Whose Common Sense? Which is the One Meaning?
The American Restoration Movement called upon Christians in America and elsewhere to read Scripture according to common sense. The hope was that so doing would soon result in doctrinal agreement, which in turn would unify all who decided to submit to divine authority according to the Bible.
In actual experience disagreements have not ceased. It is not because everyone else refuses to obey the obvious meaning of the biblical text. Like all sophisticated literature, much of what is in the Bible bears more than one meaning on purpose.
For example, Judges 3:20 turns out to have two meanings. Ehud tells Eglon he has a “message” for him. But the same word can be “thing.” Ehud’s message turns out to be a lethal “thing”: a two-edged sword!
Also, Scripture itself teaches us to find more than just one meaning. Jesus taught the Apostles that the entire Old Testament is really about Jesus, the gospel, and the mission to take the forgiveness of sins to the whole world (Luke 24:44-48). Paul wrote that the entire Old Testament “was written for our instruction,” (Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:6). That is, in the light of Jesus, everything in the Old Testament somehow provides instruction for how the Church conducts itself in its own time and place.
Therefore, relatively soon after the New Testament period, Christians learned to read the Bible paying attention to four types of meaning.
The first type is often called the “literal” meaning of Scripture. This is the plain, historical sense of the text as it was written by its human author. Moses wrote the history of Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea, for example. We are taught to seek this level of meaning by asking the question, “What is the author’s original meaning here?”
For the first type, we understand “the author” to refer to the human author: Moses, John, Paul, etc. For the remaining types we are asking about meanings likely intended by the divine Author: the Holy Spirit (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21).1
A second type of meaning across biblical texts is called “tropological,” but is more commonly known as “application.” We discover this type of meaning by asking, “How does this passage speak to our time and place; to ourselves personally?” It is crucial to identify ways that our situation is like and unlike the situation of the biblical writer and his audience. For example, Paul teaches us to recognize Israel’s march through the Red Sea as comparable to our own baptism in Jesus Christ (1 Cor 10:1-2). This encourages us to look for other ways Israel’s exodus experience speaks to Christian in a world that is spiritually a “wilderness.”
A third type might be called “allegorical” meaning. Here the reader asks the question, “What does this text have to say about Jesus Christ?” Features of the text are treated in fitting ways as representing Jesus or other elements of the gospel. (So, this level especially applies to the Old Testament. New Testament sources have to do with Jesus already at their “literal” level of meaning.) For example, the parting of the Red Sea can be taken as a reprise of the Creator’s defeat of the chaotic waters in the beginning (Gen 1:2; Isa 51:9-10). The cross, then, stands as the ultimate victory over chaotic forces of evil in the present heavens and earth (Col 2:15). This teaches us to recognize other ways God’s work of redemption manifests in history in and outside of the biblical documents.
A fourth type is called “anagogical” meaning. This could be considered an ultimate type of meaning. It has to do especially with how biblical texts might speak to the Christian hope of heaven. For example, God worked Israel’s Red Sea crossing for the purpose of leading them to their promised inheritance in Canaan. New Testament writings teach us to think of our heavenly hope in terms of the Promised Land of Israel’s history (Heb 4:11).
Human authors of merely human writings often accomplish more than one type of meaning they intend for their readers to discover. The Bible is filled with writings by human authors that ultimately were composed by the Holy Spirit. We should expect to find that God’s writings communicate more than one type of meaning.
Yet, care must be taken that our imaginations are disciplined by the gospel purpose God has revealed for giving us the Bible. Not every message we can imagine can be a valid meaning to take from God’s word. Only those things that glorify God and edify God’s people according to the light of Jesus’ life and message can be considered as possibly things God wants us to hear.
1 Peter Leithart is a thoughtful advocate of the four-fold method of reading the Bible. See, for example, Peter Leithart's essay at https://firstthings.com/bring-back-four-dimensional-bible-reading/.
In actual experience disagreements have not ceased. It is not because everyone else refuses to obey the obvious meaning of the biblical text. Like all sophisticated literature, much of what is in the Bible bears more than one meaning on purpose.
For example, Judges 3:20 turns out to have two meanings. Ehud tells Eglon he has a “message” for him. But the same word can be “thing.” Ehud’s message turns out to be a lethal “thing”: a two-edged sword!
Also, Scripture itself teaches us to find more than just one meaning. Jesus taught the Apostles that the entire Old Testament is really about Jesus, the gospel, and the mission to take the forgiveness of sins to the whole world (Luke 24:44-48). Paul wrote that the entire Old Testament “was written for our instruction,” (Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:6). That is, in the light of Jesus, everything in the Old Testament somehow provides instruction for how the Church conducts itself in its own time and place.
Therefore, relatively soon after the New Testament period, Christians learned to read the Bible paying attention to four types of meaning.
The first type is often called the “literal” meaning of Scripture. This is the plain, historical sense of the text as it was written by its human author. Moses wrote the history of Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea, for example. We are taught to seek this level of meaning by asking the question, “What is the author’s original meaning here?”
For the first type, we understand “the author” to refer to the human author: Moses, John, Paul, etc. For the remaining types we are asking about meanings likely intended by the divine Author: the Holy Spirit (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21).1
A second type of meaning across biblical texts is called “tropological,” but is more commonly known as “application.” We discover this type of meaning by asking, “How does this passage speak to our time and place; to ourselves personally?” It is crucial to identify ways that our situation is like and unlike the situation of the biblical writer and his audience. For example, Paul teaches us to recognize Israel’s march through the Red Sea as comparable to our own baptism in Jesus Christ (1 Cor 10:1-2). This encourages us to look for other ways Israel’s exodus experience speaks to Christian in a world that is spiritually a “wilderness.”
A third type might be called “allegorical” meaning. Here the reader asks the question, “What does this text have to say about Jesus Christ?” Features of the text are treated in fitting ways as representing Jesus or other elements of the gospel. (So, this level especially applies to the Old Testament. New Testament sources have to do with Jesus already at their “literal” level of meaning.) For example, the parting of the Red Sea can be taken as a reprise of the Creator’s defeat of the chaotic waters in the beginning (Gen 1:2; Isa 51:9-10). The cross, then, stands as the ultimate victory over chaotic forces of evil in the present heavens and earth (Col 2:15). This teaches us to recognize other ways God’s work of redemption manifests in history in and outside of the biblical documents.
A fourth type is called “anagogical” meaning. This could be considered an ultimate type of meaning. It has to do especially with how biblical texts might speak to the Christian hope of heaven. For example, God worked Israel’s Red Sea crossing for the purpose of leading them to their promised inheritance in Canaan. New Testament writings teach us to think of our heavenly hope in terms of the Promised Land of Israel’s history (Heb 4:11).
Human authors of merely human writings often accomplish more than one type of meaning they intend for their readers to discover. The Bible is filled with writings by human authors that ultimately were composed by the Holy Spirit. We should expect to find that God’s writings communicate more than one type of meaning.
Yet, care must be taken that our imaginations are disciplined by the gospel purpose God has revealed for giving us the Bible. Not every message we can imagine can be a valid meaning to take from God’s word. Only those things that glorify God and edify God’s people according to the light of Jesus’ life and message can be considered as possibly things God wants us to hear.
1 Peter Leithart is a thoughtful advocate of the four-fold method of reading the Bible. See, for example, Peter Leithart's essay at https://firstthings.com/bring-back-four-dimensional-bible-reading/.
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