senses of scripture interpretation

As noted above, although the Spiritual senses of Scripture are fascinating, we must not neglect the literal sense because, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal”. An example of the anagogical sense comes from the introit of the Mass for Laetare Sunday: “Rejoice, O Jerusalem, and come together all you that love her; rejoice with joy, you that have been in sorrow: that you may exalt and be filled from the breasts of your consolation.(Is. St. Thomas cites St. Gregory the Great on the phenomenon of multiple senses in the Bible: “Holy Writ by the manner of its speech transcends every science, because in one and the same sentence, while it describes a fact, it reveals a mystery.”[1] The Master of Aquino goes on to explain that “The author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but also by things themselves. John F. McCarthy, “Lesson 2: The Four Senses of Sacred Scripture,” in The Roman Theological Forum Study Program (November 1998) Online. The Isaac – Ishmael allegory also has the sanction of inspiration. 66:10-11) I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord. Dr. D’Ambrosio cites one such exegesis by St. Augustine, who interpreted the parable of the good Samaritan in such a way that the man who fell among robbers was the whole human race to whom Our Lord, the Good Samaritan, gave healing and succor. The moral or tropological sense (from the Greek word trepein, to turn) “turns” the meaning back on the reader so that he may apply it to his own life. )[3], The literal is the plainest sense inasmuch as it “relates deeds” simply. [4] No matter what allegorical meanings can be drawn out of the account (and there are many), the literal sense stands as a reliable historical record. [7] Tract 120. The literal sense refers to the sense of the words themselves; it is “that which has been expressed directly by the inspired human authors.”2 It has been variously described as the verbal or grammatical sense, the plain sense, the sense the human author intended, the sense [1] Aquinas, Thomas, St., Summa Theologiae, Ia Q. The fourfold interpretation helps us draw out dogmatic, moral, ascetical, and mystical theology directly from the inspired text, using the analogy of faith, instead of isolating the Scriptures as the subject of a specialty distinct from the rest of theology and Christian life. The ‘four senses’ of interpretation An early monk called John Cassian (360-435) identified four ways in which the Bible could be understood: the … The third spiritual sense is the anagogical sense, which reveals the eternal significance of events and realities recorded in the Bible; that is, it relates the events to death, the final judgment, hell, and heaven. This sense is very apparent in the parables of Jesus that involve the judgment at the end of time, like the separation of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46). Spiritual. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. In order to show that the “spiritual sense” of Scripture is not completely arbitrary, de Lubac notes that it is always tied to “discipline,” which implies a rule or manner (23ff). (‘Somatic’ just means, “Of the body,” from the Greek word sōma, ‘body.’) Example of the ‘bodily’ sense: This passage understood in its ‘bodily’ sense is simply the command as it stands. The allegorical sense. Its use by such approved authors makes it safe. A common example of all of the four senses of Scripture can be seen in the Biblical city of Jerusalem. Origen, great allegorist of Christianity, brought the multiple sense of Scripture to the Chris-tian Church, and firmly fixed the nature of Scriptural exegesis for suc-ceeding centuries. «Ad Rem» A Fortnightly Email Message from the Prior, Phrygian Bishop and Father of the Church: Saint Apollinaris (180), This feast is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology: "The Bringing Back of the Child Jesus from Egypt" (3 A.D.) -, 'Restoring Eucharistic Reverence in an Age of Impiety': My Interview with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, Tonight on RECONQUEST: "The Epiphany of the Savior", A longer piece on my wonderful patron: "Saint André Bessette: Montreal's Miracle Worker", Rep Congressman Condemns ‘Systemic’ Election Fraud, Nigeria: Kidnapped Bishop Moses Chikwe Released Unharmed, Paraguay Congress Prays for Babies Who Will Die in Argentina From Abortion, Fish on Friday (Fr. The advantages to the study of the quadriga, as this classical fourfold interpretation is called, are manifold. Once the literal sense of the text is understood, there are three spiritual senses that can be discovered. Christ. [4] This literal sense was defended by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1909. Enter your email address to receive notifications by email every time we post something to the site. For example, when Jesus says “I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5), you have to know he is referring to himself being the main shoot of a grapevine and his disciples being the offshoots, and not to himself being a vine clinging to the branches of a tree. 12. In the history of biblical interpretation, four major types of hermeneutics have emerged: the literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical. But Scripture's perspicuity was, in turn, based on the truth that the literal meaning of Scripture is the correct one. The parable of the ten virgins and that of the talents, related in Matthew 25, have obvious anagogical interpretations of the four last things, both from their content, and from their location, sandwiched as they are between our Lord’s eschatological discourse in Chapter 24 and his description of the final judgment later in Chapter 25. There are two basic senses of Holy Scripture: the literal (or historical) and the spiritual. (Fakhri B. Maluf, Ph.D.), RIP Prior: Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M. [10] These types are manifold. The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were founded in 1949 by Father Leonard Feeney, M.I.C.M. The Literal. The spiritual sense is further divided into the allegorical, the tropological (or moral), and the anagogical. Origen derived his three levels of interpretation from the threefold division of man into body, soul and spirit. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.The literal sense is the … St. Augustine, noting the verb used in his Latin version of John 19, spoke of it as such: “The Evangelist has expressed himself cautiously; not struck, or wounded, but opened His side… To shadow forth this, the woman was made out of the side of the sleeping man; for this second Adam bowed His head and slept on the cross, that out of that which came therefrom, there might be formed a wife for Him.”[7] The Doctor of Grace also sees the water of baptism and the wine of the Eucharist, the two sacraments which, par excellence, form the Mystical Body, coming out of the pierced side our Our Lord. Principle 1: Interpretation must be based on the author’s intention of meaning and not the reader. The Eschatological sense simply means the interpretation of Scripture as pertains to the end times. It lays the foundation for all other senses of scripture. Of course, this does not mean that something cannot be a “type” of something else; it simply means the term itself is a neologism. Online, available at: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/ [accessed 21 March 2006]. 22). Thus, The ‘bodily’ or ‘somatic’ sense of a Scripture passage, then, is simply its plain sense. More than this, studying Scripture according to the quadriga keeps the text living for us, preventing it from dying on the dissecting tables of historical critical scholars who see the sacred page as something to parse, reconstruct, cross reference with pagan fables, check for errors, and otherwise cut up as an historical cadaver. 10, Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, (Online Edition: Kevin Knight, 2003), http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100110.htm. Interpret a passage according to the grammar of the original language text, Hebrew or Greek. Literal interpretation asserts that a biblical text is to be interpreted according to the “plain meaning” conveyed by its grammatical construction and historical context. This means we must get into the author’s context, historically, grammatically, culturally and the literary forms and conventions the author was working in. St. Meinrad, Indiana: Grail Publications, 1958. a form of biblical interpretation that goes beyond the literal sense to consider what realities and events of the Scripture signify and mean for salvation.