Figure is also a term used by theologians to designate the mysteries that are represented and announced to us in a hidden way under certain types or facts in the Old Testament. See Type.

Thus manna is considered the type and figure of the Eucharist: the death of Abel is a figure of the sufferings of Jesus Christ, etc.

Many theologians and critics claim that all the actions, stories, ceremonies, etc. of the Old Testament are only figures , types and prophecies of what was supposed to happen in the New Testament. See Mystique . Chambers .

The abbé de la Chambre, in his Treatise on Religion, volume IV. Definit. iv. p. 270 , gives several rules for understanding the figurative meaning of Scripture. We shall give them here because it happens only too often that people think that everything is a figure, especially in the Old Testament , and they err when they see things that were never intended.

First rule . One should interpret Scripture figuratively and metaphorically when the literal sense includes a doctrine that attributes some imperfection or impious action to God.

Second rule . One should interpret Scripture figuratively , metaphorically and spiritually, when the literal sense has no natural relationship to the things that Scripture is attempting to describe.

Third rule . The simple power of pompous expressions in Scripture does not necessitate recourse to the figurative sense. When expressions in Scripture are too magnificent for the subject to which they seem to apply, this is not a general and necessary proof that these expressions designate a more august thing.

Fourth rule . The only figures and allegories that should be permitted in the Scripture of the Old Testament as intended by the Holy Spirit are those that are supported by the authority of Jesus Christ, the apostles, or a constant, uniform tradition accepted in every century.

Fifth rule . One must see Jesus Christ and the mysteries of the new alliance in the Old Testament everywhere that the apostles saw them; but one must not see them in any manner different from that of the apostles.

Sixth rule . When a passage in the Holy Books has a double meaning, a literal and a figurative , one must explain the entire passage of the figure , as well as of the figured thing: one must preserve the literal meaning in the whole text, insofar as possible. It is false for the figure to disappear sometimes entirely, to give way to the figurative thing.

One can see the solid proofs that the same author gives for all these rules. He ends them with these two important observations on the nature of types and figures .

1. The places in the bible that are the least apt to represent something related to the new alliance are those that contain only reprehensible and criminal actions. These sorts of figures have something indecent and unnatural about them.

2. It is false to say that the faults of the Old Testament saints cease to be faults because they are figurative. The prerogative of the type and the figure is not to render divine and to sanctify actions that are figurative: these actions remain such as they are in themselves and by their nature; if they are good, they remain good; and if they are bad, they remain bad. An action does not change its nature by dint of being the figure of another, the quality of type gives no moral quality to the action; its goodness or evil depend essentially only on its conformity with or its opposition to God's law. St. Augustine, who follows the principle that the faults of the patriarchs are figurative, in peccatis magnorum virorum aliquando rerum figuras animadverti et indagari posse, [in the sins of great men, sometimes you may attend to and explore the figures of things], [1] does not think that they cease to be faults in this respect. "The action of Lot and his daughters," he states, "is a prophecy in the Scripture that recounts it; but in the lives of the persons who did this action, it is a crime": aliquando res gesta in facto causa damnationis, in scripto prophetia virtutis [Sometimes things actually performed are a cause of damnation, but when found written are a sign of virtue]. Book II. Against Faustus. Ch. xlii. (G) [Edme Mallet]

We shall add a few remarks to these rules and observations by the abbé de la Chambre. Figure , in Theology, has two very different definitions: when one says that the expression oculi Domini super justos [the eyes of God over the just] is figurative , or that the narration of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis is figurative , there are two separate meanings of the term. In the first case there is a figure in the sense rhetoricians give to the word, the sense of a metaphor. In the second there is a figure , that is, a type, a representation of an event that is separate from the one being recounted.

The first of the rules that we have just seen is relative to the figures in Scripture taken in the first sense, of figurative expressions; and one can say in general that all rules that can be prescribed to distinguish natural from figurative expressions, can be applied to Scripture.

The other five rules of the abbé de la Chambre concern the figures in Scripture taken in the second sense, that is, of narratives that form a type; we shall discuss these figures in more detail.

The definitions of the different kinds of figurative meanings that are found in Scripture are given under the word `Scripture' (Theology). Here we shall consider them from a very simple point of view, their distinction from the literal meaning. In fact, the mystical or spiritual sense, the allegorical, the tropological, the anagogical - all these meanings are always connected with a literal sense; they are so to speak hidden under its outer covering.

