Early Church Fathers on the “absurdity” of literalism and Scripture.

The renowned scholar Jaroslav Pelikan once said, “There was no early Christian who simultaneously acknowledged the authority of the Old Testament and interpreted it literally.”

Here are some examples.

St. Dionysius: “What would anyone say about His violent passion, His grievances, innumerable oaths and repentances, His curses and malicious anger, His many and dubious quibbling excuses for the failure of promises, the battle of the Giants in Genesis, when He is said to scheme against those powerful he-men out of fear, and this when they were planning to build a home, not harming others but simply for their own salvation, or about that scheme contrived in heaven to harm and deceive Ahab?

But let us not suppose that the outward face of these contrived symbols exists for its own sake. Rather, it is the protective garb of the understanding of what is ineffable and invisible to the common multitude. This is so in order that the most sacred things are not easily handled by the profane but are revealed instead to the real lovers of holiness. Only these latter know how to pack away the workings of childish imagination regarding the sacred symbols. They alone have the simplicity of mind and the receptive, contemplative power to cross over to the simple, marvelous, transcendent truth of the symbols.”

St. John Cassian: “For sometimes, if we take the bare history, we find in the divine oracles things unworthy of God or inconsistent with reason… but when we have penetrated to the spiritual sense, we find that all things are full of divine mysteries and lead to eternal life.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa: “Many terms in use are of a base and unseemly character, of which no man of sense would conceive God the inventor: so that, if certain of our familiar expressions are ascribed by Holy Scripture to God as the speaker, we should remember that the Holy Spirit is addressing us in language of our own.”

More from Nyssa: “Wherefore Paul says, “the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life,” showing that often the obvious interpretation, if it be not taken according to the proper sense, has an effect contrary to that life which is indicated by the Spirit, seeing that this lays down for all men the perfection of virtue in freedom from passion, while the history contained in the writings sometimes embraces the exposition even of facts incongruous, and is understood, so to say, to concur with the passions of our nature, whereto if any one applies himself according to the obvious sense, he will make the Scripture a doctrine of death.”

Nyssa again: “If these things are looked at literally, not only will the understanding of those who seek God be dim, but their concept of him will also be inappropriate.”

Yet more from Nyssa: “The Scripture is of the Holy Spirit, and its intention is the profit of men. The profit is varied and multiform, as the apostle says—‘for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.’ … The divine intention lies hidden under the body of the Scripture, as it were under a veil, some legislative enactment or some historical narrative being cast over the truths that are contemplated by the mind.”

St. Maximus: “Something illogical has been mixed in with the literal account in order for us to search for the true meaning of what has been written. … Thus, if we take this passage according to its literal sense, we will not find Scripture to be speaking truly.”

St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Basil the Great, (passing on Origen): “by means of seeming history, though the incidents never occurred, figuratively reveal certain mysteries.”

St. Augustine: “But it now appeared to me that this faith could be maintained on reasonable grounds-especially when I had heard one or two passages in the Old Testament explained, usually in a figurative way, which, when I had taken them literally, had been a cause of death to me. So, after a number of these passages had been explained to me in their spiritual sense, I began to blame that despairing attitude of mine which had led me to believe that the Law and the Prophets could not possibly stand up to hostile and mocking criticism.”

More Augustine: “I was glad too that the old Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets were set before me in such a way that I could now read in a different spirit from that which I had had before, when I used to criticize your holy ones for holding various views which, plainly, they never held at all. And I was happy when I heard Ambrose in his sermons, as I often did, recommend most emphatically to his congregation this text as a rule to go by: The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. So he would draw aside the veil of mystery and explain in a spiritual sense the meanings of things which, if understood literally, appeared to be teaching what was wrong.”

Augustine again: “I was not yet able to see that the spiritual interpretation was the true one, and so I was offended by those passages which seemed to me to teach perverse doctrines, and I turned away from them….I was offended by what I read in the scriptures, for I did not yet understand that they contained mysteries… I thought them absurd and unworthy of belief…”