SOURCE: Evans, G. R. “Wyclif on Literal and Metaphorical.” In From Ockham to Wyclif, edited by Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, pp. 259-66. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1987.

In the following essay, Evans illuminates Wyclif's views on the significance and usefulness of figurative interpretation of the Bible in his De vertitate sacrae scripturae.

Origen encouraged readers of the Bible to try to penetrate beneath the literal meaning to deeper truths which lay hidden in the figurative and metaphorical senses.¹ Augustine and Gregory the Great made it a commonplace in the mediaeval West that the literal sense is only one of several possible intepretations of a given passage, and that the figurative meanings are full of spiritual riches, and bring the reader closer to the Divine Author's intentions. For Origen the Bible, taken spiritually, is the ultimate source of truth. The same high doctrine of the spiritual sense is apparent...