Reading with faith, hope and love

 Just beginning to dip into Patrick Schreiner, The Four Sense of Scripture: Learning from Ancient Ways of Reading the Bible (Baker Academic, 2026). 263pp

Schreiner is a Southern Baptist with a biblical studies PhD. He writes with learning and clarity. I am enjoying especially the pithy summaries. I am tempted, I think, to type out quite a lot of the book.

The appendixes are very helpful and include some material on how this could benefit the church and the preacher.

For other works recovering pre-critical exegesis, see footnotes on p3.

Henri de Lubac, a towering figuring in the ressourcement of pre-critical exegesis said "no one would dream of" a straightforward recovery of the four fold sense. But Schreiner says we should dare to dream! (p4), Actually, I think he is going to make some qualifications not endorse all pre-modern readings.

I feel this should have been at the front of my mind, but nice to be reminded (?!) of the connection between the spiritual senses of Scripture and the theological virtues.

(1) Allegorical sense – Christological and ecclesial – faith;

(2) Tropological – moral – love

(3) Anagogical – eschatological - hope. Who could possibly be against reading the Bible with faith, love and hope?

(p230)

Schreiner summarises very nicely: The mystery of Christ is seen in allegory, filled up in tropology and consummated in anagogy. (p231)  

One of the nice things about this is how full of Jesus it is. Christ is the archetype and antitype. The substance and the goal. The Christian life is lived on the basis of his prior work, after his example, in him and with his body, for him and from him. We see him now in Scripture so that eventually we might see him face to face.

Some of the more technical language of the quadriga can be off putting and it is arguable how necessary and helpful it is. We could easily use terms more familiar to theological students in general e.g.

(Sense (1): Literal / grammatico-historical / contextual)

Sense (2): Christological

Sense (3): Ethical

Sense (4): Eschatological.

We could even try context (literary and historical etc.), Christ, Conformity (to Christ in living), Consummation (in Christ), or similar.

We might simply ask Bible readers to consider:

Sense (1): What does the text mean in its original setting?

Sense (2): How does it point to Christ and his church?

Sense (3): What does it mean for how we live as Christians?

Sense (4) How does it point to our glorious future in Christ?

(p233)

If we put it like that, then seeking these four senses in the Bible seems, perhaps, like an obvious no brainer. