The Four Senses & Sola Scriptura

A critique of the Medieval quadriga from a Protestant perspective.

Thesis: The Medieval hermeneutic, which promotes four senses or meanings of Scripture (also known as the quadriga), ought to be rejected by Protestants who embrace the doctrine of sola Scriptura.

Introduction

In the introduction of his essay, Are We Doomed to Hermeneutical Nihilism?, Carl F. H. Henry defined hermeneutics as “the science of interpretation and explanation.”[1] Henry (a leading Evangelical and notable public theologian in the twentieth century) also noted, “in Christian circles the term [i.e., hermeneutics] has especially signified the understanding and exegesis of the text of Scripture” (emphasis added).[2] The main thrust of Henry’s essay, originally published in 1979, is a rejection of both a historical-critical hermeneutic (e.g., Adolf von Harnack) and a personal and subjective hermeneutic (e.g., Friedrich Schleiermacher). Henry believed that “the truth and Word of the God of biblical revelation” was at stake, and he argued for a recovery of a “historical and philological exegesis” intent on “textual meaning.”[3]

Today, there is a new threat from an old enemy on the rise, and the method of historical and philological exegesis, which is intent on the meaning of the text of Scripture, is worthy of a vigorous defense. The hermeneutical landscape among Evangelicals in America today largely displays the wood and foliage of what is often called the historical-grammatical hermeneutical method.[4] However, there is a creeping plant in the biome – the project of ressourcement – and Roman Catholics are not the only ones cultivating it. Mats Wahlberg is an orthodox Roman Catholic and an associate professor of Systematic Theology at Umeå University, and he reviewed a couple of books by Michael Allen and Scott Swain, both of whom are examples of the sort of Protestants who presently advocate for a project of “reformed ressourcement” or a Protestant renewal of Medieval scholasticism.[5] Wahlberg notes “questions about the internal coherence of the Reformed catholic program,” but he welcomes Allen’s and Swain’s “ecumenical perspective,” saying that “it will vitalize the ongoing Protestant rapprochement with the catholic tradition.”

One man who centers prominently in the ressourcement project is Henri de Lubac (a Jesuit priest and cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church during the twentieth-century), and his three-volume set Medieval Exegesis may represent the heart of his retrieval and renewal efforts.[6] In his second volume, Lubac explains and advocates for the use of a Medieval Roman Catholic hermeneutic, comprised of the four senses of Scripture.[7] This four-fold hermeneutical method did not originate during the Medieval period, but it was systematized and labeled then. Furthermore, the Roman Catholic ressourcement project is far more comprehensive than the discipline of hermeneutics (as is the ressourcement project among some Protestants today), but this essay will focus solely on Lubac’s advocacy of the four senses of Scripture.

This essay will demonstrate that the Medieval four-fold hermeneutic encourages and even requires biblical interpreters to advance beyond the text of Scripture to discern a plurality of spiritual meanings, confusing the categories of meaning and significance; thus, it is accompanied by an extra-biblical regulating authority. Therefore, we will argue that this hermeneutic ought to be rejected by Protestants who embrace sola Scriptura, which submits to the text of Scripture as the unique authority and also distinguishes between Scripture’s words and the theological affirmations and contemporary applications derived from them. First, we will define and describe the four-fold hermeneutical method, highlighting the expansion of the category of meaning and Lubac’s proposed regulator of spiritual meaning. Next, we will offer a brief explanation of sola Scriptura and the historically Protestant understanding of the relationship between Scripture and tradition. In short, this essay will argue that the retrieval of the Medieval four-sense hermeneutic is not compatible with the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura and the Protestant regard for the textually derived meaning of Scripture.

Part One: A Medieval Hermeneutic

Defining the Four Senses

According to Patrick Schreiner (a New Testament scholar and an Associate Professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary), it was a fifth-century monk named John Cassian who first named the four senses as a desirable objective of Bible interpretation, though the definitions and usage of these terms have developed over time.[8] The “literal” sense of the biblical text, said Cassian, “belongs to a linear history with a beginning and an end.”[9] And the “non-literal senses… represent the new covenant between God and the church and this covenant’s endless, eternal trajectory.”[10] This second category – the “non-literal” or spiritual senses – is purposefully expressed in the plural because it is a category that contains three distinct spiritual senses or sub-categories. Thus, the four senses are the combination of the literal sense (singular) and the spiritual or allegorical senses (tripartite).

Schreiner outlines Cassian’s three spiritual senses and a summary of each of their thirteenth-century definitions in the following way.[11]

· Allegory pertains to the things that follow the new covenant, the mystery that prefigured in the old covenant.

· Tropology is a moral interpretation for the cleansing of a life and practical instruction.

· Anagogy rises upward from spiritual mysteries to the more sublime, more sacred secret things of heaven.

