That the Ark of Noah, besides the history of things truly done as they are narrated by Moses, also foreshadowed and pre-signified many mysteries to come in the Church of Christ — to deny or even to doubt this is not permitted. For our Lord clearly shows that the time of Noah's flood bore a notable image of the last age of the world, the time at which the Lord's latter coming for judgment is awaited; and St. Peter teaches that the flood and the ark were a remarkable figure of Christian Baptism and of the Church. For as there very few were saved in the ark, all the rest being drowned and destroyed by the flood, so also here few are saved in the Church of Christ, while countless multitudes who are outside the Church perish in everlasting death.¹

Now if all things befell the Hebrews in figure (1 Cor. 10), how much more this event, which among all the monuments and miracles of divine power and providence holds a special claim to esteem and admiration? For if it is otherwise, and no account was taken of this matter, what need was there, I ask, that those few men with the animals should be saved from the destruction of the flood by means of an ark built with such great labor and toil — over a hundred years, indeed — when they could far more easily and expeditiously have been preserved in some one place on earth, the flood-waters being prevented from reaching that place?²

St. Augustine confirms this in the last two chapters of book 15 of The City of God, writing thus: “Now that God commands Noah, a just man, to make an ark in which he might be delivered, with his household and with the animals, from the devastation of the flood, is without doubt a figure of the pilgrimage in this world of the city of God — that is, of the Church, which is made safe through the wood (lignum) on which hung the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And the other things said in the construction of the same ark are signs of ecclesiastical realities. And it can indeed happen that someone may expound this more aptly than we, and one person in one way and another in another — provided, however, that all the things said be referred to this city of God of which we speak, sojourning in this evil world as in a flood, if he who expounds does not wish to stray far from the meaning of him who so wrote. For although they are discussed in more than one way, they must nevertheless be brought back to the one concord of the Catholic faith.” This in chapter 26.³

And in the twenty-seventh chapter he says: “That signs of things done, so manifold, do not pertain to the prefiguring of the Church — no one [is permitted to suppose], unless he be contentious…”⁴

…no one is permitted to suppose [otherwise], unless he be contentious. For the nations have now so filled the Church, both clean and unclean, that — until a sure end is reached — they are held together by a certain framework of its unity, so that from this one most manifest point it is not permitted to doubt even concerning the rest, which were said somewhat more obscurely and can be recognized only with more difficulty. Since this is so: neither will anyone, even a hard man, dare to think that these things were written in vain; nor that they signify nothing, since they were done; nor that only the words are significative and not the deeds; nor can it plausibly be said that they are foreign to the signifying of the Church: but rather it must be believed both that they were wisely committed to memory and to writing, and that they were done, and that they signify something, and that this something pertains to the prefiguring of the Church. Thus far from Augustine.⁵

We therefore shall here very briefly touch upon a threefold mystical interpretation of Noah's ark. And one interpretation will be according to Physiology. I call “physiological” that interpretation which aptly and fittingly accommodates the history of a thing to the natural force and properties of another thing, on account of a certain agreement and likeness between the two. The second interpretation will be according to allegory; the third, according to tropology. And we shall bring forth nothing of our own opinion, but shall set before [the reader] things drawn from ancient and approved authors.⁶