4. How to interpret the Bible
4. HOW TO INTERPRET THE BIBLE
If the Bible is our primary source of theology, which is the knowledge of God, how should we interpret it? Literally or symbolically?
St. Thomas’ answer to that question, like his answer to many others, is: “Both.” Here’s why:
The author of Holy Writ is God, in Whose power it is to signify His meaning not by words only (as man also can do) but also by things themselves. So whereas in every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property that the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification.
Therefore that first signification, whereby words signify things, belongs to the first sense, the historical and literal. That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and presupposes it (I,1,10).
Words are signs—signs of real things or events. Words point beyond themselves.
Real things and events can also be words, that point to God, since divine providence orders all things and events as writers order their words. This is why we often learn more about God from real events and people and history than we do from words in books. It is because these things are words too. God wrote two books, not just one: the Bible and nature, which includes people and history and events. The actual events are “words” (meaningful signs) in the book of divine providence. They point beyond themselves; they are signs of other things—above all, of God Himself, the Author of both books.
That is the justification for a symbolic interpretation of the things, events, and persons in the Bible. It is not an alternative to a literal interpretation, but a rich addition, another layer of meaning, looking-along these signs instead of just looking-at them. We have largely lost this art of sign reading, since it is not “scientific” in the modern sense. But it is a rich mine with many gold nuggets in it.
Take, for instance, the story of the Exodus. A real Moses really led real Jews from real oppression in real Egypt under real Pharaoh, really crossing the real Red Sea and really wandering through a real wilderness, past real Mount Sinai, really receiving a real Law, and really entering a real Promised Land. Yet all these real things and events were deliberately designed by God as symbols, signs pointing beyond themselves to deeper, more spiritual things. The Exodus also = salvation; Egypt = sin; Pharoah = Satan; Moses = Christ; the Jews = the Church; the Red Sea = death; the wilderness = Purgatory; the Old Law = the New Law; the gospel; the old Mount (Sinai) = the new mount from which Jesus preached His “sermon on the mount” (Mt 5-7); and the Promised Land = Heaven. The “=” is not mathematical but symbolic.
St. Thomas distinguishes three kinds of symbolic interpretation:
Now this spiritual sense has a threefold division.
(1) For as the Apostle says (Heb 10:1), the Old Law (Old Testament) is a figure (symbol, image) of the New Law (New Testament, Gospel);
(2) And . . . the New Law itself is a figure of future glory (Heaven).
(3) Again, in the New Law, whatever our Head has done is a type (symbol, image, model) of what we ought to do (I,1,10).
So many passages in the Bible invite a fourfold interpretation:
(1) the literal, historical sense, on which all the others are based;
(2) the allegorical sense (the example of the Exodus, above);
(3) the moral sense (“the imitation of Christ”);
(4) the eschatological sense: thus Jesus’ physical miracles of healing are signs of spiritual healing from spiritual deafness, blindness, paralysis, etc. in Heaven.