Ambrose and Augustine on hermeneutics

It is important to note that the comments of Ambrose and Augustine concerning the “literal” meaning of a biblical text were made in response to Christian interpreters who disregarded common literary devices such as metaphor and insisted on interpreting the Old Testament in an extremely wooden, often corporeal sense. Too many in Ambrose’s own congregation considered exegesis a “spontaneous, immediate, and unconsidered” exercise. Various “errors and absurdities” were the result. Ambrose did not ignore the literal sense of the text, “but in many cases called the spiritual sense what we would consider to be the figurative literal sense.” [De Margerie, Introduction to the History of Exegesis, 2:79]—Christopher Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, 105

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The more things change, the more they remain the same, eh? I've often said that we could use more literary interpreters and fewer engineer ones. By that meaning those who understand the literary techniques versus the literalistic, blueprint approach to scripture that seems to be far too common. Or else people wax eloquent in the allegorical approach, an equally dangerous approach…
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