In a definitive Roman Catholic work on the subject, Henri de Lubac explains that there are two general senses of Scripture – the literal and the allegorical, or the letter and the spirit, or the historical and the mystical.[12] Within the second general sense (i.e., the allegorical, mystical, or spiritual), Lubac describes the same three distinct senses as Schreiner cited from Cassian, who distinguished them long ago.[13] Lubac affirms that the spiritual senses are (1) allegorical, (2) tropological, and (3) anagogical; and he says that these three senses have a “common matrix” since they are “contained” within the spiritual sense “as so many subdivisions” under it.[14] These four senses together form a quadripartite hermeneutic, and the term quadriga is commonly used as a label for the collection of them. Like the chariot drawn by four horses (i.e., a quadriga), this hermeneutic draws a plurality of meanings from the text of Scripture that can be discerned through four distinct lenses.[15]

Lubac portrays the historical development of this quadripartite hermeneutic as having begun with the bifurcation of the literal and allegorical senses. He says that the Apostle Paul is the progenitor of this initial division, and that the Apostle employs and exemplifies it in fourth chapter of his letter to the churches in Galatia. Referring back to the two mothers of Abraham’s sons, Sarah (Genesis 21) and Hagar (Genesis 16), the Apostle Paul said that the two women may be “interpreted allegorically” (ἀλληγορούμενα) as “two covenants” (Galatians 4:24). This interpretive move by the Apostle Paul, argues Lubac, shows a hermeneutical view of Scripture which has both a literal and spiritual sense (or an historical and allegorical sense).[16]

Lubac goes on to note some ancient interpreters who picked up on this same bifurcation, such as Tertullian and Origen. And according to Lubac, during “the whole Middle Ages,” this same hermeneutical approach was continued.[17] It was the mystics, says Lubac, who are chiefly responsible for forming a consensus on the three “subdivisions” within the general spiritual sense. Citing a Victorine abbot, Lubac allows this Medieval mystic from around the turn of the thirteenth century to define and expound on the four senses as a collective hermeneutic.

“History [i.e., the literal sense] shows how to act well. Tropology shapes the will. Allegory purifies the heart through faith. Anagogy purifies the inner man by contemplating only things that belong to God. In the history, in addition to the commandment, obedience is found; in tropology, discipline; in allegory, sincerity of faith; in anagogy is found charity… These are the four wings of the cherubim: by two of them they are flying and two they cover their bodies (Ez. 1). For the holy men, who are the cherubim, i.e., those illuminated by the fullness of divine science, cover their bodies with two wings, when they shape our present dealings through history and tropology; they fly with two wings, when allegory and anagogy are lifted up to contemplation through faith and charity” (emphasis added).[18]

From the perspective of those who embrace and promote this quadripartite hermeneutic, it is not only desirable but necessary to move beyond the letter of Scripture to a mystical contemplation of its deeper and more expansive meanings. For example, Lubac also cites Gregory of Nyssa (a mystic from the late fourth century), writing, “Scripture fundamentally teaches us… that it is not absolutely necessary to stop at the letter,… but to pass on to immaterial contemplation…, in accordance with the dictum: ‘the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.’”[19] Lubac himself said it like this: “if the Scripture was a tower, its foundation was history [i.e., the historical or literal sense], but its summit or head was the spiritual sense,” in which are found the three subdivided spiritual senses of the quadriga.[20] In other words, one must begin with the letter of Scripture, but in order to climb to the summit of contemplation and the beatific vision, one must rise above the letter of the text through the interpretive lenses of the spiritual senses.

As stated earlier, it is not just Roman Catholics (like Lubac) who advocate for this quadripartite hermeneutic today. Protestant scholars, like Hans Boersma (a North American Anglican), Craig Carter (an Evangelical Baptist in Canada), and Patrick Schreiner (a Southern Baptist in America), are present-day advocates of at least some of the fundamentals of the hermeneutic described here.[21] All three of these Protestants praise Henri de Lubac’s retrieval of this Medieval hermeneutical formula, and they each point to his work (especially Medieval Exegesis) as greatly influential in their own interpretive aims and strategies.

Craig Carter, in his book Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition, does not go so far as to articulate the four senses of the quadriga. However, he does present what he calls a “prosopological” hermeneutic, which he defines (borrowing from Matthew Bates) as:

“a reading technique whereby an interpreter seeks to overcome a real or perceived ambiguity regarding the identity of the speakers or addressees (or both) in the divinely inspired source text by assigning nontrivial prosopa (i.e., nontrivial vis-à-vis the ‘plain sense’ of the text) to the speakers of addressees (or both) in order to make sense of the text.”[22]

It is this use of the prosopa, or the theological import from across the canon of Scripture (which Cater believes is summarized in the Apostles’ Creed and the “rule of faith”), that assists the reader in deducing the spiritual sense of the text.[23] According to Carter, the prosopa or “rule of faith” is the divine voice behind or above the human voice in the text. Furthermore, Carter opens the door to “several meanings” for a given text of Scripture under the category of the spiritual sense.[24] Thus, Carter may have a disagreement with Lubac’s quadripartite hermeneutic in the area of particulars, but he agrees on the fundamental principle – namely, there is at least one meaning (maybe many) of a given text of Scripture that goes beyond the words of that text.[25]

Meaning and Significance

Patrick Schreiner unambiguously argues for a full embrace of Lubac’s four senses. In an upcoming book (to be published by Baker Academic in 2025), Schreiner states boldly, “We need to recover the hermeneutic that was largely employed in the church for 1,800 years.”[26] His thesis claims, “the four senses are a more complete way of reading than our modern method” (i.e., more complete than the historical-grammatical method).[27] Schreiner argues for a “retrieval” of the “four senses” or “quadriga” for “the modern day and for everyday Christians.”[28]

It is interesting, however, that Schreiner emphasizes a desire to “preserve the organic relationship between ‘meaning’ and ‘application,’” and he also speaks of “moral and eschatological implications” when describing reasons to recover the quadriga.[29] He even uses the language of “meaning” and “significance” as distinct categories in his introduction. Such a use of these terms as categorical distinctions is exactly what E. D. Hirsch describes as “the most important preliminary principle of [interpretive] discrimination.”[30] Hirsch is a prominent literary theorist and critic, contributing an important volume on the subject of hermeneutics, and he says the fundamental hermeneutical discrimination is “undoubtedly… that which distinguishes verbal meaning from significance.”[31] However, Schreiner’s hermeneutic (which recapitulates Lubac’s Medieval quadriga) necessitates a merging of these categories – placing both meaning and significance under the single heading of meaning or sense. Indeed, this is what Schreiner argues for throughout his manuscript.[32]

