The Three-fold Sense of Scripture:

An Evangelical Grammar for Theological Hermeneutics

Published as a chapter in Semper Reformandum: Studies in Honour of Clark H. Pinnock, ed. S. E. Porter and A. R. Cross (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003),

Alan G. Padgett, Luther Seminary

apadgett@luthersem.edu

It is my pleasure to contribute this chapter to a book in honor of Clark Pinnock, a man from whom I have learned so much over the years.  Clark has been a friend in Christ, and also a teacher by means of his many theological works.  I have long been a fan of his writing; I remember how much I enjoyed and learned from his book, The Scripture Principle (1984).  That book is an excellent defense of the authority of Scripture, and of the Christian use of critical historical methods in its interpretation.[1]  The present chapter is something of a continuation of that book, especially the last chapter (‘The Act of Interpretation’).  In particular, it is my exploration of Clark’s question at the beginning: ‘How can readers engage the text so that they can have God speak to them through it?’  My question here is slightly different: ‘How can the Church engage the Bible so that it can function as the Word of God for us today?’

            Clark is a model of thoughtful, clear and learned evangelical scholarship.  He is open-minded in the best sense, gracious and thoughtful, yet constantly drawn to the Biblical witness.  He is not afraid of new ideas, nor of exploring the height and breadth of gospel truth.  This chapter likewise is an exploration: a tentative suggestion about how we might learn to read the Bible as God’s Word in the light of contemporary science and critical history.  In other words, my proposal is about Christian theological hermeneutics.  There has been a great deal of discussion about a ‘canonical’ approach to biblical theology, since the publication of B. S. Child’s stimulating work, Biblical Theology in Crisis.[2]  For this reason, we must be very clear: I am not here writing about the methods of ‘Old Testament theology’ or other descriptive, historical and/or literary approaches.  A clear and important distinction must be made between a faithful and Christian approach to academic biblical studies, and the theological and spiritual interpretation of the Bible by the community of faith. [3]  My approach here is from faith to faith, and concerns the fully theological understanding of the Bible for the Christian community, which presumes already faith in Jesus Christ, viz. Christian theological hermeneutics.[4] 

            Unlike some evangelical or post-liberal theologians, I believe that the historical and academic approach to the Bible is a permanent contribution of the Enlightenment to the Christian faith.[5]  We want to appreciate the Bible for what it is, and that means taking seriously the human character of the Bible and its authors.  Patient and scholarly work over generations within the academy has provided all of us with a far better understanding of the nature, origin, and background of the various Biblical writings.  The problem is this: however much we honor the guild of biblical scholarship, however much we have learned over the years thanks to their efforts, the Church has very different aims and purposes in reading the Holy Bible.  These differing aims and purposes put biblical scholars in conflict with ordinary believers, for difference in purpose produces difference in method.

            For example, a pop-artist may approach a can of Campbell’s soup in a very different way than a hungry human being.  For the artist, the ‘meaning’ of the can of soup is cultural and aesthetic (or perhaps, anti-aesthetic or even de-humanizing).  Hungry people approach the same can of soup with very different goals and purposes.  The can of soup has a very different meaning for them.  This difference in meaning is a result of different aims and goals for the same thing.

            My own study of the sciences has convinced me that not only meaning, but also method, follows the aim and purpose of an academic discipline.  As Aristotle once remarked, ‘clearly, it is equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from the mathematician and to demand scientific proof from a rhetorician.’[6]  That methods mirror aims is the conclusion of several important philosophers of science in the last century.  They have helped to over-turn the rationalist dream of an ‘exact scientific methodology’ which would overcome all ambiguity, be used in every discipline worthy of the name, and present us with a unified system of Nature.[7]  The rationalistic dream of there being one and only one ‘right’ way to read the Bible must be resisted by thoughtful Christians who value the love/knowledge of God above all things.  The Christian community, with its goals of worship, discipleship and witness, has very different aims from the academic community of the Bible scholar.  Even when exactly the same person participates in these different communities, they will have different goals and methods to follow in each group.  The Christian community, as a spiritual fellowship in search of the truth as it is in Jesus (Eph. 4:21) can and will adopt different methods for its purposes in Bible study.

