21. Right Interpretation of Sacred Scripture (Hermeneutics)
The Bible is free from error. Still, this fact does not guarantee the results of every kind of reading; one must find the sense that was intended by the Holy Spirit and expressed by the human writer. Hermeneutics is a science—it is the study and establishment of the principles by which the biblical text is to be interpreted.
Exegesis is the result of applying the rules of hermeneutics to a biblical text.
Hermeneutics is usually divided into noematics, heuristics, and prophoristics.
24. The Different Senses of the Bible (Noematics)
Meaning is the idea (or ideas) inherent in a word, independent of the writer’s intention. A writer uses a word in a specific sense according to the context. Sense is the specific concept the author intends to express with the word.
Thus, the Hebrew word ruah may mean “spirit,” “wind,” “breath,” “principle of life,” or “force.” The human author of Scripture uses this word in the specific sense wanted by God. In some cases, it is used in the biblical sense of “Holy Spirit.”
Noematics is the part of hermeneutics that studies the senses of the Bible. We find two kinds of senses in the Bible: literal and spiritual.
Luke 24:44–46 offers an example of the literal sense. Our Lord said: “Everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled … that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” The sense of these expressions is what the words directly describe.
Our Lord used the spiritual sense when he alluded to figures of the Old Testament in order to explain the mysteries of his death and Resurrection. Thus, he mentioned Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of the fish to explain his sojourn in the tomb for three days (cf. Mt 12:39). He used the bronze serpent of Moses in the desert that healed the Israelites to explain our salvation through the cross (cf. Jn 3:14).
The apostles compared Adam to Christ (cf. Rom 5:14) and the salvation of Noah from the waters of the Deluge to the saving effects of Baptism (cf. 1 Pt 3:21). Additionally, the Fathers of the Church and the Scholastic theologians spoke of the literal and spiritual senses of the Bible.
The Magisterium of the Church has defined the existence of the two senses present in the Bible as a truth of faith.1
25. The Literal Sense
The literal sense is everything that the Holy Spirit—the author of the Bible—intended to express with the words themselves.2 The emphasis is on the principal author (the Holy Spirit); he could have expressed something of which the hagiographer may not have been aware.
25a) Different Types of Literal Sense
(1) Proper literal sense
The words are taken in their usual ordinary meaning, e.g., “God created heaven and earth.” To create means to make something out of nothing.
(2) Improper literal sense (or metaphorical)
The words are taken in their figurative (or metaphorical) meaning.
There are several kinds of improper literal sense, some of which refer only to individual words:
· Synecdoche: The part is used to refer to the whole thing, e.g. “And the word was made flesh [man].”
· Metonymy: Something is designated by another thing. Thus, what is contained is designated by the container, e.g. “This chalice [blood] is the New Testament.”
· Metaphor or simile: A word refers to another by comparison. Thus, in the expression “the Lamb of God,” lamb does not refer to an animal but to the spotless and meek victim offered as a sacrifice.
· Hyperbole: This is a sort of literary exaggeration: “I will make your descendants as numerous as the grains of sand.”
Scripture also employs metaphors that are whole sentences or stories:
· Parable: A story illustrates a moral or spiritual truth (e.g., Mt 13:3–33).
· Allegory: This is a prolonged metaphor (e.g., Jn 10:11–16).
· Fable: This is a story that is not based on facts—and with animals or plants as characters—that illustrates a moral lesson (e.g., Jgs 9:8–15).
The literal sense can be explicit or implicit. Thus, “Mary is the mother of Jesus” (explicit) is true, and since Jesus is God, one may say, “Mary is the Mother of God” (implicit).
A large number of truths are deductions—a rational premise is added to the biblical data to reach a conclusion. The resulting conclusion is a theological conclusion, or consequent sense.
Many passages of the Bible suggest that God intended a deeper or more abundant sense than that derived from the text alone. Thus, it was unknown to the human author in its implications. This is called the plenary sense.
In other passages, something said of a group of persons may be applied to one person in an eminent sense. Thus, the statement “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren” (Dt 18:15) may be said of any of the prophets, but it applies primarily to Christ.
25b) Some Principles Ruling the Literal Sense
· Every part of Sacred Scripture has a literal sense (either proper or metaphorical). This is how people speak—they use words in a literal sense.
· One must first discover the literal sense of an expression before looking for the spiritual sense.
· The literal sense admits several interpretations, each with a greater degree of understanding. There can be a plurality of literal senses.
26. The Spiritual Sense
God is the main author of both the Old and the New Testaments. In his infinite wisdom, God disposed the events and words of the Old Testament in such a way that these things of the past prefigured (or signified) those that were to come in the New Testament. The spiritual sense is signified by the figures of the Old Testament. This sense is also called typical or mystical.3
The person, event, or thing described in the Old Testament that signifies a future reality is called type, image, or figure. The reality of the New Testament, which was prefigured in the Old Testament, is called antitype, reality, or figured.
Hence, manna—the food that God gave the Israelites in the desert—is the type (type, image, or figure) of the Holy Eucharist (antitype, reality, or figured) in a spiritual sense. Likewise, the sacrifice of the lamb in Egypt (and the sprinkling of its blood), which saved the Israelites from the avenging angel, is the type or figure; Christ, who saved mankind from sin by shedding his blood on Calvary, is the antitype or reality.
The human writer was not aware of the production of the spiritual sense. The spiritual sense was placed there by God without the human writer’s knowledge.
Three elements enter in the definition of the spiritual sense:
i) The real existence of the person, things, or events of the Old Testament. Metaphors, allegories, or parables are never types; they have no historical reality.
ii) The similarity between the type and what is prefigured by the type (the antitype).
iii) God’s intention to prefigure something. We attribute intention through the Bible itself, Tradition, or the Magisterium of the Church.
26a) Errors
· The dualistic heresies claimed that there was no connection between the Old Testament (made by a stern demigod) and the New Testament (made by a merciful God).
· The liberal Protestants rejected the spiritual sense, claiming that it was a figment of the imagination without biblical basis.
26b) Kinds of Spiritual Sense
· Proper allegorical sense (typical, or dogmatic): In it, the antitype (or reality) is Christ or his Kingdom.
· Moral sense (or tropological): In this sense, what happened to Christ is the antitype of the moral acts required of a Christian.
· Anagogical sense: In it, the events of the Old Testament or New Testament are figures of future life in heaven. Thus, the possession of the Promised Land is a figure of access to heaven.
Not all the senses are present in every passage of the Bible. Although the spiritual sense is always based on the literal sense, several spiritual senses may coexist. Thus, the entry of the Hebrews into the Promised Land (literal sense) not only foreshadows the entry of the Gentiles into the Church (allegorical sense) and the admittance of the elect into heaven (anagogical sense), but it also teaches the necessity of faith and the misery of unbelief (moral sense, see Heb 4:1–11).
26c) Principles Concerning the Spiritual Sense
· It is a sense proper to the Bible. The Holy Spirit used this sense to reveal the truth.
· It is exclusive to the Bible; only God knows future events.
· It is always based on the literal sense and proceeds from it.
· There is nothing found in the spiritual sense necessary for salvation that is not clearly stated elsewhere in the Bible in a literal sense. Thus, we find the ark of Noah (cf. Gn 6) in the Old Testament the prefiguring the Church as the only source of salvation in a spiritual sense, but this truth is also stated clearly in a literal sense in the New Testament (cf. 1 Pt 3:20–21).
27. Reading of the Bible (Heuristics)
Heuristics is the part of hermeneutics that tries to discover the true sense of passages in the Bible.
The Bible is a human document, written by people for people. Thus, we must follow certain rational principles to understand the sense of the words.
Moreover, the Bible is a divine document, written by God to reveal supernatural truths needed by all for one’s salvation. As such, the Bible was entrusted to the Church, its official guarantor and interpreter. To interpret the Bible, one should strive to discover what the human author tried to affirm and what God wanted to manifest through their words.4
To properly understand the content of the Bible, the following are needed:
(1) The light of faith Faith is not just something useful to know the Bible; it is the essential condition. Faith is all the more necessary because of man’s darkened intellect, which is a consequence of sin.
