No time to waste on this one, so let's dive in. We've been talking this year about our great human journey, a quest meant to lead each of us to our eternal fulfillment, which is seeing God as he is and so becoming as like him as it's possible for a creature to be. We've talked already about the spiritual activities that most directly relate to this quest, including reading Scripture. This morning, we're going to kick that up a notch and learn more about deeper ways to read Scripture, not just for information, but as a spiritual practice. In one of today's passages, the psalmist said, “I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:162) – that is, each part of God's word is like a treasure chest with layer after layer of riches, just waiting to be brought out into the open. And because they really believed that, because they cherished the Scriptures entrusted into their hands, the early Christians – most Christians throughout history, really – have seen that you need to approach and understand Scripture in more than just one way if you're going to profit from it the way God wants you to.
Where we begin when reading God's word is actually pretty common-sense. The early Christians called the first sense 'the letter' or 'the history.' This is what we mean by the word 'literal' – 'according to the letter.' The literal sense of Scripture is just whatever the author meant his words to mean. The words are about things, the words are signs pointing us to things – so what is that? We talked about this a couple months back, so we won't belabor it quite as much as we otherwise could. But before we go anywhere else with Scripture, we need to know what it means. If the author is writing a historical narrative, read it as a historical narrative. If he's giving a parable, read that part as a parable. If he's using a figure of speech, read that as a figure of speech. That's all the 'literal sense.'1 Read it according to when and where it's set. Read it according to where it fits in the picture.
When you open up your Bible, some understanding of the literal sense will probably be pretty obvious. If you turn to the story of the exodus, it's obvious that you're reading a narrative about a group of related tribes who are oppressed in a foreign land called Egypt, but whom God sets free through a deliverer named Moses, and leads into a desert place to meet him at a mountain. All you need to pick that up is to just follow along. To get deeper into it, it might help to read bigger chunks, including the end of Genesis to see how they got in this situation, or the psalms that look back on the exodus and celebrate it. And to get even more out of what you're reading, you might need to go to even less obvious places, like the links between each of the plagues and the powers of Egypt's false gods, or the geography of the route they take out of Egypt and why, or the significance of Moses organizing the tribes of Israel in the same lay-out as the pharaoh's war camp, or the stylistic parallels between the song they sing after escaping the Egyptians and poems celebrating the pharaoh's victories like at the Battle of Kadesh. As we learn these things, we can correct misunderstandings and wrong assumptions we might have had when we just read our English translations. We can also appreciate the Bible in newer and richer ways as we learn more about the things it's talking about and their context. None of it happened in a vacuum, and each human author God chose brought their own style and perspective to be the Holy Spirit's tools.
You could spend a whole lifetime just excavating treasures of meaning out of Scripture taken purely in its literal sense. There's just that much there. But Christians always agreed that the literal sense of Scripture isn't enough. If you just read only the literal sense, then you're getting an incomplete picture and, in some important ways, betraying the Bible. Because the Bible is meant to do so much more. Last week, we talked about how, because we're embodied creatures, God touches us through sacraments – sacred signs of sanctification. And, in a similar way, there's something sacramental about Scripture.2 Not only do the words in the Bible mean things, but in God's infinite wisdom, even those things themselves mean things!3 That's why the literal sense isn't enough. It's only the skin. That skin may be much, much thicker than an elephant's skin, but it's skin all the same. We don't just need the letter; we need the spirit. And so, from the beginning, Christians went beyond the literal to the spiritual sense, all that under-the-skin significance of what the Bible's talking about. They came, gradually, to divide this spiritual sense into three spiritual senses, for a total of a fourfold sense of Scripture.
None of this was meant to insult the literal sense, or to go astray from it. All three spiritual senses build on the letter and take it as their essential starting point. The better we understand the literal sense, the more we should be able to see when we break through to the spiritual ones.4 That's why Bible study is such a great springboard.
The first of the spiritual senses is what they called the typological or allegorical sense. And allegory is when the things behind Scripture's words are themselves signs of Jesus Christ and his activities on earth – his birth, his preaching, his teaching, his miracles, his cross, his resurrection.5 This was a big way the early Christians read the Old Testament – with the things it literally talked about being pictures, allegorically, of Jesus. They learned to think that way because Jesus told them to. Jesus himself referred to “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44). He wasn't just referring to select passages that are literally messianic prophecies, though there is that. He meant all of it – all of Scripture is about Jesus. He said that the temple itself was a symbol of his own body (John 2:21). When he read about the bronze serpent Moses lifted up on a pole so that snake-bitten Israelites could look at it and be healed, Jesus said that was a sign of him being lifted up on the cross to heal those who look to him in faith (John 3:14-15).
