The Reformers’ Spectrum of Approaches to Allegory: Reading Galatians 4:21–31 in a Literal Age

Abstract This article comparatively examines commentaries by sixteenth-century European reformers on the apostle Paul’s “allegory” in Galatians 4:21–31. Older scholarship on the reformers’ relationship to allegorical exegesis tended to view the reformers as strict literalists, leading to charges that Protestantism created an anti-figurative culture. More recent work, however, has frequently argued that the reformers in fact continued to subtly interpret the Bible allegorically, even to the point that some regularly contradicted their theoretical opposition to allegory in their actual exegetical practice. I argue that a close reading of the reformers’ commentaries on Galatians 4:21–31 challenges both of these interpretations. Rather than seeing the reformers as solely concerned with whether scripture should be read allegorically, this article points to a more nuanced set of questions that the reformers debated concerning the nature, status, and purposes of allegorical exegesis. Understanding these sixteenth-century questions supports seeing a high degree of consistency between various reformers’ hermeneutical theory and their exegetical practice, while also offering a much richer set of considerations for what it means to speak of the reformers’ spectrum of approaches to allegory than has typically been given. The reformers offered no unified approach to allegory but instead gave a rich variety of approaches to this perennial literary and exegetical conundrum.