BIBLICAL SENSES. - "Sense" is the name given to the meaning that a given phrase takes on when considered in its context, or to the thing expressed in that phrase on the symbolic-real plane. The study of the b. s. is the object of the part of biblical interpretation (v.) called noematics (from νόημα, "thought").
I. CLASSIFICATION
After many centuries of proposals and discussions, the distinction of the biblical senses is not unanimous. One of the most obscure questions currently under discussion is that of the classification of the biblical senses (J. Daniélou, Les divers sens de l'Écriture dans la Tradition chrétienne primitive, in Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses, 24 [1948], p. 119). Everyone deplores a confusion of terms, the many misunderstandings and the heated polemics concerning the "senses" of Holy Scripture. Scholars of every age, not excluding the moderns, often do not understand one another and consequently fight one another, and this precisely because of the 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). Not infrequently it is rather a question of words. An exuberance of such technical expressions, of philosophical-scholastic subdivisions coined here and there, would have had to characterize all the nuances of meaning of the individual biblical texts and of 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 (tropic, metaphorical); figurative and figurate; explicit and implicit; philological, logical, theological; consequent, full, eminent, accommodative, etc. It is today agreed that this terminology urgently needs to be reduced, to avoid misunderstandings: a simplification based on the essence of the "sense" and not on secondary or accidental points of view. Once an improper terminology that engenders confusion has been eliminated, "let us accustom ourselves to call things by their proper names and we shall always be easily understood" (G. M. Perrella, Introduzione generale [v. bibl.], p. 253, note). First of all, when it comes to interpreting the hermeneutical terms of the ancients (St. Paul, the Fathers, the Scholastics), for example "spiritual, allegorical, typical," one must never simply assume the meaning that is attributed to them today. Finally, it goes without saying that biblical hermeneutics, and noematics in particular, also requires clear concepts about biblical Inspiration, its nature and its extent.
The above-mentioned definition of the biblical sense already alludes to its twofold kind, literal and real, since the concept of the mind can manifest itself only in the word or in the res (thing, action, fact, person, institution); it can express itself 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 due to human authors, true authors though merely instrumental. The real "typical" sense, on the other hand, is an exclusive prerogative of Holy Scripture, intimately connected with the prerogative of Inspiration, a sense understood by the principal author, God, alone, and knowable to men only through Revelation.
"In no science, human industry inventa, properly speaking, can there be found anything but the literal sense; but only in this Scripture, whose author is the Holy Spirit, while man is but the instrument (is the spiritual sense found)" (St. Thomas, Quodlibetum 7, q. 6, a. 16); "Since in all sciences words signify, this science (sacred) has this as its own property, that the things themselves signified by the words also signify something" (id., Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 1, a. 10).
An immediate consequence of this unique character of the Book of Books are the two methods, mutually completing each other, for finding the scriptural sense: literary heuristics and authentic heuristics, that is, the common or rational rules of biblical interpretation and those proper or Catholic.
II. SENSO LETTERALE
Pope Pius XII points out to the Catholic exegete "among all his tasks the highest, namely to find and expound the genuine thought of the Sacred Books... Therefore they must with all diligence trace out the literal meaning of the words..." (encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu, in AAS, 35 [1943], p. 338). The most interesting and most discussed problems concerning the literal sense are three: 1) its subspecies, so to speak, especially the fuller, consequent and accommodated sense; 2) its universality: every biblical statement contains a literal sense; 3) its uniqueness: no statement of Sacred Scripture contains two or more disparate literal senses.
1. Subspecies of the literal sense
Words can be taken either "secundum proprietatem locutionis" (St. 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 (for example, Christ is compared to a lion, to a lamb, to a vine).
This metaphorical sense was not infrequently also called, inexactly, by the ancients a higher or deeper sense, a spiritual and mystical sense; especially the improper allegorical sense was sometimes confused with the typical sense. Instead, first of all, the principle must be firmly held that the improper sense with all its various forms, known also in profane rhetoric, is a literal sense, since it is "drawn out" directly from the words themselves: "Verba ad hoc proferuntur, ut hoc significent" (St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 102 a. 2 ad 1). The improper literal sense has in the interpretation of Sacred Scripture a vast extension and a very great importance, since the style and language of the Old and New Testaments are in large part characterized by the continuous use of such "transferences" or metaphors (synecdoche, metonymy, metaphor, hyperbole, ellipsis, etc.). One need only think, in particular, of anthropomorphism (v.), of the symbols and allegories of the Old Testament books, of the parables of the New Testament, all literary forms that constitute the attractive beauty and the abundant richness of the Bible.
