Literal & Spiritual

The Differences Between the Approaches

Sorts of Questions

Spiritual

interpreting Scripture occurs within a liturgical context.

What does this text tell us about God and His relationship with people?

What should we believe, do and hope for?

Literal

concerned with understanding the intent of the inspired author

What did the authors intend to convey?

What did the original audience understand?

What really happened?

The problem we will wrestle with today will center on an imbalanced hermeneutic. Very few bible interpreters are all letter or all spirit, but the closer they come to either extreme, the more liable they are to err.

Spiritual Problems

When the literal sense is ignored

Allegory run amuck: an allegory is a story that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning.

When this is taken too far, it encourages a kind of speculation of the text that will often ignore the plain or literal meaning.

Extreme example: Pope Innocent III in 1198

Sictu Universitatis Conditor: In this bull, Innocent offered an allegorical interpretation of the fourth day of the creation (Gen. 1:14-19). The “greater light”, the sun, was the Pope, and the “lesser light”, the moon, was the king. Based on this questionable interpretive move, the pope explained that the dignity of the civil, temporal ruler is inferior to that of the spiritual ruler, and the king derives his inferior authority from the pope, just as the moon derives its light from the sun.

When prior beliefs are sought to be proven

Some prefer to approach the Scriptures to uncover the spiritual sense because they do not want to discount valid meanings that are conveyed by the literal sense.

Example

Matt 5:28-29.

Matthew 5:28–29 ESV

28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

Readers understand that this should not be taken literally but as hyperbolic. When Jesus says that the one who looks at a woman lustfully ought to gauge out his eye, readers understand that this should not be taken literally because the fault is not the eye itself nor would gauging it our remedy the problem.

Some are so skilled at approaching Scripture with this spiritual bent, they can easily miss the force of this statement and the gravity of the sin.

We are meant to pay close attention to the Scriptures to the extent that our assumptions and beliefs are laid on the chopping block. Looking at a woman lustfully, as common as it may be in the experience of many men, is no small thing. We should wage war against lust, seek to put it to death and see lust as a serious offense. Spiritualizing the text too much may cloud our perspective, and may reflect a tendency to impose our assumptions and conflicting beliefs on the text.

Unless the interpreters’s thought is already sufficiently formed by Scripture, reliance on the spiritual sense could be a cover for ignoring the hard texts and avoiding the necessary struggle. - Stangler, “Letter & Spirit”

When texts are presumed to be absurd, a-historic or impossible

The problem may come in the form of a detail or a command, say in a narrative that may be puzzling and therefore set aside.

There is an assumption behind this presumption.

The assumption is that no event happened as narrated in Scripture. Too much distance between the reader and when the event took place exists for there to be any reasonable expectation to be able to understand exactly what happened… what was commanded etc.

The recording of the event does not do justice to the event itself.

Literal Problems

When uncovering authorial intent is the only goal of interpretation

The intent behind most texts may be clear. Take, for example

In many cases, the intent is clear: John 20:30-31.

John 20:30–31 ESV

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The intent of recording the miracles and activity of Jesus is clear: that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.

But not all the biblical authors understood the full meaning of what they were inspired to write. In other words,

The intent of what God wanted the readers of the full canon of Scripture to understand as a result of their study was not necessarily known by the author when He recored it.

The writers of the Bible did know what they were doing when they wrote. I do not believe that they always knew all that they were doing. I believe that there are mysterious words of prophecy in the Prophets and the Psalms, for example, which had a far richer and more glorious fulfillment than the inspired writers knew when they wrote…. They did not know the full meaning of what they wrote, but they did know part of the meaning, and the full meaning was in no contradiction with the partial meaning but was its glorious unfolding. - J. Gresham Machen, “Christian Faith in a Modern World”.

We should want to follow an interpretive method that aims to unravel the original intention of biblical authors, realizing that that intention may be multi-layered, without any layers contradicting the others. Such original intentions may have meaning more correspondent to physical reality (hence so-called ‘literal interpretation’) while others may refer to ‘literal’ spiritual realities. . . . - Greg Beale, “The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God.

This means that the progress of revelation certainly reveals expanded meaning of earlier biblical texts.

Later biblical writers further interpret earlier biblical writings in ways that amplify earlier texts.

A biblical example

Isa. 49:3-6.

Isaiah 49:3–6 (ESV)

3 And he said to me, “You are my servant,

Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

4 But I said, “I have labored in vain;

I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;

yet surely my right is with the Lord,

and my recompense with my God.”

5 And now the Lord says,

he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,

to bring Jacob back to him;

and that Israel might be gathered to him—

for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,

and my God has become my strength—

6 he says:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant

to raise up the tribes of Jacob

and to bring back the preserved of Israel;

I will make you as a light for the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Luke quotes this text:

Luke 2:32.