The apostles read Scripture allegorically all the time. When they read in the Law about the lamb sacrificed by each house on Passover, they read that lamb as a sign of “Christ our Passover Lamb” sacrificed at the same time, so that his lifeblood could be our protection (1 Corinthians 5:7). When Paul read in Genesis about Abraham's messy family, with kids by two women, first Hagar and then Sarah, he read those women as signs of the old covenant and the new covenant: “Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. … Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants...” (Galatians 4:22-24). Paul outright says he's diving into the allegorical sense – he uses that exact word. In one of the passages we read this morning, we saw how Paul reads a verse in Deuteronomy about the proper treatment of oxen, and he reads it allegorically so that the oxen are preachers of the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:9-11). And when Paul reads the exodus and wilderness narratives, he reads the passage through the sea as a sign of baptism, and the manna from heaven and water out of the rock as a sign of our 'spiritual food and drink' in the eucharist or communion (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). To read Scripture like Jesus or Paul means to open our eyes to the allegorical sense.
After allegory comes what Christians of old called the tropological or the moral sense of Scripture. If allegory is when the things the Bible talks about are signs of what Jesus did when he came, tropology is when they're signs of what Jesus does now in us. It's about how our souls work with Christ at the helm. It's about the virtues. It's about what we should do, how we should live. God means his word to be “a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path” (Psalm 119:105), and tropology lets all of it guide our path in life.6 The apostles read Scripture tropologically. When Paul recounts the story of Israel in the desert, he says “these things were written down for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:11), that “these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Corinthians 10:6). It's not enough for it to be history. God let it happen, and God had it recorded, so that we could take direction from it so as to transform our moral and spiritual lives. When the apostles read about sacrifices in the Old Testament, they read them as signs of Christ on the cross, sure – that's allegory – but they also read those sacrifices as signs of what should happen in your life – tropology: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). “Don't neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 13:15). And when Paul reads about the Feast of Unleavened Bread, he takes as a sign to reject “the leaven of malice and evil” and to instead eat “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:8). Again, that's tropology, that's a moral reading that goes beyond what the Old Testament literally said – and we need it.
Other early Christians loved tropology. One got all excited about the food laws and how they communicate moral lessons based on the behavior of animals that were considered kosher – be like them! – or non-kosher – don't be like them!7 Another looked at Jesus' parable with five wise and five foolish bridesmaids, and said that the wise bridesmaids in your soul are named Faith, Love, Grace, Peace, and Hope.8 Later on, a Christian doing a tropological reading of the life of Moses said that the tenth plague, the death of the Egyptian firstborn, is a sign that “it is necessary to destroy utterly the first birth of evil” in your soul, for “it's impossible to flee the Egyptian life in any other way.”9 And we could go on. To read Scripture like the apostles and their followers means to be prepared for tropology, for moral instruction and transformation in the places we aren't getting it literally.
After history, allegory, and tropology comes something called anagogy – 'leading upward,' it means.10 And the anagogical sense is where the things signified in the words of the Bible are taken as signs of heavenly or future or eternal realities in Christ – his return, his final victory, the last judgment, heaven and hell, and so on. So this gets right at our eternal destiny. The things shown in Scripture are meant to help us “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). “Whatever was written in former days was written... that through... the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope,” Paul says (Romans 15:4).
So Jesus explains the story of Noah with anagogy: “As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man, for as in those days before the flood... they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:37-39). Jude reads Genesis with anagogy when he says the fire falling on Sodom and Gomorrah is a sign of “a punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7). John reads the Book of Joshua with anagogy when he takes the seven trumpets toppling the walls of Jericho as a sign of seven heavenly trumpets that will topple the walls of the world (Revelation 11:15). There's even anagogy in hymns like “On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand” or “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.” Both take the Jordan River as a sign of death, and the promised land as a sign of heavenly life, so that when the Israelites cross over Jordan, that shows us our hope to “land... safe on Canaan's side” in heaven by crossing the threshold of death on earth.