(2) Moral uprightness The right dispositions (especially humility) are needed in the exegete. Then, the student of Scripture is ready to learn from God and does not become attached to false, personal criteria.
27a) The Exegetical Method
Biblical exegesis is a branch of theology. Thus, both share the same method and goal: to reach to the divine truth, penetrating into the mysteries, using human reason illumined by faith.
Biblical exegesis uses additional criteria to accomplish its task:
(1) Human criteria
To discover the intention of the human authors of the Bible, it is necessary to take into account the conditions of the time and culture, the “literary forms” used at the time, and the customary and characteristic patterns of perception, speech, and narrative that prevailed at the time that the sacred writer wrote. The exegete wisely uses certain sciences as auxiliary means of discovery, such as metaphysics, biblical languages, study of literary forms, and history.
(2) Dogmatic criteria
Since Sacred Scripture is inspired, it “must be read and interpreted with its divine authorship in mind.”5 The Second Vatican Council specifies three criteria that should be used to interpret Sacred Scripture according to the Spirit that inspired it:
i) Attention should be paid to the content and unity of the whole of Sacred Scripture.
ii) The Tradition of the entire Church should be taken into account. It is not legitimate for the exegete to interpret the Bible contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers of the Church. The Church keeps the living memory of the word of God in her Tradition, and the Holy Spirit gives her the spiritual interpretation of Scripture.
iii) “The analogy of faith” should be kept in mind (cf. Rom 12:6).6
27b) The Analogy of Faith
Of the dogmatic criteria to interpret Sacred Scripture, the analogy of faith is the harmony or agreement of the revealed truths among themselves and within the total project of revelation. Thus, each revealed truth sheds light upon the rest, and there is no contradiction among them.
Moreover, “seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter.”7
(1) Characteristics of the exegetical method
· In those passages where there is neither an authentic interpretation of the Magisterium nor unanimous consent of the Fathers, the exegete should follow the analogy of faith. Thus, the expression “brothers of Jesus” cannot be interpreted without taking into account the passages on the perpetual virginity of Mary; it should be interpreted as “relatives of Jesus,” which, coincidentally, is the meaning of the original Aramaic word.
· The analogy of faith often applies negatively. If any interpretation suggested by the exegete contradicts Church doctrine, it must be rejected as false.
· In a positive sense, the analogy of faith marks the way to interpret a text within the true context of revelation (see no. 10b).
(2) The foundation of Catholic exegesis
The analogy of scriptural faith must be the foundation of any serious Catholic Bible study (exegesis).
This was the constant practice of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. They looked for scriptural passages that are very clear in order to shed light on those passages that are less clear. They also denounced heretics who chose one passage of Sacred Scripture, twisted its sense, and interpreted it in opposition to other passages of the same Scripture.
One example of the analogy of faith is this: In 1 Corinthians 6:12, St. Paul says: “All things are lawful for me”--omnia mihi licent. Some interpreted this wrongly by saying that anything one is inclined to do is licit. But St. Thomas related this passage to another in the New Testament, Matthew 14:4, where John the Baptist tells Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have her,” referring to Herod’s brother’s wife. St. Thomas concluded that St. Paul’s phrase means that all is licit that is within limits set by the divine law.
St. Augustine expressed the rule thus: “When interpreting the more ambiguous passages of Scriptures, we must consult the rule of the faith, which is taken from the clearer passages of Scripture and the authority of the Church.”8
Vatican II warns, “Since sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted with its divine authorship in mind, no less attention must be devoted to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, taking into account the Tradition of the entire Church and the analogy of faith, if we are to derive their true meaning from the sacred texts.”9
(3) The harmony of the sacred texts
In a negative sense, the analogy of scriptural faith means that there can be no contradiction among the passages of the Sacred Scripture. If there seems to be a contradiction, it is only apparently so—it may be due to a misinterpretation of the sense of some passage.
“Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.”10
For example, in John 14:28, our Lord said during the Last Supper, “the Father is greater than I,” and in John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” There is no contradiction between these passages. The first text declares that Christ as man is below the Father, and the second declares the unity of nature between Christ as God and the Father.
28. The Explanation of the Text (Prophoristics)
Prophoristics (from the Greek word meaning “to present”) is the part of hermeneutics that studies the manner of explaining the Bible to others. The following methods are used to accomplish this task:
28a) Scientific Methods
· Vernacular versions are translations, and the Church has always encouraged reading the Bible. During some historical periods in certain places, vernacular versions of the Bible were forbidden from being used in order to avoid spreading errors transmitted in the vernacular versions made by heretics.
· Biblical theology is the exposition of the doctrine of the Bible as a unity. It offers a consolidated view of the Christian mystery contained in the written word of God.
· A commentary is the exposition of the sense of a book, passage, or several related passages of the Bible.
· A catena is a set of short biblical commentaries from the Fathers forming a series or chain.
· A gloss is a brief explanation of an obscure word in the text.
· A scholion is a brief explanation of an obscure passage.
· A paraphrase is the restatement of the meaning of the original text in clearer words.
· A postilla is a short explanation placed after some word of the text.
28b) Pastoral Methods
· Reading of the Sacred Scripture takes place within the Mass (Liturgy of the Word).
· A Bible service is a reading of the word of God, outside the Mass, often followed by a commentary of the text.
· Catechism class is an explanation of Christian doctrine by means of short questions and answers.
· A homily is a simple explanation of a biblical or liturgical text within the Mass.
Footnotes:
1. Cf. Pius XII, Enc. Divino Afflante Spiritu; CCC, 115–119.
2. Cf. CCC, 116.
3. Cf. Ibid., 117.
4. Cf. DV, 12; cf. CCC, 109–114.
5. DV, 12.
6. Cf. Ibid.
7. Leo XIII, Enc. Providentissimus Deus, 14.
8. St. Augustine, De Doct. Christiana, 3.2.
9. DV, 12.
10. Leo XIII, Enc. Providentissimus Deus, 14.
Exegesis is the result of applying the rules of hermeneutics to a biblical text.
Hermeneutics is usually divided into noematics, heuristics, and prophoristics.
24. The Different Senses of the Bible (Noematics)
Meaning is the idea (or ideas) inherent in a word, independent of the writer’s intention. A writer uses a word in a specific sense according to the context. Sense is the specific concept the author intends to express with the word.
Thus, the Hebrew word ruah may mean “spirit,” “wind,” “breath,” “principle of life,” or “force.” The human author of Scripture uses this word in the specific sense wanted by God. In some cases, it is used in the biblical sense of “Holy Spirit.”
Noematics is the part of hermeneutics that studies the senses of the Bible. We find two kinds of senses in the Bible: literal and spiritual.
Luke 24:44–46 offers an example of the literal sense. Our Lord said: “Everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled … that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” The sense of these expressions is what the words directly describe.
Our Lord used the spiritual sense when he alluded to figures of the Old Testament in order to explain the mysteries of his death and Resurrection. Thus, he mentioned Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of the fish to explain his sojourn in the tomb for three days (cf. Mt 12:39). He used the bronze serpent of Moses in the desert that healed the Israelites to explain our salvation through the cross (cf. Jn 3:14).
The apostles compared Adam to Christ (cf. Rom 5:14) and the salvation of Noah from the waters of the Deluge to the saving effects of Baptism (cf. 1 Pt 3:21). Additionally, the Fathers of the Church and the Scholastic theologians spoke of the literal and spiritual senses of the Bible.
The Magisterium of the Church has defined the existence of the two senses present in the Bible as a truth of faith.1
25. The Literal Sense
The literal sense is everything that the Holy Spirit—the author of the Bible—intended to express with the words themselves.2 The emphasis is on the principal author (the Holy Spirit); he could have expressed something of which the hagiographer may not have been aware.
