Interpreting Scripture

Jesus opens the Scriptures

On the day Jesus rose, two disciples walked to Emmaus with their hopes buried. A stranger joined them, and Luke tells us that "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself" (Luke 24:27). That evening, in Jerusalem, he did the same for the rest:

Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.” Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

Luke 24:44-45

Christian interpretation begins here. Matthew Henry puts it simply: "Christ is the best expositor of Scripture" Matthew Henry. Wherever we read, he adds, we soon meet some prophecy, promise, prayer or type that points to Christ, for "A golden thread of gospel grace runs through the whole web of the Old Testament" Matthew Henry.

The apostles read the same way. Paul says that Israel's trials in the wilderness "happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us" (1 Corinthians 10:11). The Greek word behind ‘examples’ is tupos (τύπος) (verse 6) and its adverb (verse 11), from which we get ‘type’: real people and events in history that foreshadow Christ and his salvation. In Galatians Paul turns to Hagar and Sarah, and the BSB has him say, "These things serve as illustrations" (Galatians 4:24); his verb is allēgoreō (ἀλληγορέω), to speak of one thing by means of another. Wesley defines it: "An allegory is a figurative speech, wherein one thing is expressed, and another intended" Wesley. So Scripture itself opens a way of reading beyond the bare letter. The question the church would face is how far down that road to go.

Letter and spirit: the Fathers and the Middle Ages

Around 230 Origen of Alexandria set out, in the fourth book of On First Principles, what is often counted the first Christian account of how to interpret Scripture. As a human being has body, soul and spirit, he said, so Scripture has a threefold sense: its ‘body’, the plain story, which builds up simple believers; its ‘soul’, the moral teaching for those who have made progress; and its ‘spirit’, which speaks of Christ and heavenly things to the mature Origen, On First Principles, book 4. He searched so deeply because he believed no word of Scripture was idle. Alexandria loved this spiritual sense; Antioch, whose greatest preacher was John Chrysostom, gave more weight to the plain, historical sense. That story is told in How the Fathers read Scripture.

The parable of the Good Samaritan shows how the Fathers read (Luke 10:30-37). In the app's Catena, Augustine takes the wounded man as Adam and Jerusalem as the heavenly city from which he fell, and adds, "Jericho is interpreted to be the moon, and signifies our mortality, because it rises, increases, wanes, and sets" Augustine. In the Samaritan, he says, "our Lord Jesus Christ would have Himself typified" Augustine, and Chrysostom makes the inn the church. The two coins are the two covenants for Ambrose, the two commandments of love for Augustine, and for Origen the knowledge of how the Father is in the Son. Yet the same Fathers did not lose Jesus' own point, "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:37). Chrysostom spells it out: "If you see any one oppressed, say not, Surely he is wicked; but be he Gentile or Jew and need help, dispute not" Chrysostom. Ambrose puts it in a line: "For relationship does not make a neighbor, but compassion" Ambrose.

The medieval church gathered such reading into four senses. The best-known illustration goes back to the fifth-century monk John Cassian: literally, Jerusalem is the city of the Jews; allegorically, the church of Christ; morally, the human soul; and anagogically, the heavenly city to come. A short Latin rhyme widely used in the later Middle Ages summed it up: the letter teaches what happened, allegory what to believe, the moral sense what to do, and anagogy where we are heading.

In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas accepted the four senses but drew an important line. All the spiritual senses rest on the literal sense; arguments may be drawn from the literal sense alone; and nothing necessary to faith is hidden in a spiritual sense that Scripture does not teach plainly somewhere else Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1.10.

The Reformers: the plain sense and Christ

The Reformers drew Aquinas's line more boldly. Luther had lectured on the Psalms by the fourfold method as a young professor, but he came to teach that the grammatical and historical sense, what the author actually said, is the true sense of Scripture. Calvin, commenting on Hagar and Sarah, urged readers to hold resolutely to ‘the natural and obvious meaning’. The Reformers read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, and Luther translated it into German so that ordinary people could read it for themselves.

Two principles followed. The first is that Scripture interprets Scripture. The Westminster Confession of 1646 puts it this way:

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

Westminster Confession 1.9

The words ‘not manifold, but one’ answer the four senses directly. The second principle is that Christ stands at the centre. The Reformers distrusted allegory, but they never stopped finding Christ in the Old Testament, because Jesus himself had read it so.

Reading well today

How, then, should we read? First, context: a verse takes its meaning from its paragraph and its book. Then genre: poetry, history, law, parable, letter and apocalyptic each tell the truth in their own way. Then the whole canon: one story runs from Genesis to Revelation, and it gathers in Christ. We let clearer passages shed light on harder ones, and we read within the rule of faith the church has confessed in its creeds (see The sources of theology).

The spiritual reading of the Fathers and the Middle Ages has much to teach. They saw rightly that all Scripture bears witness to Christ, and that it is given not only to inform the mind but to build faith, hope and love. To see in the Samaritan the Lord who came looking for us is no betrayal of the gospel. But allegory without the control of context and the author's intent easily lost its way. As the two coins show, each interpreter could find a different meaning in the same detail; readers began to bring into the text what it does not say, and then Scripture no longer corrected them, they corrected Scripture. Typology that Scripture itself teaches must be told apart from the reader's imagination.

Finally, we read in the church and on our knees. Like the disciples on the Emmaus road, we need the Lord to open our minds.

Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law.

Psalm 119:18

For help with reading commentaries, see What a Commentary Is and How to Read One. For more on reading the Bible, see How should we read the Bible?, and on hard passages, Does the Bible contradict itself?.

Practice