Tout ce qui ne va point à la charité est figure.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Lafuma 270)Whatever [in Scripture] is not aimed in some way at charity is figurative.
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Pascal, following his master Augustine, states in his striking Pascalian way that the sole subject and end of Scripture is charity (the two-fold commandment [duplex mandatum] to love God and neighbor)—so much so that anything in Scripture that seems unconnected to charity must be re-interpreted in a figurative way so that it does.
Two language points.
1) The negative particle point is a stronger variant of pas. It can have the strength of nullement = “in no way”: in this context (where the negative is expressed elsewhere), “in some way, in any way.” If the Scriptural passage cannot be connected in some way to the two-fold commandment, you’ve got to perform a figurative re-interpretation of it.
2) The word figure here refers to “figure of speech,” i.e., not a direct, but a round-about, transferred, metaphorical, use of speech. The end of the fragment could be translated by “is a figure of speech” rather than my “figurative.” But the absence of an article before “figure” implies it is being used more as an adjective than a noun (or, if you like, more as a category than a particular instance).
Interesting!