Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/120

 102 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. workings of the Divine.^ In all allegory there is mys- tery, and in all allegory mysticism, with its inherent spirit of contradiction and paradox, is implicit. Thus allegory serves not only to set forth mystery, but to develop mysticism. So it was in the Christian Church. The first great mystical interpretation of Scripture was Origen's allegorical commentary on the Song of Songs, which, according to him, is an Epithalamium ; but the bride is the Church and the bridegroom Christ, or the bride is the soul and the bridegroom is the Word of God.2 Origen is the first to systematize allegorical inter- pretation. For him all Scripture has a spiritual mean- ing; while not all of it has a bodily, i.e. a literal, meaning; for a passage cannot be taken to have a literal meaning when such meaning would be absurd; and he instances certain statements in Genesis as to the Garden of Eden, and the story of the Devil taking Christ up into a high mountain and showing him all the kingdoms of the earth; also the Saviour's com- mand, " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.'' ^ But these have a spiritual meaning, as those have which are also literally true. Likewise many scrip- tural commands are useful, literally taken, though they may be more spiritually interpreted. Or, a,gain, according to many passages in Origen, Scripture may 1 E.g.y see Origen, Be Principiis, Introd. Sec. 8. 2 Lib. I, Origen in Canticum Canticorum, in Rufinus' Latin translation. The Queen of Sheba coming to Solomon is the Church of the Gentiles coming to Christ, ib. Origen, Homilia, II, 1, on Song of Songs, refers to Col. iii. 9, " Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church." ^DePnn. IV, 1, 16, 18.