BIBLICAL SENSES. — “Sense” is the meaning assumed by a given sentence considered within its context, or the thing expressed in that sentence on the symbolic-real plane. The study of biblical senses is the object biblical interpretation (v.) called noematics (from νόημα “thought”).
SUMMARY:
I. Classification
II. Literal sense
III. Typical sense.I. CLASSIFICATION
After many centuries of proposals and discussions, there is no unanimous agreement concerning the distinction among the biblical senses. One of the obscurest issues currently under discussion is that of classifying the biblical senses (J. Daniélou, Les divers sens de l'Écriture dans la Tradition chrétienne primitive, in Ephemerides theologicus Lovonienses, 24 [1948], p. 119). Everyone deplores the confusion of terms, the numerous misunderstandings, and the heated controversies concerning the “senses” of Sacred Scripture. Scholars of every age, including modern scholars, often fail to understand one another and consequently oppose one another, precisely because of their use of terms, some of which have a long and intricate history, as happens today, for example, with certain Mariological questions (Gen. 3:15 and Apoc. 12:1–18). It is not infrequently a question of words. An exuberance of such technical expressions, philosophical-scholastic subdivisions coined here and there, was intended to characterize every shade of meaning in individual biblical texts and in the various biblical senses. Thus the terms: literal and real, historical and spiritual, mystical, typical; dogmatic (allegorical, messianic), moral (tropological), anagogical (eschatological); proper and improper (tropical, metaphorical); figurative and depicting; explicit and implicit; philological, logical, theological; consequent, full, eminent, accommodative, etc. Today it is generally agreed that this terminology must urgently be reduced, in order to avoid misunderstandings: a simplification based on the essence of “sense” and not on secondary or accidental points of view. Once an improper terminology that generates confusion has been eliminated, “let us accustom ourselves to call things by their proper names and we shall always be readily understood” (G. M. Perrella, Introduzione generale [V. BIBLICA.], p. 253, note). First of all, when interpreting the hermeneutical terms of the ancients (St Paul, the Fathers, the Scholastics), such as “spiritual, allegorical, typical,” one must never simply assume the meaning attributed to them today. Finally, it goes without saying that biblical hermeneutics, and noematics in particular, also requires clear concepts concerning biblical Inspiration, its nature and its extent.The foregoing definition of the biblical sense already points to its twofold character, literal and real, since the concept in the mind can be manifested only in the word or in the res (thing, action, event, person, institution), and can be expressed either immediately or mediately. The first, the literal or verbal, grammatical, historical sense (common to all human books), necessarily exists also in the books of the Bible, which are attributable to human authors—true authors, although merely instrumental ones. The real “typical” sense, on the other hand, is an exclusive prerogative of Sacred Scripture, intimately connected with the prerogative of Inspiration; this sense is understood only by God, the principal author, and is knowable to human beings only through Revelation.
« In nulla scientia, humana industria inventa, proprie loquendo, potest inveniri nisi litteralis sensus; sed solum in ista Scriptura, cuius Spiritus Sanctus est auctor, homo vero instrumentum (inventur sensus spiritualis) » (St Thomas, Quodlibetum 7, q. 6, a. 16); « Cum in omnibus scientiis voces significent, hoc habet proprium ista scientia (sacra), quod ipsae res significatæ per voces, etiam significant aliquid » (id., Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 1, a. 10).
An immediate consequence of this unique character of the Book of Books is the existence of two mutually complementary methods for discovering the scriptural sense: literary heuristics and authentic heuristics, that is, the common or rational rules of biblical interpretation and those proper to it, or Catholic rules.