This distinction between meaning and anything else (e.g., application, implication, significance, etc.) is near the heart of the matter under consideration in this essay. Hirsch describes the difference between the two by saying, “The object of interpretation is textual meaning in and for itself and may be called the meaning of the text. The object of criticism, on the other hand, is that meaning in its bearing on something else (standards of value, present concerns, etc.), and this object may therefore be called the significance of the text.”[33]

R. B. Jamieson (a local church pastor and New Testament scholar) and Tyler Wittman (a systematic theology professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary) both describe a similar distinction, though their terms are not the same. They write, “One standard way of describing [the responsibilities of theological exegesis] is through the three steps of explication, mediation, and application” (emphasis added).[34] Merging Jamieson and Wittman with Hirsch, explication is the interpretive labor that discovers meaning, and mediation and application are the secondary efforts that discern significance. Jamieson and Wittman explain,

“In explication, the goal is to understand what the text says and how it does so through patient, loving attention to its form, details, and subject matter… Mediation occurs as readers begin to internalize the sense of the text and think reflectively in its light, reading particular parts of Scripture in view of the whole canon and the collective substance of its teachings… In application the reader receives the book as the summons to discipleship that it is and responds to it.”[35]

The Medieval quadripartite hermeneutic fundamentally and radically expands the category of meaning, including virtually any and all spiritually significant implications or applications of the text of Scripture. But this raises some critical questions regarding authority, regulation, and interpretive evaluation. If the text’s meaning and its application (or applications) both occupy the category of meaning, then what is the arbiter of the validity, credibility, and precision of any given interpretation? What happens when one interpretation of meaning contradicts another? If both application (i.e., significance) and meaning sit in the seat of meaning, then how can one have priority over the other? This matter of adjudicating the meaning of a given text of Scripture is crucial, and we shall turn there next.

Regulating the Four Senses

As noted earlier, those who embrace and advocate for some version of the Medieval hermeneutic believe it is preferable or even necessary for the interpreter to go beyond the literal or plain sense of the text in an effort to understand the meaning of it. For example, Lubac explains the “flowering” of “other nuances of thought,” especially in contemplation upon the anagogical sense, by describing it as an “‘airy’ region where [contemplation] is not subject to the vicissitudes of the science of exegesis or even of theology: without spurning such science, indeed while using it, it transcends it.”[36] Lubac summarizes this by saying, “The notitia is transcended by the volatus, just as intelligence is transcended by the ‘heart.’”[37] Significantly, Lubac follows this statement with a caveat. He says, “Howsoever high its ‘flight’ may lead, this contemplative anagogy did not pretend to lead beyond faith.”[38] And yet, this statement begs the very question it feigns to answer. What is the air traffic controller that keeps the “flight” of mystical contemplation from traveling outside the boundaries of Scripture itself?

For Lubac, the answer appears to be the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. Lubac says, “allegory [i.e., the general spiritual or allegorical sense] is not only the sense that one could call apologetic; it is also, the doctrinal sense par excellence… the allegorical sense of Scripture is ‘the Catholic sense.’”[39] In other words, the general allegorical or spiritual sense (which includes the three subcategories of allegory, tropology, and anagogy) is the height of Christian doctrine and it is regulated or bounded by the dogma of Rome. Lubac makes this clear, first, by synthesizing illumination and inspiration, and second, by placing authoritative illumination and exposition in the clerical or priestly office of the Roman Catholic Church.

Illumination is the Holy Spirit’s role in giving or enabling understanding as one reads the Bible, and inspiration is the Holy Spirit’s action of speaking through human authors as they wrote the canonical words of Scripture. On illumination, Lubac says, “The Old Testament was ‘opened’ once for all by the Christ: it is still necessary now for the ‘doctors of the Church,’ or the ‘catholic doctors,’ or the ‘evangelical doctors,’ or ‘spiritual doctors,’ thanks to the ‘inspiration of the Holy Spirit,’ to manifest its content in their ‘expositions.’”[40] And on interpretive authority, Lubac writes, “Right now, on earth, with her discipline and her rule of faith, with her magisterium and her apostolic succession, in her precarious and militant condition, the Church of Christ was already ‘the heavenly Church’… which we call the Catholic Church.”[41] In other words, the Roman Catholic Church is the heavenly Church (or universal Church), and in her (namely her ecclesiastical magisterium) is the apostolic authority to define the “rule of faith” (or standard of doctrine).

