Dr Paul Allen

Ardel Caneday Would a reasonable Christian read John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress allegorically or figuratively? The answer is Neither because the adverbs “allegorically” and “figuratively” describe not how to read his similitude but how Bunyan wrote it.  Thus, he requires us to read it for what it actually is, an allegory. Authors of literature, not readers, have authority over their texts to assign symbolic or figurative properties to settings, events, persons, and things they embed within their texts.  Readers are obligated to comprehend how an author represents the world being portrayed textually, whether the realm portrayed is fictional or real. Thus, we are not at liberty to read The Pilgrim’s Progress according to our whims. We are not free to assign our own arbitrary meanings to the author’s text. Bunyan wrote it as an allegory. He assigned figurative representational significances to the settings, events, persons, and things. Readers do not have that role....

There’s a classic scene in the 1997 film Men in Black that comes to mind as I think about the problems of fake news and disinformation and the solutions that Jonathan Rauch proposes in his book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Government Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is explaining to Agent J (Will Smith) what their work of concealing and controlling alien life entails. At one point, K takes J to a newsstand and selects a stack of tabloids—the sensational publications that talk about children being born with three heads and why Elvis is still alive and performing in Wichita. “Best investigative reporting on the planet,” K says. “Read the New York Times if you want, they get lucky sometimes.” This is not just an exquisitely funny line; it’s a fitting metaphor for how a lot of people feel about the universe they actually live in. Where do we go for facts? Is there an objective answer to that question, or does it depend entirely on your worldview? Do people who think they kno...