25a) Different Types of Literal Sense
(1) Proper literal sense
The words are taken in their usual ordinary meaning, e.g., “God created heaven and earth.” To create means to make something out of nothing.
(2) Improper literal sense (or metaphorical)
The words are taken in their figurative (or metaphorical) meaning.
There are several kinds of improper literal sense, some of which refer only to individual words:
· Synecdoche: The part is used to refer to the whole thing, e.g. “And the word was made flesh [man].”
· Metonymy: Something is designated by another thing. Thus, what is contained is designated by the container, e.g. “This chalice [blood] is the New Testament.”
· Metaphor or simile: A word refers to another by comparison. Thus, in the expression “the Lamb of God,” lamb does not refer to an animal but to the spotless and meek victim offered as a sacrifice.
· Hyperbole: This is a sort of literary exaggeration: “I will make your descendants as numerous as the grains of sand.”
Scripture also employs metaphors that are whole sentences or stories:
· Parable: A story illustrates a moral or spiritual truth (e.g., Mt 13:3–33).
· Allegory: This is a prolonged metaphor (e.g., Jn 10:11–16).
· Fable: This is a story that is not based on facts—and with animals or plants as characters—that illustrates a moral lesson (e.g., Jgs 9:8–15).
The literal sense can be explicit or implicit. Thus, “Mary is the mother of Jesus” (explicit) is true, and since Jesus is God, one may say, “Mary is the Mother of God” (implicit).
A large number of truths are deductions—a rational premise is added to the biblical data to reach a conclusion. The resulting conclusion is a theological conclusion, or consequent sense.
Many passages of the Bible suggest that God intended a deeper or more abundant sense than that derived from the text alone. Thus, it was unknown to the human author in its implications. This is called the plenary sense.
In other passages, something said of a group of persons may be applied to one person in an eminent sense. Thus, the statement “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren” (Dt 18:15) may be said of any of the prophets, but it applies primarily to Christ.
25b) Some Principles Ruling the Literal Sense
· Every part of Sacred Scripture has a literal sense (either proper or metaphorical). This is how people speak—they use words in a literal sense.
· One must first discover the literal sense of an expression before looking for the spiritual sense.
· The literal sense admits several interpretations, each with a greater degree of understanding. There can be a plurality of literal senses.
26. The Spiritual Sense
God is the main author of both the Old and the New Testaments. In his infinite wisdom, God disposed the events and words of the Old Testament in such a way that these things of the past prefigured (or signified) those that were to come in the New Testament. The spiritual sense is signified by the figures of the Old Testament. This sense is also called typical or mystical.3
The person, event, or thing described in the Old Testament that signifies a future reality is called type, image, or figure. The reality of the New Testament, which was prefigured in the Old Testament, is called antitype, reality, or figured.
Hence, manna—the food that God gave the Israelites in the desert—is the type (type, image, or figure) of the Holy Eucharist (antitype, reality, or figured) in a spiritual sense. Likewise, the sacrifice of the lamb in Egypt (and the sprinkling of its blood), which saved the Israelites from the avenging angel, is the type or figure; Christ, who saved mankind from sin by shedding his blood on Calvary, is the antitype or reality.
The human writer was not aware of the production of the spiritual sense. The spiritual sense was placed there by God without the human writer’s knowledge.
Three elements enter in the definition of the spiritual sense:
i) The real existence of the person, things, or events of the Old Testament. Metaphors, allegories, or parables are never types; they have no historical reality.
ii) The similarity between the type and what is prefigured by the type (the antitype).
iii) God’s intention to prefigure something. We attribute intention through the Bible itself, Tradition, or the Magisterium of the Church.
26a) Errors
· The dualistic heresies claimed that there was no connection between the Old Testament (made by a stern demigod) and the New Testament (made by a merciful God).
· The liberal Protestants rejected the spiritual sense, claiming that it was a figment of the imagination without biblical basis.
26b) Kinds of Spiritual Sense
· Proper allegorical sense (typical, or dogmatic): In it, the antitype (or reality) is Christ or his Kingdom.
