Approaches to Biblical Interpretation

The Diversity

The Christian traditions read the same Scriptures but employ different interpretive methods — and have done so from the beginning. Four approaches have deep roots in the tradition:

Literal-historical (sensus literalis). The primary meaning of the text is what the human author intended to communicate to the original audience in the original historical context. This is the Reformation’s hermeneutical priority: scriptura sui ipsius interpres — Scripture interprets itself, and the plain sense is the controlling sense. The literal sense is not “literalistic” — it includes metaphor, poetry, and genre-appropriate reading — but it insists that the text has a determinate meaning anchored in history.

Typological/figural. Old Testament persons, events, and institutions are types (τύποι) that find their fulfillment (antitypes) in Christ and the Church. Adam is a type of Christ (Romans 5:14). The Exodus is a type of baptism (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). The Passover lamb is a type of Christ’s sacrifice (1 Corinthians 5:7). Typology reads the Old Testament as a book whose deepest meaning is Christological — not because the historical events did not happen, but because they happened in order to prefigure Christ.

Allegorical. The text carries a spiritual meaning beyond and above its literal sense. Origen (c. 185-254) distinguished the bodily sense (literal), the soul of the text (moral), and the spirit of the text (allegorical-spiritual). The Alexandrian school read Scripture as a vast spiritual landscape in which every detail — the number of Abraham’s servants, the color of the hangings in the tabernacle — signifies a theological truth. The allegorical method assumes that Scripture, as the Word of an infinite God, contains inexhaustible layers of meaning.

Moral/tropological. The text is read for its ethical application — what it demands of the reader’s life, character, and action. Every tradition does this; the question is whether the moral sense is derived from the literal sense (as the Reformers insisted) or can stand as an independent level of meaning (as the medieval quadriga allowed).

Scriptural Warrant for Each Position

For the literal-historical sense:

• “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16, ESV) — Scripture teaches, which presupposes determinate meaning
• Luke investigates events “having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account” (Luke 1:3, ESV) — the Gospel writers were concerned with historical accuracy

For typological reading:

• “Now these things happened to them as an example (typikōs), but they were written down for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:11, ESV)
• “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you… These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17, ESV)
• The entire argument of Hebrews is typological: the Levitical priesthood, the tabernacle, the sacrifices are shadows of heavenly realities fulfilled in Christ

For allegorical reading:

• “Now this may be interpreted allegorically (hatina estin allēgoroumena): these women are two covenants” (Galatians 4:24, ESV) — Paul himself allegorizes the Sarah-Hagar narrative
• The Song of Songs has been read allegorically (as Christ and the Church, or God and the soul) by virtually the entire tradition — Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux, and even many Reformers

For the moral sense:

• “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4, ESV)
• The prophetic literature is overwhelmingly moral in its address: “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8, ESV)

Patristic and Historical Roots

Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130-202)

Irenaeus is the father of figural/typological reading. In Against Heresies, he articulates the principle of recapitulation: Christ recapitulates in himself the entire history of humanity. Every stage of Old Testament history is taken up and fulfilled in Christ. Irenaeus reads typologically but insists on the historical reality of the types — the events really happened, and they really prefigure Christ. His method is typological without being allegorical: the meaning is in the pattern of history, not in a hidden spiritual code.

Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-254)

Origen developed the threefold sense of Scripture (De Principiis 4.2): literal, moral, and spiritual (allegorical). He was willing to set aside the literal sense when he judged it unworthy of God — a move that made the Antiochene school and later the Reformers deeply uneasy. But Origen was not a reckless allegorizer; he insisted that the spiritual sense must be governed by the Rule of Faith and that Scripture’s meaning is Christological from beginning to end. His homilies on Genesis, Exodus, and the Song of Songs remain monuments of Christian spiritual exegesis.

The Antiochene School (4th-5th century)

Theodore of Mopsuestia and John Chrysostom represented the Antiochene reaction against Alexandrian allegory. They insisted on the primacy of the literal-historical sense (theōria) — though Antiochene “literal” reading was not wooden but attentive to literary form, authorial intent, and historical context. Chrysostom’s homilies are masterpieces of literal-historical exegesis applied to moral formation.