            Precisely because it is a spiritual fellowship that seeks the love of God and neighbor, the Church will be interested in what we might call a ‘spiritual’ reading of the Scriptures.  As far back as there has been a Christian theology, the Church has insisted upon some kind of spiritual meaning of the Biblical text which goes beyond the literal or historical meaning.  Even those faithful theologians who complained against the excesses of allegory, such as Diodore of Tarsus and Martin Luther, used a fuller sense or spiritual interpretation of the text.[8]  There are sound theological reasons for this.  While I may not go as far as David Steinmetz, who argued for the ‘superiority’ of pre-critical exegesis, there are serious limitations to the historical-critical method.[9]  In his wonderful historical overview of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, Henri de Lubac also provides a kind of apologia for the continuation of a spiritual sense today.[10]  Surely he is right about this need.  But what shape shall such a spiritual reading take?  How can we honor the critical insights of historical methods, while at the same time doing justice to the spiritual and theological aims of the Church?  In this chapter, I will present a three-fold proposal for a Christian theological hermeneutics today, based upon the idea that the Bible presents us with gospel truth, providing a space for our relationship with God.  I will suggest an approach that is grounded in the good news about Jesus Christ, and our on-going relationship with him.  The three levels of meaning for our evangelical grammar of theological hermeneutics are the conventional, canonical, and contemporary senses.

            The main problem with the allegorical methods of old is the lack of control.  Basil the Great complained that those who engage in allegorical excess ‘believe themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and bring forth their own ideas under a pretext of exegesis.’[11]  Centuries later, Martin Luther would also complain about the excesses of allegorical interpretation.  Like the other Christian Humanists and reformers of the sixteenth century, Luther preferred the literal or historical meaning of the text.  The literal meaning gave greater authority to the historical, original text.  This was very important to a movement that insisted upon Scripture alone as the authority upon which the Church must be reformed.

            It was excesses of allegory and the need for some kind of limit to imagination in textual interpretation, which gave the spiritual sense of Scripture a bad name.  Even though modern scholars continue to steer clear of allegory, I believe that the evangel itself demands a fuller sense to Scripture beyond the ordinary or plain meaning of the text.  At the same time, we will still need some kind of control or limit to our theological interpretation, in order to avoid eisegesis.  Finding a way between these two problems is a pressing need today.

            The gospel itself demands a spiritual reading of the Scriptures.  The Church of Jesus Christ cannot be content merely with an historical-literal reading of the text.  Why not?  If the claims we make about Jesus at the heart of the Gospel are true, then we can no longer approach the Bible in the same old way.  Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ.  The Church proclaims that he is also the savior of the world, and the Word of God made flesh.  If these basic gospel truths are in fact true, then we need to re-interpret the entire scripture of Israel.  If Jesus is really savior, Incarnate Word, and Messiah, then the whole of the Hebrew Bible needs to be read in a new light, in the light of Christ.  This is what the apostles themselves did, probably following the practice of their Lord (e.g., Luke 4:16-22).[12] 

            The facts of the Gospel are the basis of the canon of Scripture.  The Old Testament is the Bible of Jesus and the earliest Christians.  The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Holy One of Israel, the God of the Old Testament.  While some early Christian heretics like Marcion rejected this identity, the identification of the God of Israel with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ lies at the heart of the claim that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel.  Jesus really is the Christ, the Messiah of Israel, and therefore his Father is the God of Israel.  At the same time, the books of the New Testament look back to the life and teachings of Jesus, and help us to re-read the Old Testament in the light of the Messiah.  These books were accepted by the community of faith as providing authentic witness to their Risen Savior.  To accept the Bible as a single book, then, is already a statement of faith in Jesus.[13]

            It is a clear implication of the gospel that we read the biblical books together, as a unity.  If we consider each text in isolation, however, this canonical reading cannot take place.  The historical-critical method is rightly committed to reading these texts in their larger cultural, literary and historical contexts.  For this reason, the academy per se is not committed to the unity of the biblical canon.[14]  Rather, academics will study the Bible just like any other ancient book.  This must be true even of faithful, believing academics.  This issue is not about the individual, but rather about the aims, purposes and methods of the discipline involved.  One might say that it has to do with the character of the truth-seeking community we are involved with.  Both the guild of historical scholarship and the Church of Jesus Christ are truth-seeking communities.  The truth they seek, however, and the methods they employ are quite distinct.