· Moral sense (or tropological): In this sense, what happened to Christ is the antitype of the moral acts required of a Christian.
· Anagogical sense: In it, the events of the Old Testament or New Testament are figures of future life in heaven. Thus, the possession of the Promised Land is a figure of access to heaven.
Not all the senses are present in every passage of the Bible. Although the spiritual sense is always based on the literal sense, several spiritual senses may coexist. Thus, the entry of the Hebrews into the Promised Land (literal sense) not only foreshadows the entry of the Gentiles into the Church (allegorical sense) and the admittance of the elect into heaven (anagogical sense), but it also teaches the necessity of faith and the misery of unbelief (moral sense, see Heb 4:1–11).
26c) Principles Concerning the Spiritual Sense
· It is a sense proper to the Bible. The Holy Spirit used this sense to reveal the truth.
· It is exclusive to the Bible; only God knows future events.
· It is always based on the literal sense and proceeds from it.
· There is nothing found in the spiritual sense necessary for salvation that is not clearly stated elsewhere in the Bible in a literal sense. Thus, we find the ark of Noah (cf. Gn 6) in the Old Testament the prefiguring the Church as the only source of salvation in a spiritual sense, but this truth is also stated clearly in a literal sense in the New Testament (cf. 1 Pt 3:20–21).
27. Reading of the Bible (Heuristics)
Heuristics is the part of hermeneutics that tries to discover the true sense of passages in the Bible.
The Bible is a human document, written by people for people. Thus, we must follow certain rational principles to understand the sense of the words.
Moreover, the Bible is a divine document, written by God to reveal supernatural truths needed by all for one’s salvation. As such, the Bible was entrusted to the Church, its official guarantor and interpreter. To interpret the Bible, one should strive to discover what the human author tried to affirm and what God wanted to manifest through their words.4
To properly understand the content of the Bible, the following are needed:
(1) The light of faith Faith is not just something useful to know the Bible; it is the essential condition. Faith is all the more necessary because of man’s darkened intellect, which is a consequence of sin.
(2) Moral uprightness The right dispositions (especially humility) are needed in the exegete. Then, the student of Scripture is ready to learn from God and does not become attached to false, personal criteria.
27a) The Exegetical Method
Biblical exegesis is a branch of theology. Thus, both share the same method and goal: to reach to the divine truth, penetrating into the mysteries, using human reason illumined by faith.
Biblical exegesis uses additional criteria to accomplish its task:
(1) Human criteria
To discover the intention of the human authors of the Bible, it is necessary to take into account the conditions of the time and culture, the “literary forms” used at the time, and the customary and characteristic patterns of perception, speech, and narrative that prevailed at the time that the sacred writer wrote. The exegete wisely uses certain sciences as auxiliary means of discovery, such as metaphysics, biblical languages, study of literary forms, and history.
(2) Dogmatic criteria
Since Sacred Scripture is inspired, it “must be read and interpreted with its divine authorship in mind.”5 The Second Vatican Council specifies three criteria that should be used to interpret Sacred Scripture according to the Spirit that inspired it:
i) Attention should be paid to the content and unity of the whole of Sacred Scripture.
ii) The Tradition of the entire Church should be taken into account. It is not legitimate for the exegete to interpret the Bible contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers of the Church. The Church keeps the living memory of the word of God in her Tradition, and the Holy Spirit gives her the spiritual interpretation of Scripture.
iii) “The analogy of faith” should be kept in mind (cf. Rom 12:6).6
27b) The Analogy of Faith
Of the dogmatic criteria to interpret Sacred Scripture, the analogy of faith is the harmony or agreement of the revealed truths among themselves and within the total project of revelation. Thus, each revealed truth sheds light upon the rest, and there is no contradiction among them.
Moreover, “seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter.”7
(1) Characteristics of the exegetical method
· In those passages where there is neither an authentic interpretation of the Magisterium nor unanimous consent of the Fathers, the exegete should follow the analogy of faith. Thus, the expression “brothers of Jesus” cannot be interpreted without taking into account the passages on the perpetual virginity of Mary; it should be interpreted as “relatives of Jesus,” which, coincidentally, is the meaning of the original Aramaic word.
