According to Gerlad Bray, "Augustine explained the hard parts of Scripture by saying that God deliberately put them there in order to keep us awake and attentive to his voice.”
No-one disputes that it is much more pleasant to learn lessons presented through imagery, and much more rewarding to discover meanings that are won only with difficulty. Those who fail to discover what they are looking for suffer from hunger, whereas those who do not look, because they have it in front of them, often die of boredom. In both situations the danger is lethargy. It is a wonderful and beneficial thing that the Holy Spirit organized the Holy Scriptures so as to satisfy hunger by means of the plainer passages and remove boredom by means of its obscurer ones.
Gerald Bray, ‘The Church Fathers and Their Use of Scripture’ in Helm, Paul and Trueman, Carl, (ed.s) The Trustworthiness of God: Perspectives on the nature of Scripture (Leicester, Apollos, 2002) p165 quoting Augustine, On Christian Teaching II, 13-15.
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