            Because we accept the authority of Scripture, the Church is committed to the authority of the text.  We must let the text speak to us in all its difference, otherness, and historical distance.  Only in this way can we respect the authority of the text, and allow it to be used of God to speak afresh in our time.  For this and other reasons, Christian theologians have long insisted upon the priority of the historical or literal meaning of the text.  I will call this first and primary sense of Scripture the ‘conventional meaning.’  I mean by this what some scholars call the plain meaning of the text, and what others designate as the authorial intention of the text, the historical or literal meaning.  These alternative terms have their problems, however.

            I prefer ‘conventional meaning’ to the various alternatives because it is less likely to be confusing.  If all we mean by ‘authorial intention’ is the public character and observable structure of the signs themselves, situated in the community and form-of-life in which they arose and make sense, then this terminology is acceptable.[15]  However, many who reject the author’s intention as having any importance for hermeneutics understand ‘intention’ to be an inner, psychological state.  As such, intention cannot be recovered by historical and philological research.  Because of possible misunderstanding, therefore, I will avoid talking about authorial intention.  The terms ‘historical sense,’ while of great antiquity in Christian theology, might suggest that all the Biblical texts are history.  Of course this is not the case.  Likewise the term ‘literal’ is contrasted with metaphorical, figurative, or poetical literature.  Since the Bible contains a great deal of figurative literature, to speak of the literal sense of Biblical texts will often be confusing.  Finally, ‘plain’ sense suggests that the alternative is some complex or fancy sense, which is not at all the case.  I have therefore decided to use the word ‘conventional’ to describe this basic sense of the Biblical text.

            The first sense of Scripture is the conventional sense.  By this term I mean what the classical Christian authors would call the historical sense.  In modern terms, this can be understood as the interpretation of an ideal reader familiar with the socio-linguistic conventions of the day, with the language used, and sympathetic to the aims and purposes of the author as they can be found in the text.  The conventional meaning is the plain meaning of the text, informed by the original context of utterance/writing.  Conventional meaning does not exclude play and novelty, but recognizes that the intelligibility of new language use depends upon recognized, shared and stable linguistic conventions.  I emphasize the conventional nature of such reading because the philosophy of Wittgenstein has pointed to the grounds of the meaning of words in their use by a particular linguistic community, and for a particular purpose.[16]

            A structuralist approach to meaning, on the other hand, would see linguistic sense arising from a system of signs, or ‘code,’ which a competent speaker of a language follows implicitly and which the linguist makes explicit through scientific investigation.  Yet surely such a view puts the cart before the horse.  The meaning of words comes not from some abstract systems of ‘signs’ or ‘difference’ as some structural and post-structural theorists believe.  Structuralist and post-structuralist thinking confuses the abstract system devised by the linguist who studies a language with the power of the ‘tools’ (words, symbols) themselves.  The meanings of words come not from the ‘code,’ but from the actual uses of speakers in particular linguistic communities.  To quote from the Marxist Russian philosopher V. N. Volosinov, ‘The actual reality of language-speech is not the abstract system of linguistic forms, not the isolated monologic utterance, and not the psychophysiological act of its implementation, but the social event of interaction implemented in an utterance or utterances.  Thus, verbal interaction is the basic reality of language.’[17]   This is an important conclusion, for the conventional meaning of sentences and texts is recoverable by philological and historical research.  Because conventional meaning is a social event, it can be discovered by research, not merely invented by the current reader.

            The social, historical and linguistic context of the original text is an important clue to the conventional meaning.  Since conventional meaning arises from communities and from use, we must always ask after the use, purpose, or aims of a text.  In all the modern emphasis on the power of the reader, I insist that any text has a dimension of ‘address’ or ‘message’ which should not be ignored in deciding between rival readings.  We cannot retrieve the intention of the author, when that means an inner psychological state.  The author is dead, apart from the text.  But because meaning is a social event, we can retrieve the message-dimension of a text when we pay attention to the broad social and linguistic context in which the authors and intended readers lived, and out of which their language had meaning.