The exegete's task becomes more arduous when, in order to identify the genuine scriptural sense, it is a matter of guessing 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. To the letter of the Bible something is added: the lux olimpletonis, some clarification, made perhaps by the ecclesiastical magisterium, of the divine intention, especially in messianic, sapiential, mariological texts (sensus plenior) or a reasoning by which a conclusion is deduced from a revealed premise (sensus consequens).
As for the "fuller sense," it is still discussed. All agree with St. 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., 2a-2ae, q. 173 a. 4). God with his infinite clarity intends and reaches a distant future object, while the mind of the hagiographer, on the same plane and in the same perspective, stops at a present or nearer future object (for example, Gen. 3, 15: Eve-Mary). Leo XIII in the encyclical Providentissimus makes mention of it: "idque nonnumquam ampliore quadam et reconditiore sententia, quam exprimere littera et hermeneutica leges indicare videantur" (Enchiridion biblicum, Rome 1927, n. 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 has much similarity with the typical sense.
The "consequent sense," on the other hand, is easier to establish, but it is less scriptural, since only the major premise of such syllogisms is from the Bible. Jesus Christ (for example, Mt. 22, 31 ff.), St. Paul (for example, I Cor. 9, 7-11), the Fathers of the Church and the scholastics made use of such scriptural deductions and applications, and without doubt the consequent sense is important in theology and useful for the Christian life, if it is employed with due moderation and caution.
In treating of the scriptural literal sense, by way of appendix one may also speak of the "accommodated" or "accommodative sense," insofar as, through 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 to signify. Such accommodation, especially that per extensionem, as often occurs in the liturgy (others think that there it is rather a matter of the fuller sense), is lawful and useful, "provided it is done with moderation and sobriety; but one must never forget that such a use of the words of Sacred Scripture is almost extrinsic and adventitious to it, and that especially in our 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, at least in practice, this norm, devaluing the literal sense, builds on sand and easily succumbs to subjectivism, or pietism, or pneumaticism: "He thus rejects the golden rule of the doctors of the Church, so clearly formulated by the Aquinate: '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, first of all, the literal sense be sought with all 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 - they affirm according to their false opinions - all the difficulties vanish which are encountered only by those who adhere (as regards 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 concept of biblical inspiration. If God in Sacred Scripture speaks to men per hominem, more humano (St. Augustine), without doubt, in order to be understood and comprehended, he could not change the natural meaning of words. It belongs moreover to the nature of the typical (spiritual) sense to be founded on the literal, as Grace supposes and elevates nature. The Fathers of the Church, even those who rather favored the spiritual-typical sense, recognize in the historical-literal truth the necessary foundation for spiritual understanding. If they often pass over the littera and rise at once to the heights of the spiritual sense, if indeed they sometimes exclude the literal-historical sense, either the latter was so clear as to need no explanation, or they understood the term "literal" more strictly than the proper literal sense, while they called the various forms of the improper literal sense (metaphorical, parabolic, allegorical) "spiritual sense." Probably the same answer holds also with regard 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., n. 499).
3. Uniqueness of the literal sense
The rather rare fact that an Old Testament text in the New Testament is applied and explained in different ways (for example, Ps. 2:7, in Acts 13:33 and Heb. 1:5 and 5:5; or Is. 53:4, in Mt. 8:17 and 1 Pt. 2:24), has led various theologians, particularly from the 16th century onward, to admit and defend the theory of pluriliteralism — both the possibility and the fact that at least some scriptural texts contain two or even more literal senses. It seemed to them that they could find confirmation of this thesis in the Fathers, who not infrequently offer various literal interpretations of the same biblical text, without however asserting that all these senses are in the intention of the divine Inspirer or of the hagiographer. Much discussed until now has been the thought of St. Augustine and, dependent on him, of St. Thomas.
The dignity of the word of God requires that the literal sense as it was intended by the author (even if for today's exegetes in obscure passages it is uncertain) be certain, determined, unique, incompatible with another disparate and independent sense. Thus it is not a question of those quasi-secondary senses, because 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 pluriliteralism descended from theory into practice.
III. TYPICAL SENSE
Against "those who put forward, as the only escape, a kind of spiritual and, as they call it, mystical interpretation," Pius XII defends and clarifies the correct use of the spiritual sense: "Certainly every spiritual sense is not to be excluded from Sacred Scripture, since what was said or done in the Old Testament was ordered and disposed by God with the highest wisdom in such a way that things past prefigured future things to be fulfilled in the New Covenant of grace. Therefore the exegete, just as he is bound to search out and expound the literal meaning of the words intended and expressed by the Sacred Author, must take the same care in searching out the spiritual meaning, provided that it really appears that God has placed it there. For God alone could both know and reveal to us that spiritual meaning" (encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu, loc. cit., p. 339). v. TIPICO, SENSO.
Bibliography26 works
Adalberto Metzinger