In the article Holy Scripture, we saw the excesses of interpreters who try to find figurative meanings in all of Scripture. According to these persons, there is no text where God did not enclose Moral truths or events of the Christian religion, within the envelope of the literal meaning of the text. Since this principle has already been directly criticized, we shall examine here 1) the causes that have led to the abusive use of figurative explanations; 2) the disadvantages in this method of explaining Scripture. We think that the details and the examples concerning these two points will be useful.

The first cause of the abuse of figurative meanings in interpreting Scripture was the use that writers in the New Testament made of this method. The first ecclesiastical writers thought that they, like the apostles, could use these kinds of explanations; and it must be admitted that some of the applications of the Old Testament made by the evangelists would seem to authorize a figurative explication of the whole of Scripture, because the applications seem somewhat indirect, and are not immediately obvious: but according to the fourth rule that we have just seen, one should accept as divinely inspired figures and allegories in the writing of the Old Testament, only those that rest on the authority of J.C., the apostles, or tradition.

The second cause of the excessive use of figurative meanings by the early church writers seems to me to have been the custom of the Jews of finding spiritual meanings in Scripture. This tendency lasted among them until the 8th century.

I find a third cause of these same abuses in the method the Fathers had of instructing the faithful through homilies that were only systematic commentaries on Scripture; since they needed to include Moral and religious truths in these commentaries, they forced these meanings into passages that were strictly historical narratives. The eloquence of the fathers could be better achieved by avoiding the literal sense and shaking off the yoke of rigorous precision. You can convince yourself of this by opening the homilies at random, and you will see that figurative explications are abundant in this kind of work: besides, since they wrote all their commentaries on Scripture with the intention of using them to instruct the faithful, rather than to understand and clarify the text, they were more strongly attached to a way of explicating Scripture that allowed them to elaborate on religious truths, especially in morality; and for that, figurative explications were wonderfully useful.

I shall give here an example of the use the Fathers made of these explications. This passage from Deuteronomy: et erit vita tua pendens ante oculos tuos, et non credes vitae tuae [and your life hanging before your eyes, and you will believe in your life], chapter 28, means that if the Israelites are not faithful in observing God's law, so much harm will befall them that their life will hang by a thread, and they will think they see their end coming every minute; this is what the sequel demonstrates: timebis nocte et die [You will be afraid night and day], says Moses, et non credes vitoe tuae; manè dices quis mihi det vesperum, et vesperè quis mihi det manè [and you will not believe in your life; in the morning you will ask "who will give me night", and at night, "who will give me morning"] .

That is the natural sense of the text, and surely the only one that Moses had in mind. St. Augustine doubtless understood this; but when this meaning, which is so simple and natural, has been stated, all is said; the details needed in a homily are lacking. Thereupon St. Augustine sets aside this first meaning, and throws himself into another explication of the passage. He finds in it the passion of Christ, his manner of death, his mission as redeemer, as author of life, and he also finds Jewish disbelief, etc. And on all these points he says fine things, but which are not unfortunately related to the text.

All of our preachers show the same faults; and in those who enjoy the highest reputations, I find applications of Scripture that are as false and oblique as the one I have just noted.

A fourth and fifth cause of these abuses, according to the judicious M. Fleury (Discourse on Ecclesiastical History), the bad taste that cause simple, natural things to be scorned, and the difficulty of understanding the letter of Scripture for want of knowing the original languages, I mean Greek and Hebrew, and the history and culture of times that were so long ago. It was easy enough to attribute mysterious meanings to what was not understood ; and in fact, if one is not careful, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and most of the Fathers who studied Scripture this way understood neither Greek nor Hebrew. St. Jerome, on the other hand, who knew the sources, stays with the literal sense.

To show that this ignorance of the original languages has often influenced the way the Fathers explained Scripture, I shall cite another example taken from St. Augustine.

