Teaching Christianity (continued)
assured of its figurative nature, it is easy, by applying the rules we set out in the first book, to turn the passage over this way and that until we arrive at its true meaning, especially when our use of these rules is reinforced by being exercised devoutly and reverently. But we discover whether the passage is to be taken literally or figuratively by considering all that has been said above. 25, When this becomes clear,[53] the words employed in the expression will be found to be drawn from similar things or from things approximating more or less closely.
35. But because there are many ways in which things are seen to be like other things, we should not think it is de rigueur for us to assume that a thing always has to signify what it happens to signify in one passage by its resemblance to something else. Thus the Lord talked of yeast in a negative sense when he said, Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees (Mt 16:6), and in a positive sense when he said, The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who hid some yeast in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened (Lk 13:21).[54]
36. Observation, therefore, will show that this variety takes two forms: thus things can signify this as well as that in such a way that they signify either contraries or merely diverse realities. Contraries, that is to say, when the same thing is put as a simile for something good in one place, something bad in another, like what I have just said about yeast. Such too is the case with the lion, which signifies Christ where it says, The lion from the tribe of Judah has conquered (Rv 5:5); and also signifies the devil where it is written, Your adversary the devil goes about roaring like a lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Pt 5:8). In the same way we have the serpent in a good sense: As cunning as serpents (Mt 10:16); while in a bad sense, The serpent seduced Eve by his cunning (2 Cor 11:3). Bread in a good sense: I am the living bread, who have come down from heaven; in a bad sense: Eat hidden loaves of bread with