The Use and Usefulness of the Historical and Mystical Exposition

On the Use and Usefulness of the Historical and Mystical Exposition

The historical kind of exposition is, first of all, supremely necessary ¹ for the instruction of those matters which are to be believed by us, for the confirmation and defense of the faith, and for refuting those who resist the truth, and for convicting all heresies. For no exposition brought in for the proof of dogmas has force and strength, unless it be one that truly, purely, and genuinely unfolds the meaning of the letter. ² For since other explanations search out the senses hidden within the marrow of the letter, and thence endeavor to draw them forth from certain likenesses of things, they can easily be deceived by the images of like things — especially since this deduction and elucidation of the spiritual senses is made by the thought, discourse, and inquiry of the human wit, which is often deceived, and in obscure matters is wont frequently to invent those things toward which the mind is most inclined, whether by nature or by exercise. For if I myself should wish to establish ³ that priests have the power of binding and loosing from sins, by the mystical exposition of that saying of Christ to the Apostles, Loose him, and let him go, the adversary will at once reply that this was said of the loosing of the linen cloths in which Lazarus was wrapped, and not of the loosing of sins. But if I show the very same thing from the authority and literal exposition of that saying of Christ to the Apostles, ⁴ Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose you shall retain, they are retained, he will straightway be compelled to acquiesce and to assent to the words. Accordingly, St. Augustine rightly writes thus in the epistle to Vincentius the Donatist: But who would not most impudently strive to interpret in his own favor something set in an Allegory, unless he also had most manifest testimonies by whose light the obscure things might be illumined? Jerome too, in the second [book] of his commentaries on Matthew, treating of the leaven hidden by the woman in three measures of meal ⁵ — after he had reported the exposition of certain persons who applied that parable to the trinity of persons and the unity of essence — subjoins these words: A pious sense, indeed; but a parable and the doubtful understanding of riddles can never avail for the authority of the dogmas. Thus he. Therefore the literal [exposition] alone is strong for supporting truth and destroying falsehood; ⁶ for since from the [first…]

[continuing from p153] …[for since] it is drawn from the first signification of the words, or from transferred words most closely joined to the first signification, it is more open and more efficacious than the other explanations. And this is the first and most necessary use of the historical exposition.

Its second usefulness and necessity arises from its relation to the other mystical expositions, beneath which it must needs be laid as their base and as the stable foundation of the whole spiritual edifice. ⁷ For unless the sense of the letter be first clear to us, how will it be possible for us to illustrate by spiritual elucidations those [passages] whose words are most obscure to us? There will be danger, too, if from words not understood we should wish to express some hidden sense, that we fall into various heresies; and that the same befall us which has befallen many heretics, especially the Manichaeans: who, since from ignorance of the Hebrew tongue they did not understand the literal sense of that saying, ⁸ In the sun he hath set his tabernacle, turned themselves to the supports of an allegorical exposition, ⁹ saying that Christ after his resurrection ascended without flesh to the Father, having left his body within the compass of the solar globe — so that his flesh should be adored by us in the sun, as in the tabernacle of the Lord’s body — whereas nevertheless the genuine and proper sense and exposition of the letter is this: that God set a tabernacle for the Sun in heaven, from which the Sun himself, in the early morning, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, goes forth to show the splendor of his countenance to all mortals. These, then, are the necessity and the benefits of the Historical exposition.

But the Mystical kind of exposition contains no lesser advantages, being far most useful both for the integrity of the faith and for the instruction of morals. For it is, first of all, most necessary for discerning, preserving, and explaining the purity of the gospel doctrine ¹⁰ — which must needs be contaminated and defiled by us with Jewish institutions, if we should everywhere wish to explain the Scriptures, especially the old ones, according to the bare letter. And it would then be necessary to return again to that ancient observance of the Jewish ceremonies, and again to be circumcised with the Jews, to sacrifice cattle, to eat the lamb and the unleavened bread, to abstain from unclean foods, and to follow the other shadows of the Hebrews — which, now that the gospel light has shone forth, have vanished away. Next, hardly any kind of defense or answer is left to us against the enemies of the law and the prophets, if they object to us: why did God once give such absurd laws — to cut off the little skin of the foreskin, to kill a lamb, to slaughter a calf, to cut the throat of a goat, to defile everything with beastly blood, to carry a peg upon the belt, and, after the manner of cats, to cover the excrements of one’s own body with dug-up earth? We shall also find but few things in the old histories that would spiritually delight the soul and feed the mind, if we neglect the mystical expositions; ¹¹ rather, all those things will seem to us insipid, rustic, senseless, and utterly unworthy of the divine majesty, which God commands concerning the lamb, the ram, the ox, the red heifer, the goat, the fat, the right shoulder, the liver, the breast, the belly, and the other entrails of brute beasts. And God himself will seem to command nothing great, nothing sublime, nothing worthy of God — [nothing] but sacrifices of this kind, which seem cheap, lowly, and to be despised by the wise of this world — unless you refer [them] to the sacrifice of Christ, which was made for us contemptible, abject, and despised even unto the death of the cross; outwardly indeed clothed in a sordid and cheap garment of flesh, but inwardly great, lofty, magnificent, and beautiful beyond the sons of men — [Christ] who suffers himself to be figured by unworthy words and cheap sacrifices. Therefore, in carnal sacrifices of this kind, unless we admit a mystical sense and explanation, the laws of the gentiles — whether of the Athenians or of the Lacedaemonians — will seem more rational.

