Cheryl Schatz

Charis, I don’t think that Paul would go into a complex allegory without saying so. After all, Paul made it clear that the two people he was talking about in Galatians 4 as allegory, were allegory stating this as clear as can be in Gal 4:24. Why then would Paul resort to a more complex allegory in 1 Timothy 2 without ever stating that it is allegory and what the allegory means? Should we take this further to make the attire spoken of in 1 Timothy 2:9 as allegory with the pearls representing Christ being attached superficially to their hair when he should instead be attached to their inner beings? We have to be very careful as allegory can be used to remove the clear teaching of Scripture and instead be used arbitrarily to mean whatever we think it should mean. While Paul went into great detail to give the application of the allegory in Gal 4, no such application is given in 1 Timothy 2.

Also if we see this as an allegory about the church, then the church is not saved. Does the Scripture define the church as those who are not saved? Never. The Scripture talks about the church as those who are born from above, not those who are still existing in the results of the transgression. The church is never given as an allegory of the deceived ones nor is the salvation of the church from death to life said to be something in the future that follows things that she, the church must do. Lastly the salvation of the church is not said to be dependent on whether the last Adam remains in faith with us. There is never a conditional if attached to the last Adam. Hebrews makes it clear that there is no if attached to the resurrected Christ. He cannot die again and our faith is not attached to one who may or may not remain in faith (thus qualified as being attached to an “if”). How would such an iffy allegory be consistent with the rest of the Scriptures?

We can tell that the Scripture is giving an allegory if the author says that it is an allegory or tells us what the allegory means. If we make the entire Scripture an allegory then we will have lost our foundation for truth as truth then becomes an allegory based on our own interpretation. We should never look to a passage that is not identified as an allegory, to be an allegory especially if the meaning of the passage can be understood in the way it is written. I believe very strongly that the specific grammar of this passage shows a specific meaning that can be understood exactly as it is written. There is no such marker that makes this an allegory.