Theological Dissertation on the Theologoumena of Macarius Magnes

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It is evident to Christian writers of old that they used a method of interpretation by which they were accustomed to explain various oracles of Scripture, which were full of hidden mysteries, in a sometimes mystical and allegorical sense. That Porphyry severely blamed the Christians for this genre of commentary through typical and allegorical expositions is testified by EUSEBIUS in that most lucid passage, which he brought forward from the third book of Porphyry against the Christians in his Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter XIX. There is clearly no doubt that our MACARIUS, in his complete work, the Apocritica The Response/Apology, also refuted this ignorance of sacred matters in his most cunning adversary, for whom otherwise it could not have remained hidden that the very sacred rites of the Gentiles were usually filled with abstruse meanings original: "ipsa Gentilium sacra abstrusis plerumque sensibus repleta esse"; even though in his surviving fragments nothing is found that can be referred to the treatment of this topic: except that our author, in his Seventeenth Oration on Genesis, when he deals with the coats of skins of our first parents, quite clearly argues that there are certain things found in Holy Scripture which do not admit of a historical interpretation, but demand an allegorical rationale.

2) On this matter, one should read especially ARNOBIUS, Book V, Against the Gentiles, p. 179, et seqq. He says: "You err, you slip, and you demonstrate by the very attacking of these things that you are inexperienced, unlearned, and rustic. For what is written, and placed at the very front of the words, is not signified and meant, but all those things are understood by allegorical and secret meanings. Therefore, he who says 'Jupiter lay with his mother' does not signify incestuous or shameful couplings of Venus, but names Jupiter for the rain, and Ceres for the earth, etc." Compare THEODORET, against the Greeks, Sermon III, p. 44, et seq.; JULIUS FIRMICUS on the error of profane religions, and others. Indeed, PORPHYRY himself showed in more than one book that the fables of Homer are coverings for higher things, in which dogmas about God and heavenly matters lie hidden, as shown by his Homeric Questions, his booklet On the Cave of the Nymphs, and his moral interpretation of the errors of Ulysses; indeed, his own specific volume On the Allegorical Theology of the Greeks and Egyptians original: "περὶ τῆς ἀλληγορουμένης Ἑλλήνων καὶ Ἀιγυπτίων Θεολογίας", if we are to believe EUSEBIUS. Compare CUDWORTH in his Intellectual System, p. 371.