The Marcionite Church rejects the allegorical reading of the Hebrew Bible as a deceptive enterprise rooted not in revelation but in desperation. Allegory is the interpretive practice of assigning symbolic or spiritual meanings to literal words, turning stories of war, law, and violence into supposed metaphors for faith and salvation. It is a method born out of a crisis—the crisis of trying to reconcile the wrathful deity of the Hebrew Scriptures with the gracious Father revealed by Jesus Christ.
Rather than confront this contradiction honestly, the early Church fathers resorted to allegory—a method of theological self-preservation that sought to hide the faults of a false god beneath the veil of metaphor.
This is not exegesis—it is evasion.
To allegorize is to deny what the text plainly says. When Yahweh commands the slaughter of infants, the allegorist insists that this points to spiritual warfare. When Yahweh sanctions slavery, the allegorist spiritualizes it into a metaphor for submission. When Yahweh delights in burnt offerings, the allegorist speaks of foreshadowed atonement.
But these are not symbols—they are atrocities. And no amount of figurative language can transform evil into good.
Worse still, allegorical reading enables eisegesis rather than exegesis. It allows the interpreter to impose their own meaning onto the text, unconstrained by its actual content. This lack of objectivity opens the door to error, abuse, and theological invention.
The Hebrew Bible becomes not a record of the false god’s actions, but a blank canvas on which churchmen paint the doctrines they wish to find. In doing so, they abandon the literal and historical sense, ignoring what was actually written, what was actually commanded, and what was actually done.
What remains is not Scripture but speculation.
The Apostle Paul, in the Apostolicon, does not spiritualize the Law—he unmasks it as immoral and enslaving, the instrument of a god alien to grace. He calls it a yoke of bondage (Galatians 5:1), a ministration of death (2 Corinthians 3:7), and a system of condemnation. The gospel Paul preaches does not reinterpret the Law; it denounces its author as the ruler of this world.
Paul does not draw secret meanings from the Law of Moses—he exposes it as incompatible with the freedom brought by Christ.
The true God, revealed through Jesus Christ, does not need riddles or typology. His revelation is not hidden in the shadows of a false deity’s covenant. It stands apart, new and untainted. Allegory blurs that line. It undermines the clarity—the perspicuity-of Scripture by cloaking simple, horrifying commands in layers of imagined mystery.
It contradicts the principle of prima scriptura, placing human invention above divine truth. It invites doctrinal error, masking moral evil with pious language and giving license to heresy under the guise of symbolism.
Allegory was not a hermeneutic born of faith, but a tactic born of betrayal—a refusal to choose between Christ and Moses, between the Father and Yahweh. It was how the early Church preserved the illusion of continuity with a covenant Christ had come to destroy.
The early Church, unwilling to reject the Hebrew Scriptures, invented allegory to make them palatable. But the result was confusion, not clarity; distortion, not truth. By spiritualizing the Law, they preserved the authority of Yahweh under the guise of Christian theology. The Church became a house divided—proclaiming grace while clinging to wrath, preaching freedom while defending bondage.
Allegory is not only misinterpretation—it is idolatry of the text. It prioritizes symbolism over truth, blinding the soul to the true nature of the divine. It transforms error into orthodoxy by sleight of hand.
The Marcionite Church stands against this deception. We do not rescue the Hebrew Bible through metaphor—we confront it literally, and by doing so, expose it as the testimony of a false god. We do not spiritualize Yahweh’s words—we take them seriously, and for that reason, we reject him. His cruelty requires no interpretation. It speaks for itself.
The gospel needs no allegory to justify itself. It shines by its light, revealing a God of pure goodness, unknown to the world until the appearance of the Lord Jesus. Let others spiritualize the Law to save it. We will proclaim its nullification.
For Christ has said, “No man putteth new wine into old bottles.” We heed that word. The new wine is the gospel of the Father. The old bottles are the Law and the Prophets. They cannot contain Him.
