Literalism

The desert monks spent a lot of time meditating on scripture, but without reading it all literally. In our time, we are told by many vocal Christians that the Bible should be read literally, that God made it for all to use and be enlightened by. But that was not the way the earliest Christians read it, as we see in today’s passage from a monk called Abba Serenus, who lived in the Egyptian desert in the late fourth century.

“Holy scripture is very aptly compared to an abundant and fertile field which, although it brings forth and produces many things that do not need to be cooked in order to serve as food for human beings, brings forth other things that would be unsuited or harmful for human use if their raw bitterness were not gotten gotten rid of and if they did not become tender and digestible through cooking. But some are naturally so good either way that their uncooked rawness is not unpleasant or offensive, although cooking makes them more helpful….

But if certain other things were not made digestible through an allegorical interpretation and made tender by a probing spiritual fire they would in no way become healthy food for the inner man without a degree of corruption, and then eating them there would be more harm than good as in this example: "let your loins be girt and your lamps burning."… And "whoever does not take up his cross and follow me it's not worthy of me." Some of the strictest monks, having indeed a zeal for God but not according to knowledge understood this literally. They made themselves wooden crosses and carried them constantly on their shoulders, evoking not edification but rather derision in all who saw them.”

This passage was part of a compilation of discussions with Egyptian monks called The Conferences. It was read in European monasteries for hundreds of years afterwards as a source of wisdom and guidance. The move to read the Bible more literally came from the Protestant Revolution in the early 1500s. Martin Luther felt the Catholic Church had gone too far in its allegorical interpretations of scripture. Today, there are still many Christians who feel that the Bible can be read as a straightforward rulebook, and so they rely heavily on the letters of Paul and others who do give orders about behaviour, which they interpret literally ( ie, women should not speak in church, they should be obedient to their husbands, celibacy is best). This strain of Christianity has been powerful in backing the rise of the current American President.

Next week, this series will jump ahead a few hundred years to feature the thoughts of European monks who saw their self imposed isolation in monasteries as a form of desert. They, too, had wisdom to share which is still valuable as we continue our journey through Lent. Peace. 

-Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto

Quotation: John Cassian, The Conferences, 8th conference, III. 

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