In Book XIII. of The City of God, ch. xii , he explains as follows the threat that God made in ch. ii of Genesis. In quocumque die comederis ex eo, morte morieris: morte moriemini, dit-il, non tantum animae mortis partem priorem ubi anima privatur Deo, nec tantùm posteriorem ubi corpus privatur animâ, nec solùm ipsam totam primam ubi anima et à Deo et à corpore separata punitur, sed quidquid mortis est usque ad novissimane quae secunda dicitur, et quà est nulla posterior comminatio illa amplexa est. [In whatever day you eat from it, you will die by death. We will die most certainly, he says, not only the initial part of the death of the soul where the soul is deprived of God, not only the later part where the body is deprived of the soul, not only that total first part where the soul, separated both from God and from the body, is punished, but whatever sort of death up to the last which is called the second death, and than which there is no further threat included].

It is clear that in this whole explanation St. Augustine stresses the energy and the force that he sees in the expression morte moriemini [you will die by death]; and he falls into this error through his lack of knowledge of the Hebrew language, according to the remark of the scholar Le Clerc, who gave me this example, Crit. of Art, first section, ch. iv. In Hebrew the infinitive is often joined to the verb, as a noun, without this doubling giving any energy to the phrase. For example, in the preceding verse, one reads in Hebrew and in the Septuagent, comedendo comedes [you will eat in eating], instead of just comedes [you will eat]; the same turn of phrase is also used in the Attic dialect. One reads concionem concionari [to stir up what is stirred up] in Homer; even the Latins say vivere vitam [living life], etc., and these phrases have none of the emphasis St. Augustine saw in this text.

Sixth cause. The view about the exact inspiration of every word and syllable in Scripture, and of every fact, that is, of all those witnessed by the sacred writers and that they could recount themselves. For according to this view, each word of Scripture was considered to hold sacred mysteries, and the most minute circumstances of the simplest facts were considered to have been destined by God to furnish us with very lofty knowledge. This principle was adopted by the majority of the Fathers. I find it explained very well by the Jesuit Kirker, in Book II of his work On Noah's Ark . It is in ch. viii that he entitles mystico-allegorico-tropologicâ arcae expositione [mystical-allegorical-tropological exposition of Noah's ark]: he says that since God could save Noah, his children and the animals from the flood with a single word, without all the apparatus of the ark, provisions, etc. , it is probable that he had this huge boat built, and had the sacred historian give such an exact description of it, only to raise us to the contemplation of invisible things by means of these visible things; this ark probably hides and encloses great mysteries. The hard, durable wood represents the virtuous people in the Church; this wood is polished, to represent sweetness and humility; the squared wooden beams are the doctors; the three storeys of the ark are the three states one sees in the Church, the secular, the clerical and the monastic. He puts the monks on the third floor, but does not in any way assign a place to either of the other two orders, etc.

These, I think, are the principal causes that led to figurative explanations. I shall now attempt to show the disadvantages of this method of Scriptural exegesis.

First disadvantage. Although figurative explanations can often be rejected purely on the grounds that they are not justified, they are not dangerous as long as they consist only of an overly subtle search among the figurative meanings of Scripture for dogmas that are also based on passages taken in their natural, proper sense. But the harm comes from the fact that legitimate limits have not always been respected, and that writers have tried to turn figurative meanings into dogmas. This new practice, as is apparent, could be adopted rather easily; in fact, when a writer used a figurative meaning to establish a dogma that was already accepted, no effort was made to deny the figurative meaning or to say that it proved nothing, because the writer would have seemed to be denying the truth of the dogma; in this way the figurative sense soon acquired considerable authority, and writers did not hesitate to propose it as proofs of new views. Here is a striking example that everyone knows: the attempt to use the allegory of the two swords to grant the Church authority over sovereigns, even in temporal affairs; and it should be noted that this method of explaining Scripture, and the authority of the allegories used as proofs of dogmas, was so well established in the 11th century that the defenders of emperor Henry IV against Gregory VII did not even think of pointing out that this figure proved nothing.

This abuse had reached its peak at the time we are discussing; and we have not yet been completely cured of it; Vivès complained bitterly about it in the 16th century: quo magis miror [from which I marvel even more], he says about ch. iii of Book XVII, The City of God, stultitiam, ne dicam an impudentiam, an utrumque eorum, qui ex allegoriis praecepta et leges vitae, dogmata religionis, vincula quibus ligemur teneamurque, colligant atque innodant, et ea pro certissimis in vulgum efferunt, ac haereticum clamant si quis dissentiat [at the stupidity, lest I say impudence or both, of those who from allegories gather and spread the precepts and laws related to life, the dogmas of religion, the chains by which we are bound and held, and impose those things as most certain on the ordinary person, and loudly proclaim "heretic" if anyone dissents].