The Medieval Quadriga

John Cassian (Conferences 14.8) and the medieval tradition formalized the fourfold sense:

• Literal (littera): what happened — “Jerusalem is the city in Judea”
• Allegorical (allegoria): what to believe — “Jerusalem is the Church”
• Moral (tropologia): what to do — “Jerusalem is the faithful soul”
• Anagogical (anagogia): what to hope for — “Jerusalem is the heavenly city”

The medieval dictum summarized: Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. The four senses were not competitive but complementary — different levels of a single, richly layered text.

The Reformation

Luther and Calvin reasserted the primacy of the literal sense, not because they rejected typology (both practiced it extensively) but because they believed the allegorical method had been abused to read doctrines into Scripture that were not in it. Luther’s hermeneutical principle — was Christum treibet (“what drives Christ”) — is itself a kind of Christological reading, but one anchored in the plain sense of the text rather than in allegorical ingenuity.

The Case for Compatibility

The compatibility of these methods rests on a shared conviction: Scripture has determinate meaning within the Rule of Faith, and that meaning is ultimately Christological.

Every tradition affirms the literal-historical sense as foundational. No responsible interpreter denies that Moses really led Israel out of Egypt or that Jesus really died on a cross. The question is whether the meaning of these events is exhausted by their historical description — and here the entire tradition says no. The Exodus is a historical event and a type of baptism. The cross is a historical event and the eternal sacrifice of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

The four senses are not four competing methods but four dimensions of a single reading. The literal grounds the others; the typological reveals the Christological pattern; the allegorical opens the spiritual depth; the moral applies the truth to life. A reading that employs only one sense impoverishes the text. A reading that employs all four — as the patristic and medieval tradition did, and as the best modern exegesis is recovering — honors the fullness of Scripture as the Word of an infinite God addressed to the whole person.

The Reformation’s insistence on the primacy of the literal sense was a necessary corrective to real abuses — allegorical readings that supported indulgences, purgatory, and papal supremacy without literal warrant. But the Reformers themselves did not abandon typology or moral application. Calvin’s commentaries are rich in typological reading; Luther’s christological hermeneutic is a form of figural interpretation. The Reformation narrowed the method without abolishing it.

The Boundary with Layer 4

This diversity becomes a faultline when:

• Allegorical interpretation is used to deny the literal-historical meaning of Scripture. When Rudolf Bultmann’s program of “demythologization” treats the Resurrection as a myth expressing existential truth rather than a historical event, it has crossed a line that all historic traditions — Roman, Orthodox, Reformed, and Anglican — reject. The spiritual sense presupposes and depends upon the literal sense; it does not replace it.
• The literal sense is absolutized to exclude all typological and spiritual reading. A strict historicism that reads the Old Testament only as ancient Near Eastern literature, without Christological reference, severs the unity of the two Testaments and contradicts the New Testament’s own reading of the Old (Hebrews, Galatians 4, 1 Corinthians 10).
• Interpretive method is used to override the Rule of Faith. If an allegorical reading produces a conclusion that contradicts the Creed — if, for example, the Song of Songs is read in a way that denies the goodness of creation, or if Genesis is allegorized to deny the reality of the Fall — the method has been misapplied. The Rule of Faith is the boundary within which all methods operate.
• Any single interpreter or tradition claims a monopoly on right reading. Scripture is read within the Church, by the Church, under the guidance of the Spirit. No individual genius and no single tradition exhausts its meaning.

For Further Study

1. Origen, De Principiis 4.1-3 — the foundational statement of the multiple senses of Scripture
2. Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture (4 vols., 1959-1964; English trans. 1998-2009) — the definitive modern study of the quadriga
3. Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979) — canonical reading as a modern recovery of the literal sense within the whole biblical canon
4. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (1974) — how modern hermeneutics lost the figural reading and what was lost with it
5. John J. O’Keefe and R.R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (2005) — accessible introduction to patristic exegesis