Lubac explains that those who are “the preachers of the Truth” are “those who succeed [the apostles] in the Church: the Fathers, the Doctors, and our present-day pastors… ‘The successors of the apostles, the holy preachers.’”[42] Therefore, the sacrament of holy orders and the magisterium (i.e., those authoritatively illumined by the Spirit as well as the dogma and doctrine which they preach) are the necessary framework for the general spiritual sense of Scripture (i.e., the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses) to be rightly known and understood. Lubac says,

“Those who have received the ‘grace of preaching’ from God in the footsteps of the Twelve [apostles] are not only men who attempt to cite the Bible in their discourses with a view to giving them ‘force and effectiveness,’ or who draw upon the holy Letters for ‘pious reflections,’ ‘lessons,’ and ‘examples’ appropriate for ‘illustrating the divine truth.’ They are ‘the preachers of the Truth.’ … In space and time they extend the same ‘sound of the apostolic preaching’: ‘every order of preachers is collected together in the union of the apostles.’ … Scripture has been delivered over to them.”[43]

While Lubac says flatly, “the Protestant point of view… would refuse the spiritual interpretation of Scriptures,” some Protestants (like Schreiner, Boersma, and Carter) do attempt to embrace it without arguing for the Roman Catholic magisterium.[44] However, Lubac and others claim that the ressourcement project includes a comprehensive recovery of key features Medieval Roman Catholicism (including Rome’s ecclesiology). For example, E. Ann Matter is a liberal theological scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, and she too perceives an across-the-board retrieval project in the recovery of the four senses. In her review of Lubac’s second volume of Medieval Exegesis, she writes, “the historical quest is one of… ressourcement, of retrieval and renewal of the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition” (emphasis added).[45]

The arguments from Boersma, Cater, and Schreiner do not call for an appeal to the magisterium, but instead to the “rule of faith” or “analogy of faith,” though they define this phrase differently than Rome. But the question at hand is whether one can embrace a spiritual meaning or sense without an extra-biblical regulator, such as the magisterium. Clearly, Lubac has argued that the quadripartite hermeneutic is fittingly attended by the magisterium, and Matter perceives that the retrieval of the former is necessarily related to a renewal of and appeal to the latter. There is no doubt that Lubac believed the ressourcement project is an all-encompassing whole, an exclusively Roman Catholic effort to recover key Medieval theologies and practices.

We have argued that the Medieval four-fold hermeneutic advances a plurality of meanings through a spiritual interpretation of Scripture, and that such an effort creates a need for an extra-biblical regulating authority. Roman Catholics have no issue with such an appeal, but Protestants who embrace sola Scriptura ought to reject it. Of course, most Protestants affirm at least some of the historic creeds and at least some concept of a “rule of faith,” but Protestants do not believe that such things wield the kind of authority that Scripture alone does over Christian belief and practice. We shall turn now to the doctrine of sola Scriptura and the historically Protestant understanding of the relationship between Scripture and tradition.

Part Two: One Rule to Rule Them All

Sola Scriptura

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (published by English Baptists in 1677/1689) begins with the affirmation, “The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, Faith, and Obedience” (emphasis added).[46] This sentence was an addition made by the Baptists in London when they deliberately borrowed from the Westminster Confession of Faith (published in 1646) in order to create their own summary of doctrine and practice. However, the assertion that the Scriptures are the “only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule” for Christian belief and behavior was hardly unique to seventeenth-century Baptists. The doctrine of sola Scriptura was the formal principle of the argument between Protestants and Roman Catholics during the sixteenth-century reformations across Europe. Mark Thompson is a historian and the Principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, and he describes sola Scriptura as “the conviction that Scripture stands alone as the final authority by which every other claim to Christian truth is tested.”[47]

Many Protestants are quick to explain, however, that the affirmation of Scripture’s singular place of ultimate authority as the unique infallible rule does not repudiate the value of extra-biblical expressions of Christian truth and instruction. Pointing to Martin Luther as an exemplary sixteenth-century reformer on this point, Thompson (a scholar of Luther and his doctrine of Scripture) wrote, “[Luther] recognized other subsidiary and contingent authorities, not alongside but under the rule of Scripture, which remained his final authority.”[48] As Thompson explains, Luther’s prime emphasis on the authority of Scripture “did not eliminate all appeals to the fathers, the creeds, and the decisions of the church.”[49] “But, critically,” Thompson goes on to say, “an appeal [to any other authority] could be questioned on the basis of the plain reading of the text of Scripture.”[50] In other words, the plain reading of the text of Scripture stands as the singular meaning of a given passage of it, and Scripture itself (i.e., the plain reading of it) judges the validity of all possible interpretations, including those contained in formal creeds and ecclesiastical statements.

Peter Gentry picks up on this Reformation emphasis on the concept of a “plain reading” of the text of Scripture when he writes, “The Reformers argued for the sensus literalis [or literal sense] in an effort to challenge the hermeneutical approaches of earlier eras. They spoke of sola Scriptura and delineated the attributes of Scripture in terms of necessity, authority, sufficiency and clarity.”[51] Each of these are necessarily connected to the others, and Protestant view of the authority of Scripture is dependent upon the Protestant view of the sufficiency and clarity of it.

This phrases “literal sense” and “plain sense” have been bastardized by combatants from every camp on the hermeneutical battlefield. Some use it as a battering ram against any symbolic or typological reading of Scripture, and some use it as a slur to malign any appeal to a “plain” or “literal” reading as rigidly literalistic or even a rejection of the supernatural. And yet, the plain reading or the literal sense (according to the best use of these phrases) is simply an appeal to the perspicuity of Scripture. The fact is, as Baptists have historically confessed along with other Protestants, that understanding the meaning of the biblical text is generally attainable by the “learned” and the “unlearned” by “a due use of ordinary means.”[52] Carl Henry wrote, “The Word of God is… not objectively inaccessible, but is conveyed in intelligible human speech, and its truth given in universally valid statements.”[53] No doubt there are confusing and enigmatic passages of Scripture, but these are not as numerous as some seem to imply, and the main doctrines and ethics of Scripture are constructed from clear and harmonious passages (not obscure and/or peculiar ones).