But even supposing that the figurative sense is employed by Theologians as proof of a dogma that is well established in other ways, it is always a considerable disadvantage to use such a poor reason, and this kind of explanation ought to be completely banished from Theology. However, ancient theologians (and the moderns are not completely exempt from this reproach) frequently fell into this error. An example drawn from St. Thomas comes to mind. In order to prove that the simple-minded are not required to have an explicit faith in all the truths of religion, he relies on the passage in Job. 1. Boves arabant et asinae pascebantur juxta eos; quia scilicet minores, qui significantur per asinos debent in credendis adhaerere majoribus, qui per boves significantur [The cattle graze and the asses feed near them; because, the lesser namely, which are signified by "asses" must, as concerns beliefs, follow the greater, which are signified by "cattle"]. This is a bad proof and a strange explanation. It is true that saint Gregory interpreted this text in the same way ( Book II, Morality ): but it is easy to see the difference between the use of such an explanation in a Moral treatise, and in a treatise on Theology, as in the text of St. Thomas.

This abuse is so great, that I am absolutely certain that if God had not watched over his Church, this prodigious quantity of unjustified explanations, allegorical meanings, etc. would have become part of the corpus of Christian doctrine, just as the Kabala became part of Jewish theology: but Providence had placed a barrier against this excess in the Church, the authority of the Church itself. It alone has the right to interpret the holy Books, and destroys and dooms to forgetfulness the glosses of individual doctors who do not render the true meaning of Scripture, while adopting the glosses that conform to the doctrine that was received from J. C.

The second disadvantage of this method is that the non-believers have seized the opportunity to say that these precarious explanations have corrupted Scripture among Christians, by causing them to lose its meaning, to the same extent as altering the text itself would have done. The freedom to explain Scripture in this way , says M. Fleury, has been pushed to such an excess that it has succeeded in making intelligent people who are poorly instructed in religion, scorn Scripture; they have regarded it as an unintelligible book that means nothing in itself, and which was the plaything of interpreters. It is in this way, say the Socinians, that we have lost the true meaning of Scripture on the important dogmas of the Trinity, the satisfaction made by J. C., original sin, etc. , so much so that we can no longer understand anything in it, preoccupied as we are with the figurative meanings that a long habit makes us regard as proper, although we have lost the simple, natural sense that the sacred authors intended. It is easy to answer this accusation, by pointing out that catholic doctrine is not based on these arbitrary figurative explanations of certain passages, but on their proper, natural sense, as Theologians demonstrate by establishing the truth of each dogma in particular; and by pointing out that however ancient these figurative explanations may be, today, when we examine dogma, we can examine and grasp the proper, natural sense of the passages on which we base these dogmas. This proper, natural sense is the one that the Church accepts, etc. , but Socinians always, as is evident, base such reproaches on the abuse of figurative meanings in the interpretation of Scripture, and that is what we wanted readers to notice.

In the third place, according to the conviction that Holy Scripture is inspired, the one who claims to find a moral truth or a dogma in a passage by means of the figurative meaning that he finds in it, gives on his own authority a definition on a matter of faith. In fact, this person, when interpreting Scripture in this way, no doubt supposes that God intended to impart this figurative sense when inspiring the writer in question to write the passage; otherwise the writer would not be able to use this sense as a proof since it would only be in his head. He must therefore think that this passage contains a truth of faith that obliges others to believe what he sees so clearly contained in the work of God. Whence many problems, theological opinions built up as dogmas, accusations of heresy, etc. Nevertheless it is true that those who have proposed figurative explanations have not always claimed that these explanations should be an object of faith. Thus St. Augustine, in the 15th book of The City of God , where he makes an extended comparison between J. C. and the ark, insinuates that someone had proposed another interpretation than his, according to what one reads in ch. vi v. 16 of Genesis, in the Septuagint and in Hebrew-Samaritan ( see Walton's Polyglot ): inferiora, bicamerata et tricamerata facies [you make the inferior two and three times greater]. He had said that bicamerata [two times] meant that the Church included the multitude of nations, because this multitude was bipartita, propter circumcisionem et praeputium; et tripartita, propter très filios Noë [two-fold, because of circumcision and foreskin; three-fold, because of the three sons of Noah]. But he allows us to understand by this, faith, hope and charity; or the three bounties of these lands, some of which, according to Jesus Christ, bear 30, others 60, and others 100; or again, the purity of married women, of widows and of virgins.

