The evil of allegory lies in its turning its
back on the Biblical story or teaching and refusing to allow them to speak
directly to us. Instead it reads into them the allegorist’s own thoughts,
which, however high and noble, are not Go’s. One example must suffice. In Lk.
10:30-37 we have a story, real or imaginary, which clearly teaches us our duty
to our fellowmen. In the hands of St. Augustine we see Adam leaving the
heavenly city for mortality. The devils and his angels stripped him of his
immortality, persuaded him to sin and brought him to the verge of death. The
priesthood and the ministry of the Old Testament could not help him, but the
Samarians (meaning Guardian, and hence our Lord) restrained his sin, giving him
comfort and exhortation to work (oil and wine). The donkey was His human flesh,
and being set on it means believing in the incarnation. The inn is the Church,
the innkeeper is the Apostle Paul, and the two pence are the promise of his
life and the next. All this may be theologically true, but it has nothing to do
with our Lord’s teaching.
The nearest approach to the allegorical use
of the Old Testament in the New is Gal. 4:22-26. But it should be noted that it
derives its force from the truth of the Genesis story. Paul is claiming to draw
out the spiritual principle underlying what really happened. We are really
dealing with an extreme case of analogy. (H.L. Ellison, The Message of the Old Testament [Biblical
Classics Library; Carlisle, U.K.: The Paternoster Press, 1969, 1994], 88-89)
