[zeek]

We should call the language police, because allegory is an extended metaphor and language is rife with metaphors.

I commend Tomes for calling WL & LSM on cherry picking and contradiction. They claim that allegorizing is a long standing tradition in one place and then state they don't care for traditions of the historic church. If they don't care for tradition then to be consistent, don't use tradition to support what you are doing.

But then he goes on to condemn allegorization. He prefers the meaning intended by the author. That begs the question what does the author mean? If we knew that there really wouldn't be a problem would there? And there must be one meaning only. Really? Were the authors of the Bible dumber then modern authors and poets, movie makers, etc. who intend multiple meanings in their writings? I mean Christians do think God speaks through the Bible right? But God can only have one meaning if only we could find it. Obviously we haven't. If we had there would be only one church and not one on every corner.

Now Paul did extensive allegorizing of the Hebrew Bible in the course of supporting his gospel message. So do we or don't we follow his method? No. Too dangerous?

I submit that the entire Book of Revelation is an allegory. How are we to understand it if we do not allegorize?

The Reformers had a problem with the official Roman Catholic practice of allegorizing. They believed that the ordinary Christian could interpret the Bible. What if the ordinary Christian allegorizes?

I submit that typology is a subcategory of allegory. So if we are not to allegorize we should throw out typology. Joseph is not a type of Christ after all. The writer of Genesis never explicitly states that he is so Christians are just reading that into the narrative.

If someone has a problem with a teaching of WL or LSM name what it is. Certainly there may be allegorical interpretations of the Bible that are unfounded, or don't make sense, or are silly or evil. But blanket rejection of the method results in the contradiction that we cannot employ a method that was used by the very writers that we are trying to understand when we read the Bible.