            What we are suggesting is that the reader qua reader has responsibilities.[18]  She is responsible to the text, to herself, and to the community of interpretation to put forth a reading which respects the Otherness of the text and its author.  It is wrong to willfully mislead another, and it is just as wrong to willfully misinterpret what my friend says to me.  It is wrong to mislead a stranger, or to manipulate my foe.  Texts are the remains of friends, foes, or strangers.  As such they deserve respect.  Since some readings are better than others, the reader owes it to the author, to herself, and to the community of inquiry to put forth as honest a reading as possible.  The text itself forms the objective reality from which any and all readings of the text begin, and to which they should return for critical analysis.  The author is dead, but the text still has rights because readers have responsibilities and duties toward the text.  Critical investigation of the validity or responsibility of any particular reading will necessarily involve a discovery and recovery of the conventional meaning of the text, through careful attention to the text itself and its broader context of utterance.

            What is true of texts in general will be especially true for the Church in reading and interpreting the Holy Scriptures.  Here we particularly wish to respect the text, its authority and its Otherness.  The conventional sense of Scripture therefore must be the basis and guide for any further, spiritual sense, as well as the basis for any critique of fuller interpretations.  In this insistence, we are in fact following the great doctors of the Church, at least in their stated aims if not always in their practice.  The priority of the historical is no surprise in an historical religion, whose God is at work in history.  The story of God in the Bible is rooted and grounded in history: in exodus, exile, return, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection.  The priority of the original, conventional meaning is not a new idea, nor simply a Reformed notion, but a common teaching of the Christian tradition.  As Diodore of Tarsus once wrote, ‘history [the literal sense] is not opposed to theoria [the spiritual sense].  On the contrary, it proves to be the foundation and basis of the higher senses.’[19]  Even Origin could call the historical meaning the ‘foundation’ for any higher or spiritual sense.[20] 

            Biblical interpretation and application that is Christian may well begin with the conventional sense, but it will also involve a larger, canonical sense.  As we have just seen, the unity of the books of the Bible in one canon is already a faith statement, grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  As T. F. Torrance remarks, for example, ‘Since the Scriptures are the result of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the will of the Father through Jesus Christ, and since the Word of God who speaks through all the Scriptures became incarnate in Jesus Christ, it is Jesus Christ himself who must constitute the controlling centre in all right interpretation of the Scriptures.’[21]  By ‘right interpretation,’ Torrance must mean a right Christian reading of the Bible as the Word of God.  The canonical sense, then, is christocentric.  Jesus as the Living Word constitutes the ‘controlling center’ of any properly Christian biblical interpretation.  Because Jesus is also God Incarnate, this christological framework is finally Trinitarian.  When we read the whole Bible together with the whole Church, and with Christ as its living center, the result is a Trinitarian canonical sense.[22]  Once again, the Holy One of Israel is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: this Trinitarian identity is central to the gospel.  The God of the Old Testament is God the Father, while the Spirit of God and the Word of God become in fully developed Christian thought God the Spirit and God the Son: the blessed Trinity.  It was Torrance’s teacher and mentor Karl Barth who called attention to the christological and therefore Trinitarian character of divine revelation in recent times.[23]  Barth did not invent this idea, however.  The christocentric and therefore Trinitarian ‘rule of faith’ was the framework within which classical Christian theologians of the early period also interpreted the biblical text (e.g., Irenaeus).[24] 

            I am not at all suggesting that we engage in allegory.  If the Bible in one verse tells us to hate our enemies, then I am not suggesting that we allegorize the word enemy into meaning our sins, and the like.  Let the text speak for itself.  However, each particular text will only be authoritative for the Church today in conversation with the larger canon.  My proposal for a canonical sense concerns the larger significance of entire passages seen within books and Testaments, not allegory.  The whole canon, then, provides a larger context of meaning which will shape, adjust and even correct a particular text.  As Terry Fretheim puts this point in his Hein/Fry Lectures, the church today should ‘seek a unified portrayal of God, but with the understanding that some biblical texts will just not fit; they provide some ongoing over-againstness to that portrayal.’[25]  Instead of the typical canon within a canon, we should let each passage speak for itself, even when it is in tension with the overall canonical sense of Scripture.  This methodology would be very different from the allegorical approach typical of classic Christian theology.

