Allegory and Analogy

In my theology courses the words “allegory” and “analogy” come up frequently. I tend to confuse the two with each other, saying “allegory” when in fact “analogy” is the proper word. Why do we have these two words? What is different about them?

Encarta defines allegory as “a work in which the characters and events are understood as representing other things and symbolically expressing a deeper, often spiritual, moral, or political meaning.”

Analogy is “a comparison between two things that are similar in some way, often used to help explain something or make it easier to understand” (Encarta).

One blog editor I found says that, although similar, there is an “enormous difference between the two words: all analogies break down at some point. When one makes an analogy, one’s simply indicating that the two things in comparison are ‘similar in some way’ – then using the similarities to increase understanding of an entirely different item, idea, or situation.”

But I think this distinction comes out of an imbibed modern illusion that difference = alienation. That is, it sounds to me like this writer is saying there is no real unity between different things. The Catholic approach has always been (according to my professors here at Franciscan University) one in which finding distinctions between two things becomes a way to bring them into unity. It is not a matter of “breaking things apart” as the blog writer suggests. So perhaps moderns have the first step right – finding the difference – but then the Catholic scholar will finish the work by seeking to discover the unity.

So what is the difference between allegory and analogy?

My thought is that allegory is a mode of expression and a way of understanding expression whereas analogy is something built in to reality. We use the expression “the analogy of being” to describe how being itself is analogical.

Allegory is a way of understanding expression (whether fictional or factual). But allegory depends on the fundamental reality in being that two things can be like and unlike at the same time. This is analogy. Without analogy, allegory would not be possible. And without a true understanding of analogy, the characters and events of allegory would become useless and purposeless once the deeper meaning which they represent had been found.

Called to Sacrifice, Always

Growing up and reading the Bible (little knowing how lucky I was to be in a household where this was done) I always thought of the Garden of Eden as an idyllic place with no trouble, no pain, no sacrifice. I longed to find my way back there. I didn’t realize that our hearts are made for sacrifice, always.

the New Eve (Our Lady of the Speed Limit)

Yes, Eden is worthy of our longing. It is a place free of death, pain, irksome travail, jealousy, selfishness, sin. However, it is not to be longed for as a place where we get whatever we want with no need for courage, patience, trust, charity. Our hearts are made to love, and this means self-donation.

If you think about Satan in the Garden, he was not only quick-tongued but also deadly. He was a serpent, a dragonish animal, deadly and venomous. Satan spoke to Eve and Adam, but Adam was silent. “You will not die,” the serpent says, using the plural form of “you.” Scott Hahn shows there is a threat behind the words:

The flip side, then, can be read as a threat: They would die if they refused to eat the fruit. They would die physically, and he would make sure of it.

Adam did not respond because he feared his own death. That was his fall. This was Adam’s chance to love, to become king.

(Source: First Comes Love p69)

Abbey Johnson

I totally agree with Abbey Johnson (former Planned Parenthood employee) on her message to us last night at Franciscan University. She said we cannot stand passively by and watch our brothers and sisters live in the lie that abortion is merely a choice. However, I found Abbey’s rhetoric flawed and at times painful.

Abbey said repeatedly that if you and I do not put our hands to work in the pro-life movement, either by helping at pregnancy centers or standing outside abortion clinics, then our hands are stained with the blood of the innocents we could have saved. In other words, you and I become complicit in abortion.

I found this disturbing. I believe we already share the guilt of our brothers and sisters. I don’t believe that we can be made clean only insofar as we become active in the service of the unborn. The Church has never said we are obligated to stand outside abortion clinics. Monks and nuns who spend their adult lives in contemplative prayer are not guilty of abortion because of their vocation.

I think the rhetoric of the pro-life movement should always be tempered with the realization that even as the lives of the unborn are of infinite value to God, so also are our lives. God does not use me as a soldier in his army. He is not interested in me only as a weapon in his hand. God wants a relationship with me. To say that all are called to activism subtly denies this. It denies our uniqueness before God. It even falls into the trap that says we are not fully human unless we are fully developed and active.