It is a logical necessity (even if a practically messy one) that the text of Scripture sits authoritatively over theological affirmations derived from it. Steven Wellum writes, “to receive Scripture on its own authority is what distinguishes historic theology from its non-orthodox alternatives, or what we have identified as intratextual versus extratextual theologies” (emphasis added).[54] Jamieson and Wittman describe “theology” and “exegesis” as having a “mutually informative, albeit asymmetrical relationship.”[55] They explain,

“Exegesis thus enjoys an epistemological primacy over theology because there can be no abstract or immediate knowledge of doctrine that is not drawn from careful attention to the texture and shape of biblical discourse… Doctrine functions this way [i.e., as something of a ‘grammar’ of Scripture] because it is formulated a posteriori, on the basis of careful exegesis, rather than a priori, imposed on the text from elsewhere.”[56]

Thus, Scripture itself and the primary labor of exegesis (which discovers meaning) bears a weight of authority greater than all theological formulas, practical applications, and contemplative implications that may arise secondarily. This is a fundamental feature of the Protestant doctrine of Scripture. And, of course, the authority of Scripture is directly related to its divine authorship. Wellum says, “Scripture is God’s word through the agency of human authors so that what Scripture says (the human texts, canon), God says… At least this has been the historic view of Scripture.”[57] Indeed, Wellum is echoing B. B. Warfield (a distinguished Reformed theologian and principal of Princeton Theological Seminary at the turn of the twentieth century), who argued in the nineteenth century that God is so closely associated with the Scriptures that the biblical authors used the phrases “Scripture says” and “God says” interchangeably.[58]

“But,” says Wellum, “since the Enlightenment, some who have broadly identified with Christianity have sought to modify this view.”[59] Wellum names those influenced by “modernism” and “postmodernism” particularly, and he says that among some of these who affirm “special revelation” there is an “ambiguity regarding the precise relation between the human texts of Scripture and God’s word/speech.”[60] The culprits Wellum identifies today are the same ones that Carl Henry targeted in the twentieth century, but it is ironic that some Protestant advocates of a spiritual sense of Scripture (e.g., Carter and Schreiner) also perceive modernity and postmodernity as detrimental to a right hermeneutic.

The irony is that Protestant advocates for retrieving the four-fold Medieval hermeneutic also emphasize a significant distinction between the human text of Scripture and the intent of the divine author. For example, Schreiner writes, “For the Reformers, the literal sense was the plain and straightforward meaning of the biblical text in the context of the Christian canon.”[61] But Schreiner contrasts the Reformers with his preferred hermeneutical practitioners, saying, “[for premoderns], God was the primary author and therefore his intent was principal. If the human author didn’t mean multiple meanings that [is] no concern… for the ultimate author [is] God.”[62] Thus, according to Schreiner, the “premoderns” (i.e., those who employed the quadriga before the Enlightenment) perceived an authorial intent in the divine author of Scripture which is discernible from something other than the authorial intent of the human authors.

And yet, this Medieval hermeneutical effort to discover a divine authorial intent that is above, beside, or other than the human authorial intent is flat contrary to the historically Protestant understanding and practice. For example, James Hamilton Jr. (professor of biblical theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) writes, “we can determine the intent of the divine author of Scripture by determining the intent of the human author of Scripture.”[63] Hamilton asserts that Bible readers are responsible to “validate and verify what the biblical authors meant to communicate” in their effort to do proper interpretive work.[64] And John Owen (the seventeenth-century English Puritan) writes, “there is no other sense in [the Scripture] than what is contained in the words whereof materially it doth consist [i.e., the words of the human author]… And in the interpretation of the mind of any one, it is necessary that the words he speaks or writes be rightly understood.”[65]

The historic Protestant doctrine of Scripture focuses directly on the words of Scripture, which are the words of both God and men. Authorial intent, from this perspective, is a confluence of both the divine author and the human one, and authorial intent is discernable by a plain reading of the text of Scripture. Those who affirm sola Scriptura receive the words of Scripture as supremely authoritative (i.e., as the words of God), and they perceive the meaning of the biblical text as generally understandable and attainable by the use of ordinary means. But Roman Catholics, like Lubac, take a different view of the relationship between Scripture and doctrine. This is where we shall turn next.

Contrasting Perspectives of Tradition

A major feature of the divide between Roman Catholics and Protestants regarding the doctrine of Scripture is differing views of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Notable theologian and historian Richard Muller writes, “A distinction between Scripture as source and theology as discipline is arguably present in the writings of even the earliest and least systematic of the Reformers.”[66] In other words, Protestants distinguished between the unique authority Scripture as the source of all doctrine and the subordinate authority of the theological assertions derived from it (i.e., doctrine and Tradition). This was a Protestant departure from the Roman Catholic developments during the Medieval period. Muller writes, “[the] mutual interdependence of text and tradition… serves to identify and define the issue of the relationship and relative authority of Scripture and tradition as found in the Middle Ages.”[67] Over time, the two views on this matter became known as Tradition I and Tradition II.