But neither will the old histories be able at all to profit for the forming of morals, if we consider them according to the bare letter. For what does it profit toward salvation to know the wars and seditions of the ancient Jews, if in them we understand nothing else than slaughter and effusions of blood? What does it matter toward attaining piety to know, according to the letter, that Abraham had two wives and [two] sons, Ishmael and Isaac; that the boy Isaac was weaned from milk; that on the day of the weaning a banquet was made; that [Ishmael] played with Isaac; that Sara is indignant that the son of the handmaid should play with the son of the free woman — unless you refer the carnal history to the mystical understanding, and, together with Paul, expound that Abraham having two wives signifies Christ having two testaments and two peoples: ¹² the one carnal, and the other spiritual, weaned from the milk of the carnal Life; and that the play of infancy [signifies] the persecution of the carnal people against the spiritual; and that on this account Sara — that is, the new law — is indignant against Hagar, the old law which perceives only carnally? ¹³ If you should expound these things mystically in this fashion, the history will help in a wonderful manner to foster and nourish in us the fire of faith and love, and will bring to our taste the delight of a wondrous savor.

Here, however, those who take up the task of expounding the sacred Scriptures must be admonished to hold the mean in these expositions, and to flee the extremes (which are always faulty). For just as certain expositors of our age are by no means to be approved, who — the mystical senses being spurned as chance thoughts devised at pleasure — perpetually sit beside the drowsy letter, and lean upon dead syllables and words alone, cold, without spirit, bloodless and lifeless: so also gravely to be condemned are certain inept expositors of our times, who — having utterly rejected the literal exposition as a matter of the slightest moment, and (as they say) worthy of Grammarians rather than Theologians — drag forth in each passage of Scripture certain forced and insipid allegories, doing violence to the divine Scripture; and, the truth of the history being destroyed, peddle their ridiculous notions as great and hidden sacraments of the Church. These I most lovingly beseech and adjure to consider that the literal exposition is not a thing so common, cheap, and worn out, ¹⁴ and [that… to all…]

[continuing from p154] …[and that the literal exposition is not so common, cheap, and worn out, and] open to all — as they themselves boast — [as merely fit for] the pedagogues of boys, but is the most difficult of all expositions, and the most laborious, on account of the unusual and abstruse properties of the holy tongue, and on account of the abundance of most difficult matters — namely of all the arts, sciences, and disciplines — which are comprehended under the historical sense of Scripture. Witnesses of this are the two most brilliant lights of the Latin church, Jerome and Augustine, ¹⁵ who did not dare to set their hand to the Historical explanation except when already advanced in age, after they had spent many years in mystical explanations, as in easier studies. Whose words it pleases [us] to bring in here for the confirmation of our opinion, so that those who approach the exposition of the Scriptures may recognize how greatly the Historical explanation is to be esteemed. Concerning it, Jerome, in the preface of his commentaries on Obadiah, speaks thus:

When I was a little child, I spoke as a little child, I understood as a little child, I thought as a little child; but when I became a man, I put away the things that were of a child. ¹⁶ If the apostle advances, and — daily forgetting the things that are past — reaches forth to the things that are before, ¹⁷ according to the precept of the Lord and Savior (holding the plough-handle, he looks not back behind him), ¹⁸ how much more ought I — who have not yet come to the age of a perfect man and to the measure of Christ — to deserve pardon for this: that in my youth, provoked by ardor and zeal for the Scriptures, I interpreted allegorically the prophet Obadiah, whose history I did not know? My mind burned with mystical knowledge; and because I had read that all things are possible to them that believe, I was ignorant that the charisms are diverse. I knew the letters of the age [secular learning], and on that account I thought I could read the sealed book. I hoped that what I had written lay hidden in my little chests, and had vowed the first rashness of my little wit to the fire — when suddenly there is brought from Italy a copy [of it], by a certain youth as many years old as [the years] since I had once written it, praising my little work. I confess, I marveled that, however badly anyone has written, he finds a reader like himself. He was proclaiming [it]; I was blushing. He was carrying, as it were, the mystical understandings up to heaven; I, with lowered head, was kept from confessing my shame. What then? Do we condemn that in which we played as boys? By no means. But I freely profess that that was [the work] of a boyish wit, and this, which I now write, [the work] of ripe old age. Thus Jerome, when in extreme old age he wrote a commentary on the prophet Obadiah according to the letter.

But Augustine testifies that, having first written easily on Genesis according to allegory, he attempted much later a literal exposition upon the same book, but, deterred and worn out by the magnitude of the labor, was compelled to desist. ¹⁹ His words are these, in the first volume of the Retractations: When I had composed two books on Genesis against the Manichaeans — since I had handled the words of Scripture according to the allegorical exposition, not daring to expound to the letter such great secrets of natural things (that is, in what manner the things there said might be taken according to historical propriety) — I wished to try, in this most laborious and most difficult work also, what I could do; but in expounding the Scriptures my apprentice-effort sank beneath so great a burden of the load; and before one book was finished, I rested from the labor which I could not sustain. Thus far the words of Augustine. From which it is clear that the historical explanation is not to be neglected by the expositors of our age as if ignoble, trivial, and unlearned, ²⁰ since it itself surpasses almost all the mystical expositions by the excellence of noble and most learned matters.

And let these things concerning the four general and principal explanations of divine Scripture be said sufficiently; it remains for us to proceed to certain other particular explications of the same Scripture.