            The canonical sense I have in mind is not an allegory, but a larger context of meaning.  One might think that Martin Luther, as the father of the Reformation and a critic of allegorical methods used by his Catholic opponents, would stick strictly to the conventional sense alone, and reject any such larger, canonical context.  This is not in fact the case, as a careful reading of his work demonstrates.  Luther did complain about the excesses of the allegorical method, and especially of Origen’s legacy.[26]  ‘Everywhere we should stick to just the simple, natural meaning of the words, as yielded by the rules of grammar and the habits of speech that God has created among humans.’[27]  This is very much what we are calling the conventional sense.  His understanding of the clarity and central message of the Scriptures, however, was firmly pneumatological and christological.  While wishing to start with the simple or plain sense of Scripture, he also allowed that the message of the Scriptures cannot ‘offend against an article of faith.’[28]  This is because, for him, Christ is the true meat of the Scriptures, and thus the ‘simple’ sense of the Scriptures cannot be understood by those persons who do not have the Holy Spirit and the light of Christ.  ‘For what solemn truth can the Scriptures still be concealing, now that the seals are broken, the stone rolled away from the door of the tomb, and the greatest of all mysteries brought to light — that Christ, God’s Son, became human, that God is Three in One, that Christ suffered for us, and will reign forever?’[29]  Luther’s grasp of the message and center of Scripture is exactly what I am calling the canonical sense, which is christocentric and therefore Trinitarian.  While Luther might typically be thought of as an opponent of any spiritual sense for Scriptural interpretation in the Church (and in several places he condemns allegory and a spiritual sense beyond the literal one) in his actual practice he adopted what we are calling a canonical sense for biblical interpretation.[30]  For Luther, Jesus Christ, the Living Word, is the key to the Scriptures.  The light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, therefore, helps to establish the meaning of the biblical text.[31]

            So the primacy of the conventional sense does not rule out a larger, canonical sense.  To see this larger canonical sense as christocentric and Trinitarian is not to impose a rigid dogmatism on the text, but rather to bring each particular passage into conversation with its Testament, and to unify both testaments around the Living Word, Jesus the Messiah.  Since we do give priority to the conventional sense, I am not proposing that we read Jesus or the Trinity back into every verse of the Bible.  Remember that we are discussing here a process of interpretation for the Church, in faith and under the illumination of the Holy Spirit.  It is this ecclesial and evangelical hermeneutic which insists upon a canonical sense, bringing particular texts into conversation with the whole of the canon, with the Living Word, and thus with the Triune God.  Confessional interpretation does not have to be restrictive and imposing.  If we believe in the truth of the Gospel, then confessional interpretation may well be liberating.[32]  It is entirely possible that a canonical sense may bring out new insights to be discovered in the conventional sense, or discover important ethical-political dimensions that could be overlooked.  Any meaning we propose to the church as faithful Christian interpreters will be open to revision in light of both the conventional sense of the text and the true heart of Scripture, which is Christ.

            Consideration of biblical meaning for today brings us to the final sense of Scripture: contemporary.  The contemporary sense is the proposed, imaginative application of the conventional sense of the passage in light of the larger canonical sense.  It is the process of applying and appropriating the passage for Christian life and thought today.  The Bible has meaning in the Church in a larger context of our relationship with God and our lives of Spirit-filled discipleship in the world.  Reading the Bible already implies a contemporary application.  After all, this is the word of God in human words.  All three senses of Scripture, then, operate at one and the same time in practice.  There is a hermeneutical circle which continues as we move from conventional to canonical to contemporary senses of the text, and then back again.  As Gadamer pointed out some years ago, any interpretation is already an implied application.[33]  This does not mean, however, that we cannot distinguish between the aims of seeking the conventional meaning of a text, and the aim of seeking a contemporary application.  While all three senses come together at once in practice, we can distinguish each sense when we attend to the process of faithful biblical interpretation.  When equally sound, faithful, learned, and Spirit-filled Christians disagree about the meaning of the Bible, it will be particularly important to attend to these different senses, and to tease-out the proper meaning in each domain (conventional, canonical, contemporary) along with the criteria of adequacy appropriate for each sense.