Keith Mathison (a professor of systematic theology at Reformation Bible College) describes two “concepts” of “Tradition.”[68] Mathison says, “In general… most of [the] views [on the subject of Scripture and Tradition] would fall under one of these two general concepts” – “Tradition I” or “Tradition II.” Mathison borrows definitions of these concepts from Heiko Oberman (a prominent twentieth-century Dutch historian and theologian with a focus on the Reformation), who defined “Tradition I” as the view in which “the sole authority of Holy Scripture is upheld as the canon, or standard, of revealed truth in such a way that Scripture is not contrasted with Tradition.”[69] Rather, “the Tradition of the Church” is understood to be “the history of obedient interpretation” of the sole authoritative source of apostolic teaching.[70] “Tradition II,” on the other hand, “is a wider concept,” writes Oberman.[71] Those who take this view argue that “the Apostles did not commit everything to writing… [but] during [the] forty days [after Christ’s resurrection] an oral Tradition originated which is to be regarded as a complement to Holy Scripture, handed down to the Church of later times as a second source of revelation.”[72] As noted in Part One of this essay, Lubac (as well as other Roman Catholics) believes that the Roman Catholic Church not only maintains the ancient oral tradition but also bears the same interpretive authority as the apostles themselves (i.e., the magisterium).

In summary, Oberman says, “in the first case [i.e., Tradition I] Tradition was seen as the instrumental vehicle of Scripture which brings the contents of Holy Scripture to life in a constant dialogue between the doctors of Scripture and the Church.” The content of tradition, in this view, is identical to what Iain Provan (an Old Testament scholar and professor at Regent College in Vancouver) calls by various labels – “the analogy of faith,” the “rule of faith,” the “analogy of Scripture,” and the “rule of truth.”[73] However, as Provan acknowledges, Roman Catholics mean something more by the phrase “rule of faith.” In Rome’s teaching, says Provan, this phrase refers “to a principle whereby biblical passages must not be set in opposition either to one another, or to the faith and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church” (emphasis added).[74] This comports well with Oberman’s (and Mathison’s) summary of Tradition II, where “Tradition was seen as the authoritative vehicle of divine truth, embedded in Scripture but overflowing in extra-scriptural apostolic tradition handed down through episcopal succession.”[75]

It is this second view of Tradition (i.e., Tradition II), which Roman Catholics have codified and advanced at least since the sixteenth century. Protestants, however, have repudiated such a parallel view of Scripture and Tradition, each bearing mutually supported divine authority. Protestants, from the earliest distinguishable reformers, embraced what it described above as Tradition 1. John Owen, writes,

“the church of Rome endeavoured to deal with all Christians. Their main endeavour is, to seize those springs of religion into their own power. The Scripture itself, they tell us, cannot be believed to be the word of God with faith divine but upon the proposal and testimony of their church; thereby is one spring secured. And when it is believed so to be, it ought not to be interpreted, it cannot be understood, but according to the mind, judgment, and exposition of the same church; which in like manner secures the other.”[76]

Mathison argues that Tradition II was not the view of the earliest Christians. He writes, “The Church was the interpreter and guardian of the Word of God, and the regula fidei was a summary of the apostolic preaching… But only the Scripture was the word of God. In other words, for the first three centuries, the Church held to the concept of… ‘Tradition I.’”[77]

Protestants, on the whole, have historically and vigorously argued for sola Scriptura and Tradition I, which do not reject Christian creeds or theological summaries of the text of Scripture, nor do these preclude a practically limitless scope of implications and applications which may be drawn from the exegetically derived meaning of it. But sola Scriptura and Tradition I actively and intentionally place the words of Scripture (interpreted according to their plain sense or literal sense) as the unique and authoritative source for doctrine or theology. However, the Roman Catholic effort to recover the Medieval four-fold hermeneutic seems to have at least some Protestant advocates looking for a way to loosen their grip on Tradition I.

A Via Media

An essay was recently published in the Journal for Ecumenical Studies by Sean Luke, and he argues for a “sole infallible source of doctrine and authority” that includes Scripture and also stands above it.[78] Luke is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he is yet another representative of the Protestant ressourcement project. His essay is exactly the sort of argument necessary for Protestants who want an authoritative rule of faith to “bound” the “allegorical” or spiritual sense of Scripture without overtly calling for the Roman Catholic magisterium.[79] Luke writes, “The sole infallible source of doctrine and authority – and the fountainhead from which all other authority derives – is the apostolic teaching, the integral unity of the teachings of the prophets and apostles.”[80] Luke is quick to note that “Scripture is not downstream of the apostolic teaching but is the supreme… form the apostolic teaching takes.”[81] And yet, Luke argues that Scripture is “not [the] only” form we have of the apostolic teaching.[82]

He never comes right out to say it, but Luke implies that the received doctrine of the universal Church – the “consensus fidelium” or the “conjunction of the teaching authority [of ministers] together with the reception of the faithful,” – is the other form.[83] It is not clear where Luke believes anyone can find a definitive list of the doctrines included in the consensus of the faithful, though the official catechism of the Roman Catholic Church says it is the “dogmas” which are “defined” by the “magisterium” and “received” by the “People of God.”[84] While Luke clearly believes he is marking out some common ground for Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox, it is not obvious that Luke’s doctrine of “Sola Apostolica” differs in the least from the Roman Catholic view of Scripture and Tradition (i.e., Tradition II).

