The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

in it. 4: The word "Passover" here means the festival, not the transition
itself. 5: If the lamb could be called the Passover feast, it would be so
called, not because the lamb signified the feast, but because the feast was
made on the lamb. 6: If the words had been used at an actual supper, and
had been "Take, eat, This is the body of the Paschal Lamb slain for you,"
could Zwingli's interpretation of the verse in question overthrow the literal
meaning of "is" in them? If not, there is no parallel.
Allegory.
The ALLEGORY seems no better as a parallel. The allegory leads
us into a world where a being or thing is the designed ideal representative
of another. The bundle on Christian's back is the burden of sin. The lions
are terrors in the way. Vanity Fair is the godless world, the dark river is
death--that is, says the slovenly interpreter, signifies or is a sign of. Now an
actual burden in real life may be a symbol of a spiritual burden; living lions
may be symbols of the terrible; a real river a symbol of death; but the
bundle, lions, river of the allegory are as ideal as the symbol. In an
allegory, moreover, the framer has the reality in his mind before the ideal
representative. The real is throughout the subject, the allegorical
representative the predicate. Hence, to put them in their proper attitude
both as to time and logical relation, we should say the burden of sin is the
bundle on Christian's back; the terrors are the lions; death is the dark river.
That is the meaning even in the inverted order in which we first put them-but
the burden of sin is not the symbol of a bundle--death not the symbol
of a river. Hence the structure of an allegory not only does not sustain the
Zwinglian interpretation of the words of the institutor, but overthrows it-for
it demonstrates that the subject is not the symbol of the predicate, but
Zwingli's theory assumes that it is. But were it otherwise, the Lord's
Supper is no allegory.
A more dangerous falsity in interpretation, than the assumption that
the word "is" may be explained in the sense of "signify," or "be a symbol
of," is hardly conceivable. Almost every doctrine of the Word of God will
melt under it. "The Word was God" would mean "The Word signified
was a