            As a Christian process of interpretation, we believe the Holy Spirit is at work in all of this.  The Spirit inspired the original authors and editors of Scripture, as well as the canonical process.  The Spirit likewise assists us to grasp the conventional, canonical, and

contemporary senses of Scripture.  But the Holy Spirit is the mother of the Church, and has long been active in Biblical interpretation.  Therefore, the contemporary sense of Scripture is best developed in conversation with the history of the interpretation of the text.  Of course this can in practice be done only by those with time for serious study.  Still, the history of the interpretation of the text ought to guide our application today, just as the history of theology guides our current constructive efforts in systematic theology.

            The Church has an obligation to preach, teach and live from the Bible.  The Bible has been given to us by God as a guide and a word for our time.  However we may insist upon the clarity of Scripture and simplicity of the Gospel, people do misunderstand and abuse the Bible.  I believe that this simple three-fold approach to reading the Bible, if taught in congregations and applied in pulpits, would help Christian people to find the Bible more meaningful for their lives.  It can help them to see that we need to read the Scriptures in faith, and that not every verse is directly applicable to our lives today.  The Bible should be read with the whole of Scripture in mind, and especially with Jesus and the Gospel in mind.  Christian biblical interpretation is guided by the rule of faith, because Christian biblical interpretation speaks from faith to faith.

            Perhaps a short example will help clarify my suggestion for a three-fold sense.  Remember we are talking here about theological hermeneutics, that is, Biblical interpretation in and for Christian faith.  I will take as an example a problem text Pinnock also mentions, the editorial summary paragraph at the end of Joshua 10 (vv. 40-43).[34]  There our editor claims that ‘Joshua defeated the whole land; . . . he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed as the Lord God of Israel commanded’ (10:40).  First of all, this is historically a gross exaggeration, if we know anything about this period of Hebrew conquest in Canaan.  So the text is not historically accurate.  Secondly, the text also claims that God commanded Joshua to utterly destroy (herem) every living person.  But is that consistent with the justice and mercy of God revealed in the whole of Scripture?  I think not!

            First of all, this text demonstrates that historical accuracy is not the basis of our claim that the Bible is true.  The inerrancy of Scripture — in positive terms the truthfulness and authority of Scripture — does not imply that every passage is 100% factually correct in terms of science and history.  On the other hand, the shape and character of this narrative would absurd if there were no conquest at all.  Some continuity between Biblical claims and historical reality is needed, but not historical inerrancy.  Secondly, we need to grasp the conventional meaning of this text in its larger place within the book of Joshua, the Former Prophets, the Old Testament and the whole Bible.  Thirdly, in a larger christocentric reading, this text’s claim about God’s command to utterly destroy every human will need to be modified.  That God has the right to take life is not a question.  Pinnock is right to see this passage in the larger Biblical teaching about the wrath of God.  In giving this text a contemporary sense, we will need to place this passage in a larger, eschatological context of judgment against all sin and evil.  Even so, in teaching from this passage today we will still question whether God would be so indiscriminate in His judgment.  So this text is a good example of doing what Fretheim suggests, namely, allowing some texts to stand in tension against the rest of the canon.  As Pinnock suggests in the conclusion of The Scripture Principle, biblical inerrancy applies to the whole of Scripture, not to its parts; for the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  However, I want to emphasize that we are not judging the Bible in this approach.  Rather, we are brining different and conflicting texts into conversation through a canonical approach with a contemporary meaning.  The Bible is correcting itself in this proposal, using Christ as the key to understanding the heart of Scripture.  This differs from an approach that criticizes the text based upon contemporary human concepts or philosophies.

            In this chapter I suggest that the Church today should adopt a three-fold sense of Scripture in our theological interpretation of the Bible.  These three senses are the conventional, canonical and contemporary meanings of the Biblical text.  I have assumed throughout the truth of the central claims of Christian faith, that is, the good news about Jesus Christ.  Other readings of the Bible are legitimate and welcome; this one is from faith to faith, in keeping with the overall aim of the Church to worship, glorify, and obey the Triune God.