In a battle, the entire army does not rush to the front lines. A great number remain back, forging the ammunition, giving medical aid to the wounded,  negotiating peace. John Paul II made it clear that in the battle for a culture of life it is the spiritual battle that is primary. We need men and women on the front line, and we need men and women who only pray.

Abbey is a brave woman. She left Planned Parenthood and then prayed and counseled women outside the very abortion center where she had worked for eight years. She is entering the Catholic Church this Easter. So in disagreeing with Abbey, I don’t want to undermine her. But I must disagree with her rhetoric because I feel it unwittingly propagates a lie.

St. Augustine on the Jungle Gym

I think philosophers and theologians, because they are so good at becoming convinced, may be the very people less capable of keeping perspective.

Is it any different from the child who becomes so involved in the moment that he forgets the stairs? But falling down the stairs is a small price to pay for being caught up in the oneness of being!

. . . the lack of [distinction] sometimes led [Augustine] into absurdity, as when he persuaded himself that professional singers, because they perform ‘for money’ or ‘for fame,’ know nothing about music . . .

I am beginning to see that picking up a dense theology book is like jumping onto the jungle gym to follow a child. It’s the opposite of sophisticated. This kind of play, I think, is only possible when all your fears have been put aside because you know your Parent is near at hand.

(Quote from Oliver O’Donovan’s The Problem of Self-Love in Augustine)

The Rabshakeh of Sennacherib and the Mouth of Sauron

The Rabshakeh that King Sennacherib sends as his messenger to Jerusalem in Isaiah 36 is like a one-man army attacking the spirit of Israel.

He has no name. That is, no name is recorded except for his official title, “Rabshakeh,” which means “chief of the princes.” It was a title given to the chief cup-bearer or vizier of the Assyrian royal court (Wikipedia).

This figure calls to mind the Mouth of Sauron, a character in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings whose name and title seem have melted into one.

A comparison can shed light on the nature of these two characters. The Mouth of Sauron speaks to the small army that has come the very gate of Mordor – the Black Gate – in a final, heroic attempt to buy Frodo time by distracting Sauron. Their presence seems to Sauron and to his mouthpiece to be proof that their own intelligence, strength, and empowerment is superior to the old powers of Middle Earth. The Mouth asks:

Is there any of this rout with the authority to treat with me? Or indeed, to understand me?

To Aragorn, the true king, he scoffs:

It takes more than a broken piece of Elvish glass to make a king!

Finally, he presents to Gandalf and the fellowship the mithril shirt of Frodo. This at last seems to break their spirits. And yet it does not convince them that evil is more powerful than good. Rather, it deeply saddens them. The words of the Mouth of Sauron cannot crush them, and he returns to Mordor angry and afraid.

The Rabshakeh speaks to the Israelites in their own language (Hebrew). He even claims to have the backing of their God to destroy them. He mocks the royal court of Hezekiah the king of Judah:

Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you?

His purpose is to destroy hope. His tongue also is a sword. Yet the children of Israel do not respond to the Rabshakeh but are silent. Shortly after, the Lord slays 185,000 Assyrians during the night!

Law of love for oneself

Isaiah 43:25

Biblical Permission Not To Love

We get so worried about hell and being acceptable that we forget what our hearts need in order to love. One things our hearts need is permission not to love. I’m willing to suggest that God gives us that permission in Scripture.

In Song of Songs the bride three times (chapters 2, 3, and 8 ) makes the same request of her friends:

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the deer of the field,
that you stir not up nor awaken love until it please.

Each time these words are spoken, they seem almost to engender the next scene, which is the coming of the bridegroom.

This pattern reminds me of another song, Psalm 40, in which it is sung:

Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.
Then I said, “Behold, I come . . . “

The first time I read this psalm seriously I found these two lines very moving. They seemed to me to describe the moment when the psalmist realized that God really did not require anything from him – no sacrifices, no great actions, no feelings, nothing. At this moment the psalmist experienced a sudden flow of love for God.

In Song of Songs the same transition into love seems to occur. First: “. . . stir not up nor awaken love until it please.” Then, just at the moment when the bride knows she has all the time in the world at her disposal, her heart is thrilled with love: “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes . . . .” (2:7-8 )