II. LITERAL SENSE
Pope Pius XII points out to the Catholic exegete “among all his tasks the highest, namely, to discover and expound the genuine thought of the Sacred Books... Therefore they must diligently trace the literal meaning of the words...” (encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu, in AAS, 35 [1943], p. 338). The most interesting and most debated problems concerning the literal sense are three: 1) its subdivisions, so to speak, especially the fuller, consequential, and accommodative senses; 2) its universality: every biblical affirmation contains a literal sense; 3) its uniqueness: no affirmation of Sacred Scripture contains two or more disparate literal senses.1. Subdivisions of the literal sense
Words may be taken either “secundum proprietatem locutionis” (s. Thomas, Expos. in Gal., 4, lectio 7), in their proper, obvious, native sense, or “secundum similitudinem seu metaphoram” (ibid.), in their improper, metaphorical, transferred, figurative sense (e.g., Christ is compared to a lion, a lamb, and a vine).This metaphorical sense was not infrequently designated by the ancients, inaccurately, also as the higher or deeper sense, the spiritual and mystical sense; in particular, the improper allegorical sense was at times confused with the typical sense. First of all, however, one must hold firmly to the principle that the improper sense, with all its various forms, also known in profane rhetoric, is a literal sense, since it is “drawn out” directly from the words themselves: “Verba ad hoc proferuntur, ut hoc significent” (s. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 1°-2°, q. 102 a. 2 ad 1). The improper literal sense has an extremely broad range and very great importance in the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, since the style and language of the Old and New Testaments are largely characterized by the continuous use of such “transfers” or metaphors (synecdoche, metonymy, metaphor, hyperbole, ellipsis, etc.). anthropomorphism (v.), of the symbols and allegories of the Old Testament books, and of the parables of the New Testament—all literary forms that constitute the Bible’s compelling beauty and abundant richness.
The exegete’s task becomes more arduous when, in order to identify the genuine scriptural sense, it is a matter of discerning the very intention of the sacred author and of God himself, the principal author of Sacred Scripture. One is no longer in the field of the pure and common literal sense, but in some way its limits are surpassed. Something is added to the letter of the Bible: the lux olimpletonis, a certain clarification, perhaps supplied by the ecclesiastical magisterium, of the divine intention, especially in messianic, sapiential, and Mariological texts (sensus plenior), or a reasoning by which a conclusion is deduced from a revealed premise (sensus consequens).
As for the “fuller sense,” the discussion continues to this day. Everyone agrees with s. Thomas that the mind of the prophet and of the hagiographer is an instrumentum deficiens and that they necessarily “non omnia cognoscunt quae in eorum visis aut factis Spiritus Sanctus intendit” (Sum. Theol., 2°-2°, q. 173 a. 4). God, with his infinite clarity, intends and reaches a distant future object, whereas the mind of the hagiographer, on the same plane and in the same perspective, stops at a nearer present or future object (e.g., Gen. 3, 15: Eve–Mary). Leo XIII mentions it briefly in the encyclical Providentissimus: “idque nonnumquam ampliore quadam et reconditioner sententia, quam exprimere littera et hermeneutica leges indicare videantur” (Enchiridion biblicum, Rome 1927, no. 93). M.-J. Lagrange characterizes it as “un sens en quelque sorte supra-littéral qui ne peut être déterminé que par une autorité compétente” (Revue biblique, 9 [1900], p. 141). In practice, this fuller sense closely resembles the typical sense.
The “consequential sense,” on the other hand, is easier to establish, but it is less scriptural, since only the major premise of such syllogisms belongs to the Bible. Jesus Christ (e.g., Mt. 22, 31 ff.), s. Paul (e.g., I Cor. 9, 7–11), the Fathers of the Church, and the scholastics made use of such scriptural deductions and applications; and there is no doubt that the consequential sense is important in theology and useful for Christian life, provided it is employed with due moderation and caution.