Not every part of the Bible necessarily has all four senses in it, but a lot does. So take, for example, the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. Read it literally, and you have an encounter three thousand years ago, in which – by the power of God – a boy stepping in on Israel's behalf overcame a giant foe and cut off his head with his own sword. Read it allegorically, though, and you find a sign of the Son of David – Jesus Christ – stepping in on humanity's behalf to overcome the devil and ruin him with his own weapon, the power of death exercised via the cross. Read it tropologically, and now it's about Christ in you as you fight, by his strength, the inner war of the spirit against the flesh: your temptations and trials may loom like Goliath, but offer Christ the pebbles of your obedient faith, and they'll all fall. Read it anagogically, and you see a sign of Christ's final victory over evil when he comes again, for “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26).11
For another example, go anywhere in Scripture that talks about the people of Judah being taken captive by the forces of Babylon into exile, and then being set free after Babylon's fall. Read it literally, and you have that event in history: Nebuchadnezzar repeatedly deported several waves of Judahites in the early sixth century BC, but by the end of the sixth century BC, Babylon had fallen to the Persians, who gave permission for deported peoples to return to their homelands – a miracle accomplished by God. Read it allegorically, and Jesus was exiled from the land of the living through his death on the cross, and yet three days later, he returned through his resurrection. Read it tropologically, and each of us, formerly exiled from God's presence due to sin, is invited back into relationship with him through grace in Christ, in which our inner Babylon of disordered passions can be overthrown and set right.12 Read it anagogically, and the whole creation is presently captive under corruption and exiled from the perfection meant for it, but one day Babylon the Great will fall – the end of Christ-resisting culture and of the dominion of decay itself – and so creation will be set free to become the new creation.
Or, here's a simpler last example. Let's say you're reading Psalms, and you find a verse that says, “the LORD builds up Jerusalem” (Psalm 147:2). Read it literally, and that's about a Middle Eastern city with a latitude and longitude, and about the work that God did there in history. But read it allegorically, and Jerusalem is a symbol of the church on earth. Thus, the Lord builds up the Jerusalem that is his Church. Read it tropologically, and now Jerusalem is a symbol of the orderly soul, which the Lord seeks to build up inside you through establishing virtue in your heart and life. Now read it anagogically, and Jerusalem is “the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22), “Jerusalem above” (Galatians 4:26), “new Jerusalem” (Revelation 21:2). We're “looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10).13 You get the picture.
When we understand and consciously look to read Scripture according to more than just one of its senses, that's when things really open up. And we can put this to good use in a spiritual practice that in Latin was called lectio divina – 'divine reading,' 'spiritual reading.' It's just how Christians always used to read the Bible, almost as a default. It's got four steps, and the first of those steps is doing the actual reading. Find a quiet spot, if you can. Pause for a while to gather and calm yourself. And then open the word of God.14 The sort of conversation with God we're looking for here has to start with letting him speak, and the Bible is where we turn. So find a passage of Scripture, some good unit, and read it. Read it slowly, carefully, attentively, inquiringly.15 Don't just rush through it; really read it. Read it maybe four times over, pausing to let yourself feel it in between.16 Ask yourself questions about what it's saying. Break out your Bible study tools, maybe, or bring to bear what you already know. You don't have to disengage your brain for this. Be a thoughtful, attentive, curious reader.
The second step is meditation. Meditation is a pretty important part of how we're supposed to interact with the word of God. God said to Joshua, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8). The very first psalm depicts somebody who “meditates” on God's word “day and night” as being healthy, fruitful, prosperous, blessed (Psalm 1:1-3). And the longest psalm has its psalmist pledge to “meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways” (Psalm 119:15). We meditate with our mouth, first of all. After you've read the passage, pick a word or a phrase and recite it over and over again, letting it wash over you, letting it sink into your memory.17 It's also a useful anchor against distraction.18
With that anchor phrase on your lips, start mentally turning it over like a diamond, looking at it from every angle. Start digging beneath the letter of the passage to the spiritual senses. Where is Jesus in it? Maybe you're in the New Testament, and he's right on the surface. Or maybe you're in the Old Testament, and you need to meditate on the allegory that reveals new covenant truth to you. But as you meditate, make sure you seek and find Jesus Christ. He's the reason for the Bible in all its parts. Look for him until you've found him staring back at you from the page. And as you keep meditating, start moving ahead to tropology – where are you in this (or, more to the point, Christ in you)?19 Turn the phrase or the passage over and over until you catch a real reflection of yourself, an X-ray reflection that looks inside you, for “the word of God is living and active..., discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart, and no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).
