As I shared in the last issue of this article, the Church recognizes two senses of Scripture, the literal and the spiritual. I already shared what the Church sees as the literal sense. The spiritual sense of Sacred Scripture derives from the unity of God’s plan of salvation. The text of Scripture discloses God’s plan. The realities and events of which it speaks can also be signs of the divine plan. There are three spiritual senses of Scripture:

The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ. Example: the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory over sin and also of Christian baptism.

The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.

The anagogical sense. We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland. Thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.

The Church’s Scripture scholars are expected to work according to these principles to develop a better understanding of Scripture for God’s people. Two of the various challenges that must be faced by the Church are those who interpret the Bible only in a literal fashion and, on the other hand, by those who deny the supernatural aspects of the Gospels.

In the United States a certain number of Christians of many denominations have adopted the supremacy of Scripture as their sole foundation. This they do in the strictest literal sense without appreciation of the various literary forms that the biblical authors used within the specific cultural circumstances in which they were writing. The adherents to this approach to the Scriptures are often referred to as Fundamentalists.

The Church’s response to this approach is that Revelation is transmitted by Apostolic Tradition and Scripture together. The Church and Apostolic Tradition, which I have referenced before, existed before the written New Testament. Her Apostles preached the Gospel orally before writing it down. The Apostles appointed bishops to succeed them with the authority to continue their teaching. Scripture alone is insufficient to understand the message of Jesus. Sacred Tradition is essential to the understanding of the New Testament.