· The analogy of faith often applies negatively. If any interpretation suggested by the exegete contradicts Church doctrine, it must be rejected as false.
· In a positive sense, the analogy of faith marks the way to interpret a text within the true context of revelation (see no. 10b).
(2) The foundation of Catholic exegesis
The analogy of scriptural faith must be the foundation of any serious Catholic Bible study (exegesis).
This was the constant practice of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. They looked for scriptural passages that are very clear in order to shed light on those passages that are less clear. They also denounced heretics who chose one passage of Sacred Scripture, twisted its sense, and interpreted it in opposition to other passages of the same Scripture.
One example of the analogy of faith is this: In 1 Corinthians 6:12, St. Paul says: “All things are lawful for me”--omnia mihi licent. Some interpreted this wrongly by saying that anything one is inclined to do is licit. But St. Thomas related this passage to another in the New Testament, Matthew 14:4, where John the Baptist tells Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have her,” referring to Herod’s brother’s wife. St. Thomas concluded that St. Paul’s phrase means that all is licit that is within limits set by the divine law.
St. Augustine expressed the rule thus: “When interpreting the more ambiguous passages of Scriptures, we must consult the rule of the faith, which is taken from the clearer passages of Scripture and the authority of the Church.”8
Vatican II warns, “Since sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted with its divine authorship in mind, no less attention must be devoted to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, taking into account the Tradition of the entire Church and the analogy of faith, if we are to derive their true meaning from the sacred texts.”9
(3) The harmony of the sacred texts
In a negative sense, the analogy of scriptural faith means that there can be no contradiction among the passages of the Sacred Scripture. If there seems to be a contradiction, it is only apparently so—it may be due to a misinterpretation of the sense of some passage.
“Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.”10
For example, in John 14:28, our Lord said during the Last Supper, “the Father is greater than I,” and in John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” There is no contradiction between these passages. The first text declares that Christ as man is below the Father, and the second declares the unity of nature between Christ as God and the Father.
28. The Explanation of the Text (Prophoristics)
Prophoristics (from the Greek word meaning “to present”) is the part of hermeneutics that studies the manner of explaining the Bible to others. The following methods are used to accomplish this task:
28a) Scientific Methods
· Vernacular versions are translations, and the Church has always encouraged reading the Bible. During some historical periods in certain places, vernacular versions of the Bible were forbidden from being used in order to avoid spreading errors transmitted in the vernacular versions made by heretics.
· Biblical theology is the exposition of the doctrine of the Bible as a unity. It offers a consolidated view of the Christian mystery contained in the written word of God.
· A commentary is the exposition of the sense of a book, passage, or several related passages of the Bible.
· A catena is a set of short biblical commentaries from the Fathers forming a series or chain.
· A gloss is a brief explanation of an obscure word in the text.
· A scholion is a brief explanation of an obscure passage.
· A paraphrase is the restatement of the meaning of the original text in clearer words.
· A postilla is a short explanation placed after some word of the text.
28b) Pastoral Methods
· Reading of the Sacred Scripture takes place within the Mass (Liturgy of the Word).
· A Bible service is a reading of the word of God, outside the Mass, often followed by a commentary of the text.
· Catechism class is an explanation of Christian doctrine by means of short questions and answers.
· A homily is a simple explanation of a biblical or liturgical text within the Mass.
Footnotes:
1. Cf. Pius XII, Enc. Divino Afflante Spiritu; CCC, 115–119.
2. Cf. CCC, 116.
3. Cf. Ibid., 117.
4. Cf. DV, 12; cf. CCC, 109–114.
5. DV, 12.
6. Cf. Ibid.
7. Leo XIII, Enc. Providentissimus Deus, 14.
8. St. Augustine, De Doct. Christiana, 3.2.
9. DV, 12.
10. Leo XIII, Enc. Providentissimus Deus, 14.