By now it should be obvious, by the way, that this lectio divina thing, this divine reading, is no quick and easy process. This isn't a five-minute devotional – not if you're serious like Joshua and the Psalmist. But Scripture is a juicy, chewy steak, not a pudding cup. And a good steak deserves as long as it takes, even 'day and night.'20
So once you've grasped it literally, explored it allegorically, and probed it tropologically, now you're ready for the third step, which is prayer. By this point, you've sure got something to pray about! Because once you've hit tropology, if not before, God has spoken to you personally, you in your situation, and demanded a response. Maybe you've heard his wooing of your soul. Maybe you've come across a moral challenge. Maybe both.21 But with God in prayer, you're going to now wrestle to get to the bottom of the tropological truth God's written onto your soul. This can lift you up or cast you down, put profound sweetness or bitter medicine on your tongue, bind up bleeding wounds or nail you to a cross.22 It's not for nothing that “the word of God is... sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow” (Hebrews 4:12). But as you wrestle with God in prayer over this passage, you're going to ask him to reveal to you where it's aimed. What ultimate reality is it tugging you up toward, and how? This prayer should climax in anagogy, God leading you up toward things above, toward the good things to come – a hopeful praise, a yearning petition.
And as anagogy comes into view, you can come to the fourth step, which is contemplation. Here, prayer gives way to silence. You've bitten, you've chewed, you've swallowed what you found in Scripture. You've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Now it's time to restfully digest the word of God.23 And as you do, as you feel him silently abiding within, let him show you a glimpse of eternity. Because by this point, you're not just reading the words of Scripture; you're “reading the face of God in the eternal Word.”24 Now you've seen “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). And as you hope for its fulfillment and live toward it according to what God showed you in your prayer over this scripture, you'll have taken a step closer toward finally seeing him face to face. That's a powerful spiritual practice, combining prayer and scripture, meditation and contemplation, in ways that can truly be transformative. So I'd commend it to you as another tool in your kit of holiness. May it be of service to you as you strive to make the Bible more central to your pursuit of God in his fullness. Amen.
1 Steven C. Smith, The Face of the Lord: Contemplating the Divine Son through the Four Senses of Sacred Scripture (Franciscan University Press, 2020), 95.
2 Steven C. Smith, The Face of the Lord: Contemplating the Divine Son through the Four Senses of Sacred Scripture (Franciscan University Press, 2020), 66.
3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.1, a.10.
4 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Fourfold Sense of Scripture, 3 vols. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998-2009), 2:41-50.
5 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Fourfold Sense of Scripture, 3 vols. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998-2009), 2:91; Steven C. Smith, The Face of the Lord: Contemplating the Divine Son through the Four Senses of Sacred Scripture (Franciscan University Press, 2020), 107-109, 148.
6 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Fourfold Sense of Scripture, 3 vols. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998-2009), 2:132-134; Steven C. Smith, The Face of the Lord: Contemplating the Divine Son through the Four Senses of Sacred Scripture (Franciscan University Press, 2020), 90, 127, 131, 148.
7 Letter of Barnabas 10.1-11 (second century)
8 Epistula Apostolorum 43 (second century), in J. K. Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in English Translation (Clarendon Press, 1993), 584.
9 Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses 2.90 (fourth century), in Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses, Classics of Western Spirituality (Paulist Press, 1978), 75.
10 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Fourfold Sense of Scripture, 3 vols. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998-2009), 2:180-181; Steven C. Smith, The Face of the Lord: Contemplating the Divine Son through the Four Senses of Sacred Scripture (Franciscan University Press, 2020), 132, 150-151.
11 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Fourfold Sense of Scripture, 3 vols. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998-2009), 2:197-198.
12 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Jeremiah 27.2.3 (third century), in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 97:250.
13 John Cassian, Conferences 14.8 (fifth century), in John Cassian: Conferences, Classics of Western Spirituality (Paulist Press, 1985), 160; Steven C. Smith, The Face of the Lord: Contemplating the Divine Son through the Four Senses of Sacred Scripture (Franciscan University Press, 2020), 89.
14 Hans Boersma, Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham Press, 2023), 7.
15 Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love (Emmaus Road, 2019), 220-222.
16 Hans Boersma, Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham Press, 2023), 7.
17 Brant Pitre, Introduction to the Spiritual Life: Walking the Path of Prayer with Jesus (Image, 2021), 15-20; Hans Boersma, Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham Press, 2023), 72-74.
18 Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love (Emmaus Road, 2019), 223-224.
19 Hans Boersma, Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham Press, 2023), 7.
20 Brant Pitre, Introduction to the Spiritual Life: Walking the Path of Prayer with Jesus (Image, 2021), 21.
21 Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love (Emmaus Road, 2019), 226.
22 Hans Boersma, Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham Press, 2023), 141-143.
23 Thomas Acklin and Boniface Hicks, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father's Love (Emmaus Road, 2019), 229.
24 Hans Boersma, Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Lexham Press, 2023), 31.
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