As we see, this father does not force us to accept his explanation: but first of all, not all writers were so modest; and besides, I think his reasoning should have led him to require it, since, thinking as he does that the Holy Spirit had this first meaning in mind, he must have meant for his explanation to be believed as a matter of faith, even though it is arbitrary.

I shall conclude by noting a fourth problem with figurative explanations; they mar the majestic simplicity of Scripture. One often sees in them, in the middle of the most beautiful plan in the world, an explanation of this type that disfigures everything: for example, St. Augustine, in the twelfth book Against Faustus , purporting to show that the prophets had prefigured and announced J. C.; the author has recourse to a prodigious number of figures , allegories, and relations that he sees between J. C. and Noah's ark: he bases these relations chiefly on the fact that the length and width of the ark are in the same proportions as the length and width of the human body that J. C. deigned to take on; the door of the ark is the wound that J. C. received in his side; the square beams represent the stability of the lives of the saints, etc. St. Ambrose, following approximately the same idea, enters into even more minute details: he explains the nidos faeies in arcâ [nests you make in the ark], by saying that these nests or boxes are our eyes, our ears, our mouth, our brain, our lung, our marrow: as to the door of the ark, he added, however, that pulchrè autem addidit, ostium ex adverso facies eam partem declarans corporis per quam cibos egerere consuevimus, ut quae putamus ignobiliora esse corporis, his honorem abundantiorem circumdaret [the door opposite the face is beautiful, indicating that part of the body through which we are accustomed to eject food, so that what we consider the more ignoble parts of the body, he surrounds with even greater honor]. Book VII, About Noah and the Ark .

Moreover, there is an important remark to make here; it is that the fathers have worked out these figurative explanations according to fixed principles and a coherent system: Their agreement in that respect could suffice to furnish the proof of it; but there is more; in several places they have discussed these principles and this system.

Origen, among others, whose authority and method have been respected in both churches, puts forward the notion that all of Scripture should be interpreted allegorically, and he goes so far in several places as to exclude the literal sense of the holy books. Universam porrò sacram scripturam ad allegoricum sensum esse sumendam admonet nos, vel illud aperiam in parabolis os meum [He warns us that the entire sacred scripture is to be taken in an allegorical sense, that is to say, I will open my mouth in parables]. Origen. In the preface. Historia scripturae interdùm interserit quaedam vel minùs gesta, vel quae omninò geri non possunt, interdùm quae possunt geri nec tamen gesta sunt [The history of scripture occasionally concerns a kind of exploit which either is less than sufficient or cannot be completely entertained, or occasionally which can be entertained but yet is not entertained]. IV. Concerning Principles. By rejecting this idea of Origen, that there were events in Scripture that never happened and that could not be understood literally, St. Augustine holds that we must nevertheless relate the events of the Old Testament to the city of God, unless we are willing to stray widely from the meaning of the one who dictated the holy books: ad hanc de quâ loquimur Dei civitatem omnia referantur, si ab ejus sensu qui ista conscripsit non vult longè aberrare qui exponit [All things are referred to that city of God concerning which we speak of, he who explains it does not wish to wander afar from the meaning of him who wrote it]. Book XV, ch. xxvi. The City of God.

In general, almost all writers have held that God, when inspiring Scripture, would not have entered into the minute details that one finds at every step, if he had not meant to hide the truths of Morality and of the Christian religion: whence one sees that it is according to fixed principles and a coherent system that they explain Scripture in this way.

I feel obliged to end this article with a remark by the wise and judicious Fleury. I know, he says, that figurative meanings have been received by the Church from the beginning... We see them in Scripture itself, such as the allegory of the two alliances, symbolized by the two wives of Abraham; but since we know that the epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians was no less inspired than the book of Genesis, we are equally certain about the history and the application, and this application is the literal sense of the pauline passage. The same is not true of the figurative meanings that we read in Origen, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine. We can regard them as the particular thoughts of these doctors...and we should not accept these applications except insofar as they contain truths that are in conformity with those that we find elsewhere in Scripture, taken in its literal sense. Fifth Discourse . (h) [André Morellet]

Notes

1. [Translations from the Latin are by James Conroy Doig.]