In treating of the scriptural literal sense, one may also speak, by way of an appendix, of the “accommodated” or “accommodative sense,” insofar as, because of some verbal or real resemblance, words of the Sacred Books are adapted to persons or things entirely different from those which the human-divine author intended them to signify. Such accommodation, especially that per extensionem, as is often found in the liturgy (others think that what is involved there is rather the fuller sense), is licit and useful, “provided it is done with moderation and sobriety; but one must never forget that such use of the words of Sacred Scripture is almost extrinsic and adventitious to it, and that especially in our own days it is not without danger...” (Pius XII, Divino affl. spiritu, loc. cit., p. 339). If, on the other hand, that resemblance is found only in the words, such accommodation by allusion is rather abusive and a blameworthy play on words.
2. Universality of the literal sense. — A fundamental principle of all sound biblical exegesis is that there is no text of Sacred Scripture that does not have a literal sense, proper or improper. Whoever abandons this norm, at least in practice, by devaluing the literal sense, builds on sand and easily succumbs to subjectivism, pietism, or pneumaticism: “In this way he rejects the golden rule of the doctors of the Church, so clearly formulated by the Angelic Doctor: ‘Omnes sensus fundantur super unum, scilicet litteralem, ex quo solo potest trahi argumentum’; a rule that the Supreme Pontiffs sanctioned and consecrated when they prescribed that, above all, the literal sense should be sought with every care...” (Letter of the Pontifical Biblical Commission to the Italian episcopate, in AAS, 33 [1941], p. 467). “In this way, with the new exegesis, called symbolic and spiritual—for so they assert according to their false opinions—all the difficulties disappear that are encountered only by those who adhere (with regard to the Old Testament) to the literal sense of the Scriptures” (Pius XII, encyclical Humani generis, in AAS, 42 [1950], p. 500; Civ. Catt., 1950, III, p. 465).
The reason for this universality follows from the nature of human language and is obvious to anyone who has a correct conception of biblical inspiration. If God speaks to human beings in Sacred Scripture per hominem, more humano (s. Augustine), then, in order to be heard and understood, he certainly could not change the natural meaning of words. Moreover, it belongs to the nature of the typical (spiritual) sense to be founded upon the literal sense, just as grace presupposes and elevates nature. The Fathers of the Church, even those who favored the spiritual-typical sense, recognize the historical-literal truth as the necessary foundation for spiritual understanding. If they often omit the littera and immediately rise to the heights of the spiritual sense, and if at times they even exclude the literal-historical sense, either the latter was so clear that it needed no explanation, or they understood the term “literal” more narrowly than the proper literal sense, while they called the various forms of the improper literal sense (metaphorical, parabolic, allegorical) the “spiritual sense.” Probably the same answer also applies to Origen, who seemed to have denied the universality of the literal sense. Finally, Benedict XV recommends that exegetes “modeste temperateque e litterali sententia ad altiora exsurgant” (Enchiridion biblicum, loc. cit., no. 499).
3. Uniqueness of the literal sense. — The rather rare fact that an Old Testament text is applied and explained in different ways in the New Testament (e.g., Ps. 2:7 in Acts 13:33 and Hebr. 1:5 and 5:5; or Is. 53:4 in Mt. 8:17 and I Pt. 2:24) has led various theologians, particularly from the sixteenth century onward, to admit and defend the theory of multiple literal senses, namely, both the possibility and the fact that at least some scriptural texts contain two or even more literal senses. They seemed to find confirmation of this thesis among the Fathers, who not infrequently offer various literal interpretations of the same biblical text, without asserting, however, that all these senses are intended by the divine Inspirer or by the hagiographer. The thought of St. Augustine and, following him, of St. Thomas has until now been much debated.
The dignity of the word of God requires that the literal sense, as it was understood by the author (even if, for present-day exegetes, it is uncertain in obscure passages), be certain, determinate, unique, and incompatible with another disparate and independent sense. Thus, the question does not concern those quasi-secondary senses, because they are subordinate (sensus implicitas, plenior, eminens, consequens), which form a single literal sense. « Multiplicitas enim sensuum in una Scriptura parit confusionem et deceptionem et tollit arguendi firmitatem » (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 1, a. 10, ob. 1). It would be the death of exegesis if multiple literalism were to descend from theory into practice.