "multitude of gentiles" to "good works," explaining that when the people left the city, Jerusalem became without the Word and lost its distinction as the greatest city (75). Christianity teaches that the Word is very important, so with this logic, such a statement makes sense; however, it has very little to do with the actual passage because it is so allegorical.

When allegories are not intended by the author of a text, the best they can do is to illustrate an idea that has already been proven elsewhere, keeping in mind that the allegory itself is a human device used for individual purposes that does not necessarily reflect the real meaning of the text. Looked at in this way, Origen's commentaries are helpful for Christians who have considerable knowledge of scripture because they unite concepts from different parts of the Bible into coherent theology. However, they must not be taken to have arisen completely out of Lamentations, but rather out of Origen's mind (with the influence of both Lamentations and other books of the Bible).