St Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana: "What the apostle says pertains to this problem: 'For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth', that is, when that which is said figuratively is taken as though it were literal, it is understood carnally. Nor can anything more appropriately be called the death of the soul than that condition in which the thing which distinguishes us from beasts, which is the understanding, is subjected to the flesh in the pursuit of the letter. He who follows the letter takes figurative expressions as though they were literal and does not refer the things signifies to anything else... He is a slave to a sign who uses or worships a significant thing without knowing what it signifies.
Church Father Origen: “Scripture contains an unhistorical element in-woven with the history, in order that the worthlessness of the latter may drive us to seek the spiritual meaning”
2007-08-04
23:49:57
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