Conclusion

Carl Henry believed the stakes were quite high in the twentieth century, and the necessity of a clear demarcation between that which is the divine word of God and everything else has not diminished in the least. Mark Thompson (a Reformation historian) wrote of the English reformer, Thomas Cranmer, saying, “He understood… the disastrous pastoral consequences of other words introduced alongside, rather than subordinate to, Scripture.”[85] And then Thompson quoted Cranmer at length on this point:

“If anything were the Word of God other than Holy Scripture, we could not be certain of God’s Word. If we be uncertain of the Word of God, the Devil might be able to make for us a new word, a new faith, a new church, a new God, indeed make himself God, as he has done up to now. For this is the foundation of the Antichrist’s kingdom. If the church and the Christian faith did not rely upon the certain word of God as a firm foundation, no one could know whether he had faith, whether he were in the church of Christ of the synagogue of Satan.”[86]

Protestants used to be united on this front. Sola Scriptura and the subordinate authority of creeds, confessions, and any summary of doctrine (i.e., the rule of faith or analogy of faith) was an area of nearly universal agreement among Protestants. However, the project of recovering the Medieval hermeneutical method, led by Roman Catholics like Henri de Lubac and focusing heavily on a spiritual meaning of Scripture, which is a meaning (or a multitude of meanings) beyond, beside, or above the biblical text, has fractured Protestant ranks. Anglicans, Reformed, and even Baptists are among the advocates of a kind of Protestant retrieval of what Lubac asserts is a Roman Catholic hermeneutic, which he believed requires a Roman Catholic ecclesiology (i.e., holy orders, apostolic succession, and magisterium) and bibliology (i.e., the doctrine of Scripture, and the related doctrines of tradition and interpretation). Protestants ought to reject the Medieval hermeneutic, and they ought to recover their own historical conviction to prioritize the plain sense of the text of Scripture, which alone is able to make one wise for salvation and equip the Christian for every good work.

Bibliography

Boersma, Hans. “A Divine Reading of Divine Scripture.” Blog. Hans Boersma (blog), 2022. https://www.hansboersma.org/articles-1/credo-magazine-pierced-by-love.

———. Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition. Bellingham: Faithlife Corporation, 2023.

Bush, L. Russ, and Tom J. Nettles. Baptists and the Bible. Revised and Expanded. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1999.

Carter, Craig A. Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018.

———. “You Better Believe It.” First Things (blog), October 2024. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/10/you-better-believe-it.

Catechism of the Catholic Church with Modifications from the Editio Typica. First Image Books. New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group, 1995.

Chou, Abner. The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2018.

Flynn, Gabriel, and Paul D. Murray, eds. Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Gentry, Peter J. “A Preliminary Evaluation and Critique of Prosopological Exegesis.” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, no. 23.2 (2019): 105–22.

Hamilton, James M. Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns: How Old Testament Expectations Are Fulfilled in Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022.

Henry, Carl F. H. “Are We Doomed to Hermeneutical Nihilism?” In God Who Speaks and Shows, IV:296–315. God, Revelation and Authority. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999.

Hirsch, Eric D. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

Jamieson, R. B., and Tyler Wittman. Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022.

Lawrence, Michael. Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church: A Guide for Ministry. IXMarks. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010.

Lubac, Henri de. The Four Senses of Scripture. Translated by E. M. Macierowski. Vol. 2. 3 vols. Medieval Exegesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.

Luke, Sean. “Sola Apostolica: A Proposal for an Ecumenical Principle of Authority.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 59, no. 1 (2024): 27–53.

Mathison, Keith A. The Shape of Sola Scriptura. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001.

Matter, E Ann. “Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture 2.” Theological Studies 63, no. 1 (March 2002): 167–69.

Muller, Richard A. Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology. 2nd ed. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics : The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 / Richard A. Muller, Vol. 2. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003.

Owen, John. The Works of John Owen, Vol. 4: The Reason of Faith. Edited by William H. Goold. Logos Research Systems. Vol. 4. 17 vols. The Works of John Owen. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2008.

Provan, Iain W. The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017.

Schreiner, Patrick. “The Fourfold Sense: Recovering an Ancient Way of Reading Scripture for Today,” 2024.

Thompson, Mark D. “Sola Scriptura.” In Reformation Theology: A Systematic Summary, 145–87. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017.

Wahlberg, Mats. “Reformed Ressourcement.” First Things (blog), February 2017. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/02/reformed-ressourcement.

Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Philadelphia, PA: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970.

Wellum, Stephen J. Systematic Theology, Volume 1: From Canon to Concept. 1st ed. Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2024.

Endnotes

[1] Carl F. H. Henry, “Are We Doomed to Hermeneutical Nihilism?,” in God Who Speaks and Shows, vol. IV, VI vols., God, Revelation and Authority (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 296–315. 296.

[2] Henry, “Are We Doomed to Hermeneutical Nihilism?.” 296.

[3] Henry, “Are We Doomed to Hermeneutical Nihilism?.” 314-315.

[4] Michael Lawrence (a local church pastor and church history scholar) describes this method as the discipline of “discerning the meaning of the text [through] an exploration and study of the grammar, syntax, and literary and historical context of the words we’re reading.” Michael Lawrence, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church: A Guide for Ministry, IXMarks (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010). 41. Abner Chou (President of The Master’s University and a scholar of Old Testament) uses the label “literal-grammatical-historical” in his 2018 volume on hermeneutics, and he describes it as “seeking the ‘author’s intent’” by examining the “historical background, context, grammar, and [the] individual words” of Scripture. Abner Chou, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2018). 13-14.

[5] Mats Wahlberg, “Reformed Ressourcement,” Blog, First Things, February 2017.

[6] “De Lubac was instrumental, with others, in the foundation of the Théologie series, a project of the Fourvière Jesuits, dedicated to the ‘renewal of the Church.’” Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray, eds., Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 8.

[7] Henri de Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. E. M. Macierowski, vol. 2, 3 vols., Medieval Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000).

[8] Patrick Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense: Recovering an Ancient Way of Reading Scripture for Today” (2024). 24.

[9] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 24.

[10] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 24.

[11] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 24.

[12] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 25.

