Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[Belacqua]

It's interesting that you associate harmonizing with fundamentalism. An allegorist can harmonize too. Leo Tolstoy was almost a pure allegorist but he sought out and extensively explored the harmony of the disparate messages of Christianity. Even if Christ is merely a symbol of forbearance and surrender you can try to find a harmony between that and the rest of the Christian corpus.

I'm the opposite personally. I perceive a great disharmony between the disparate parts of the Christian corpus. Loving your neighbor and hating your neighbor at the same time. It doesn't gel with me.

I still think it might help to tighten up the vocabulary. 

Are you using "fundamentalist" to refer to anyone who reads everything literally? Is anyone who believes in a talking snake a fundamentalist? I'm not quite sure if all fundamentalists are literalists. 

And even the talking-snake literalists accept some allegory. That is, when Jesus tells a parable about seeds falling on stony ground, they accept that he's not giving agricultural advice -- it's about the word of God. 

Likewise, "allegory" is a very specific kind of non-literal expression. There are lots of other kinds of non-literal ways to write. Generally allegory is thought of as a simple narration in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between one character and one concept. The paradigm case is of course Pilgrim's Progress, in which the main character is called Christian, so he stands for Christians. Along the way he meets Obstinate, Pliable, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Hypocrisy, Discretion, etc. There is no ambiguity, no question at all what each of the characters stands for. 

There are approximately one zillion allegorical paintings produced by the various official academies over the years, like this one about France welcoming back Napoleon:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:...Egitto.jpg

No ambiguity there. 

So it seems to me that there will be a number of Bible stories, and other religious texts, which are non-literal but not necessarily allegory. Any story in which the characters or actions are not clearly identifiable with a specific concept, in which the meaning is eternally open to debate, may not count as allegory. 

So there are allegories in the Bible, but there are also many other non-literal tropes, and I suspect we're using the word allegory as synecdoche to refer to all of those tropes. That could lead to confusion. 

On forums like this, it's more common for people to refer to all non-literal tropes as "metaphor," but again, metaphor is only one specific kind.

Blake, who was an incredible master of the non-literal, wrote harshly against allegory. He felt that any text in which the meaning was so simply spelled out would inevitably be misleading -- at least as wrong as it is right. As an adherent to apophatic theology, and a founder of Romantic Irony, he felt that valuable expressions about religion must be infinitely interpretable. For him, a Bible without contradictions would be untrustworthy, and a simple declarative statement in human language about an infinite God (who is beyond our understanding) would necessarily be false. Non-literal symbols designed to provoke puzzlement and induce contemplation are far more desirable. Poems with internal contradictions, or contradicting poems published side by side, serve to show us our own limitations, and God's infinity. 

contradictory poems:

---

The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead; 
Gave thee clothing of delight, 
Softest clothing wooly bright; 
Gave thee such a tender voice, 
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee, 
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name, 
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.
-----
The Tyger
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

---

self-contradictory poem:

---

The Clod and the Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please, 
Nor for itself hath any care, 
But for another gives its ease, 
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair." 

So sung a little Clod of Clay 
Trodden with the cattle's feet, 
But a Pebble of the brook 
Warbled out these metres meet: 

"Love seeketh only self to please, 
To bind another to its delight, 
Joys in another's loss of ease, 
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite." 

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(I just recently learned how to use the "hide" feature.)

The assumption that every sentence should act like a statement of scientific fact has damaged our ability to think.