Luke 2:32 (ESV)

32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

and for glory to your people Israel.”

Acts 13:47.

Acts 13:47 ESV

47 For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, “ ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ”

note how Christ and the church fulfill what is prophesied of Israel in the OT. When the prophecy was recored in Isaiah, the author did not know the full extent of how it would be fulfilled.

When the spiritual meaning is dismissed

Those committed to the literal meaning, tend to dismiss the spiritual meaning all together.

This exclusive approach to the Scriptures tends to marginalize faith commitments, and presume that faith commitments have no place in our efforts of interpreting Scripture.

The strict commitment to objectivity (not allowing preconceived ideas or beliefs to influence our interpretation of Scripture), may result in disregarding the faith of the historic church. The bible can become little more than an ancient artifact.

This is not to say that a commitment to understanding the literal sense of the text, including an effort to understand the author’s intent reflects a lack of concern for how the text is meant to be applied to our lives. We just need to be sure that the rigors of our study to understand the meaning will not fail to account for the impact how the Scriptures are meant to impact our lives.

An example from a commentary on Song of Solomon:

Song of Solomon 1:2.

Song of Solomon 1:2 ESV

2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine;

“Kiss” in most places in the Old Testament, is a matter of at least one mouth applied to a variety of objects - mouth, lips hands, feet, and idol. - Pope, “Song of Songs”.

Fails to capture the point and leaves something to be desired.

Bernard Clairvaux, in his Sermons on Song of Songs:

The grace released by the touch of those lips…

Keeping Our Interpretive Efforts on the Track

As you might have discerned, I want to suggest that our approach should be two fold. That is to say, the spiritual and literal approaches to biblical interpretation should be used to understand the message of the Bible. As we have seen, there are pitfalls within both approaches, so we will consider some controls to help guard against going off the tracks.

Spiritual Controls

Literal Sense

The spiritual approach should never pass over the literal sense, but should seek to tie itself to the literal sense.

All interpretation must first take seriously the actual words, sentences and context of the text.

One must read the lines before reading between the lines. - Stangler, “Letter & Spirit”.

We should begin with questions of the historical context and authorial intent. We cannot assume that when the literal sense does not make sense to us, that it did not make sense to the author or original audience. We need to be willing to do the hard work of interpretation.

Bottom line: The spiritual interpretation should not bypass the hard work of historical, grammatical, and contextual understanding.

Analogy of Scripture

Using clear Scriptures to help explain obscure ones is not in conflict with the spiritual approach to interpretation. Another way of saying this is that a proposed spiritual interpretation should not contradict other plain passages of Scripture.

The sun and the moon allegory of Pope Innocent III fails the test of the plain sense of other passages. The topic of the church and state is taken up in other places in the Bible (Romans 13:1-7 for example).

Overarching unity is the key assumption underlying the analogy of Scripture or Faith. The unity of the faith of the prophets and the apostles is reflected in the basic theological unity of the Scriptures that they composed, all inspired by the one Spirit of God. - Stangler, “Letter & Spirit”.

Literal Controls

Spiritual Sense

Again, if biblical interpretation should be two fold, then the literal and spiritual sense must balance one another.

While the literal sense, as has been stated, should be the first step, we need to be clear that it is only one step.

If Christ and His redemptive work is the scope of all of Scripture, as we suggested last week in our discussion on Biblical Theology, the spiritual sense of the text of Scripture is inherent to its meaning.

Biblical Theology teaches that we should have christological lenses on when reading the Bible. This does not mean that Christ is in every text, but that Christ is the trunk line that runs through the middle of Scripture and all of Scripture is fed by this trunk. The spiritual sense is an essential concern for our approach to biblical interpretation.

Take for example the Song of Solomon again. From a strict literal interpretation perspective, there is no good reason for thinking that this song is about anything more than the love between a man and a woman. But we are meant to see this as not only displaying the love between husband and wife but love between God and His people… Christ and His bride.

Analogy of Scripture

There is diversity in our Bibles. Diversity in genre, historical contexts, writing styles among the authors. We need to be careful however, not to allow this fact to obscure the overarching unity that is clearly present in Scripture. This unity flows from the story of redemption in Christ.

A Way Forward: The Perspicuity of Scripture

The Bible’s message is clear.

Moses instructs the people of Israel to teach the divinely revealed commandments of God to their children, which makes clear that children are capable of understanding and applying the Word of God as their parents teach it to them.

Deuteronomy 6:6–9 ESV

6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This also makes clear that ordinary mothers and fathers are able to have a grasp of Scripture sufficient enough to teach it to their children.

This does not deny that some passages of Scripture are difficult to understand, but it does mean that anyone who studies the Word of God can discern the basic message of salvation an what it means to please God.

2 Peter 3:15–16 ESV

15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.