[13] These three terms – allegorical, mystical, and spiritual – are used interchangeably among advocates of the Medieval hermeneutic when they refer to the second general sense.

[14] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 37.

[15] It is not clear, however, that Lubac or any of the other advocates of the four senses named in this essay want to limit the number of meanings to four regarding any given text of Scripture. Indeed, Patrick Schreiner and Craig Carter argue that the significance of a given text (which they both include in the category of meaning) will necessarily change according to the reader and the milieu in which the Scripture is read. Thus, the number of meanings for a given text may be limitless once the interpreter concedes that the number is any more than one.

[16] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 1. Others dispute whether this argument is warranted and assert that the Apostle Paul was not doing what later interpreters have called the allegorical method. For example, Abner Chou, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2018). 150.

[17] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 25.

[18] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 31-32.

[19] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 35.

[20] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 77.

[21] Carter and Schreiner are cited in the body of this essay, but Boersma has written a book describing the lectio devina (or divine reading), in which he explicitly celebrates Henri de Lubac’s retrieval of the four senses and even uses the quadripartite hermeneutic as something of a base from which to build out his divine reading practice. Hans Boersma, Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition (Bellingham: Faithlife Corporation, 2023). Hans Boersma, “A Divine Reading of Divine Scripture,” Blog, Hans Boersma (blog), 2022.

[22] Craig A. Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018). 192.

[23] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. 158.

[24] Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. x.

[25] Carter has published an affirmation of the “historic fourfold sense,” but Carter may not embrace all aspects of Lubac’s hermeneutic. Craig A. Carter, “You Better Believe It,” First Things (blog), October 2024.

[26] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 6. The date range Schreiner give here is in question. Even if it is granted that most every interpreter from the patristics to the Medievals did employ it, notable scholars argue that sixteenth-century Reformers began the rejection of the quadripartite hermeneutic at a fundamental level. Richard A. Muller, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology, 2nd ed., Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics : The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 / Richard A. Muller, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003). Iain W. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017). Peter J. Gentry, “A Preliminary Evaluation and Critique of Prosopological Exegesis,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, no. 23.2 (2019): 105–22. 120.

[27] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 9.

[28] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 7.

[29] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 10.

[30] Eric D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). 62.

[31] Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation. 62.

[32] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 10.

[33] Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation. 211.

[34] R. B. Jamieson and Tyler Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022). 50.

[35] Jamieson and Wittman, Biblical Reasoning. 50.

[36] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 193-194.

[37] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 194.

[38] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 194.

[39] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 109.

[40] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 219.

[41] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 183-184.

[42] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 218.

[43] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 217-218.

[44] Lubac, The Four Senses of Scripture. 139.

[45] E Ann Matter, “Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture 2,” Theological Studies 63, no. 1 (March 2002): 167–69. 168.

[46] L. Russ Bush and Tom J. Nettles, Baptists and the Bible, Revised and Expanded (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1999). 45.

[47] Mark D. Thompson, “Sola Scriptura,” in Reformation Theology: A Systematic Summary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 145–87. 185.

[48] Thompson, “Sola Scriptura.” 155.

[49] Thompson, “Sola Scriptura.” 155-156.

[50] Thompson, “Sola Scriptura.” 156.

[51] Peter J. Gentry, “A Preliminary Evaluation and Critique of Prosopological Exegesis,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, no. 23.2 (2019): 105–22. 120.

[52] Bush and Nettles, Baptists and the Bible. 44.

[53] Henry, “Are We Doomed to Hermeneutical Nihilism?.” 314.

[54] Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology, Volume 1: From Canon to Concept, 1st ed. (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2024). 287.

[55] Jamieson and Wittman, Biblical Reasoning. 57.

[56] Jamieson and Wittman, Biblical Reasoning. 56.

[57] Wellum, Systematic Theology. 219.

[58] Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia, PA: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1970). 348.

[59] Wellum, Systematic Theology. 219.

[60] Wellum, Systematic Theology. 219.

[61] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 63.

[62] Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 63-64.

[63] James M. Hamilton, Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns: How Old Testament Expectations Are Fulfilled in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022). 28.

[64] Hamilton, Typology. 29.

[65] John Owen, The Reason of Faith, ed. William H. Goold, Logos Research Systems, vol. 4, 17 vols., The Works of John Owen (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2008). 215.

[66] Muller, Holy Scripture. 162.

[67] Muller, Holy Scripture. 33.

[68] Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001). 73.

[69] Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. 73.

[70] Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. 73.

[71] Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. 73.

[72] Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. 73-74.

[73] Iain W. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017). 11.

[74] Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture. 11.

[75] Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. 74.

[76] Owen, The Reason of Faith. 121.

[77] Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura. 48.

[78] Sean Luke, “Sola Apostolica: A Proposal for an Ecumenical Principle of Authority.,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 59, no. 1 (2024): 27–53. 50.

[79] Schreiner writes, “the allegorical sense needs to be bounded by the rule of faith… [which] essentially outlines what one must believe to be an orthodox Christian.” Schreiner, “The Fourfold Sense.” 89.

[80] Luke, “Sola Apostolica.” 50.

[81] Luke, “Sola Apostolica.” 50.

[82] Luke, “Sola Apostolica.” 50.

[83] Luke, “Sola Apostolica.” 50.

[84] Catechism of the Catholic Church with Modifications from the Editio Typica, First Image Books (New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group, 1995). 33-34.

[85] Thompson, “Sola Scriptura.” 185.

[86] Thompson, “Sola Scriptura.” 185.