The gospel in swaddling clothes.

Allegory, antiquity, and the cradle of Christ.

Charles Le Brun, “Adoration of the Shepherds”

One of the pervading fallacies of modernity is an attitude known as “chronological snobbery,” which, according to the term’s originator, C. S. Lewis, writing in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, is the “uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited” (207–8). I have been coerced into this, at times, when writing academically since certain courses have required me to consult only sources extant in the last fifty years. For someone who makes a habit of reading books authored by “old, dead, wise guys,” this requirement was as grating as nails on a chalkboard. I have earnestly done my best to follow the principle Lewis outlined in his esteemed preface to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, in which he said, “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between” (10). (More often than not, though, my reading habit consists of two-thirds old to one-third new.)

Being the chronological snobs that we are, our inclination is to look down our long philosophical noses at the writings of the patristic and medieval thinkers. We are often predisposed to assume we have figured something out that those ancients never recognized, which, again, is why Lewis’s insistence on reading old books is so pertinent. “Every age,” he continues in his famous preface, “has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books” (10). This is, perhaps, the best mindset one can have when engaging in any sort of “theological retrieval” project, especially when the sources hail from the age in which theologians and spiritual thinkers tended toward applying an allegorized film over God’s Word.

When confronted with allegorical exegesis, we all too often disregard it wholesale, dismissing it as an artifact of a bygone era from which we have long since evolved. For as much as we might revere Augustine’s theology, we are also given to explaining away his allegorical exercises, similar to how the allegories of Origen, Bernard of Clairvaux, or Hugh of St. Victor are pushed to the side in order to recover their more significant ecclesiological contributions. Modernity’s emphasis on the grammatical-historical method of interpreting Scripture has all but snuffed out any allegorical whimsy that might have otherwise existed. For my own part, as much as I would tend toward exegeting Scripture “literally” so as to “give the sense” of God’s words (Neh. 8:8), there is something to be said for the exegetical playfulness afforded in biblical allegories, which, if done carefully, can imbue the Word with a sense of wonder and warmth.

For example, Martin Luther, a consummate medieval theologian in his own right, was also given to allegorizing God’s Word in ways both good and ill. In one of his Christmas Day sermons, in which he preached from Luke 2:1–14, everyone’s favorite German reformer proceeded to explain the text itself and apply its gospel in allegorized terms. “The angel here,” Luther says, “was in the place of all the preachers of the Gospel, and the shepherds in the place of all the hearers, as we shall see” (1:148). Even though it stands to reason that this wasn’t likely St. Luke’s original intent when reporting Jesus’s nativity, the picture Luther paints for us is true enough. The angel came bearing a message from heaven — a message that was pointedly given to poor, lowly shepherds whose social disfavor serves as a suitable portrait of sinners in need of good news preached to them. Where Luther surely loses contemporary students of the Word is when he asserts that the soldiers who “cast lots” for Christ’s seamless tunic symbolize the frittering away of the gospel by the pope and his bishops. Here’s how Luther puts it:

Christ’s seamless coat which was not divided and which during his sufferings was gambled off and given away, John 19:23–24, represents the New Testament. It indicates that the pope, the Antichrist, would not deny the Gospel, but would shut it up violently and play with it by means of false interpretation, until Christ is no longer to be found in it. Then the four soldiers who crucified the Lord are figures of all the bishops and teachers in the four quarters of the earth, who violently suppress the Gospel and destroy Christ and his faith by means of their human teachings, as the pope with his Papists has long since done. (1:150)

The inclusion of Roman centurions gambling for Jesus’s clothes is, of course, immediately explained by John himself, when he says that “this was to fulfill the Scripture which says . . .” (John 19:24). Luther’s broadside against the papacy, while true, feels more than a little forced, like an experiential square peg being jammed into an exegetical round hole. Be that as it may, Luther’s allegory for the manger in which Jesus was laid and the swaddling clothes in which he was wrapped prove both effective and stirring. Christ in a manger is nothing less than the gospel itself, with the swaddling garments symbolizing the Scriptures. “The clothes,” Luther says, “are nothing else than the holy Scriptures, in which the Christian truth lies wrapped, in which the faith is described. For the Old Testament contains nothing else than Christ as he is preached in the Gospel . . . Therefore the angel says, the sing by which he is recognized is the swaddling clothes, for there is no other testimony on earth concerning Christian truth than the holy Scriptures” (1:150).

There is something palpably heartwarming about the picture of the Messiah swaddled in a makeshift crib that casts even more light on Scripture itself, which is nothing less than a cradle wherein the Christ of God is found. Luther’s famous quip that “all Scripture is pure Christ” is a fitting paradigm by which to interpret both the Old and New Testaments. He says the same thing in this sermon: “The law and the prophets cannot be rightly preached and known unless we see Christ wrapped up in them” (1:150). Like the bands that swaddled the Lord on the night he was born, the pages of Scripture envelop the singular message that the Savior of the world has appeared. God has dwelt with us and died for us. There is no other piece of good news other than the announcement that the Lord’s Christ has come, and every sinner, shepherd, and sufferer is beckoned to see him in the gospel that welcomes all and casts away none.

This, in my estimation, is a specimen of effective allegory, which aids our understanding of Scripture and the gospel itself. “The Gospel properly apprehended,” Luther continues, “is a supernatural sermon and light which makes known Christ only” (1:147). Jesus is the message. He’s the one to whom the angel pointed. He’s the one of whom that heavenly choir sang. He’s the one about whom the disheveled shepherds rejoiced after seeing. Christ’s person and work, from the cradle to the cross to the empty tomb, permeates the Word. He is there on every page, wrapped in word and wonder, waiting to be found.

Works cited:

C. S. Lewis, “Preface” in On the Incarnation, by St. Athanasius, translated and edited by John Behr, Popular Patristics Series (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 2011).

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1966).

Martin Luther, “Sermons on Gospel Texts for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany,” Sermons, Vols. 1–8, edited by John Nicholas Lenker (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988).