How should we read the Bible and the Gospels and meditate on them? Should we interpret  or read them literally?

Dear Father Angelo,

I write again to ask you how we should read the Bible and the Gospels and meditate on them.

Should we interpret them or just read them? Should we take their meaning literally?

Thank you

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The answer of the Priest

My dear,

1. My answer refers to what we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church; it takes up verbatim what St. Thomas already explained in his time.

There is no more authoritative text.

Here you are:

2. “According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church” (CCC 115).

3. “The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture” (CCC 116).

Forthwith, it recalls that the literal meaning is conveyed by the sacred text scholars’ (the exegetes’) discoveries; they kept in mind the cultural, historical, and geographical circumstances of the text genesis.

Forgetting their help, one easily falls into fundamentalism, that is reading the text only literally, with the risk of adulterating its meaning.

That is the error of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others’ too who open the Holy Scriptures at random to grasp God’s thought.

4. In reference to the literal sense, the CCC reports an authoritative statement by St. Thomas: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal” (Summa Theologiae, I, 1, 10, ad 1).
St. Thomas calls it historical sense as well.

This is the indisputable starting point.

5. Then, there is the spiritual sense. God also speaks through the events and realities of sacred history. Together with the historical sense, another is conveyed, which is valid forever and for everybody. It is the spiritual sense.

6. St. Thomas writes: “Now this spiritual sense has a threefold division. For as the Apostle says (Heb. 10:1) the Old Law is a figure of the New Law, and Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i) “the New Law itself is a figure of future glory.” Again, in the New Law, whatever our Head has done is a type of what we ought to do.” (Summa Theologiae, I, 1, 10).

7. Here is the foundation of the threefold distinction of the spiritual sense.

“Therefore, so far as the things of the Old Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegorical sense; so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do, there is the moral sense. But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense” (Summa Theologiae, I, 1, 10).

8. Thus, in the allegorical sense we can see the crossing of the Red Sea as a sign of Christ’s victory, and the significance of Baptism which makes us pass from the devil’s slavery to the new life as children of God.

About the moral sense, it suffices to remember that the events narrated in the Sacred Scriptures were written “for our instruction” (rf. 1Cor 10:11) to enable us to righteously act according to Christ.

In the anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”), “we can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem” (CCC 117).

9. St. Thomas adds that we can find this threefold distinction also in the historical or literal meaning: “Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confess. xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses” (Summa Theologiae, I, 1, 10).

10. Lastly, the CCC recalls the precious contribution of the exegesis which allows for a deeper understanding of Sacred Scripture and for the exposition of its senses.

Then, it concludes stating: “the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God” (Dei Verbum, 12).

In fact, St. Augustine says: “But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me” (Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti, 5, 6).

Wishing you all the best, and an ever deeper understanding of the Scriptures according to their four meanings, I bless you

Father Angelo

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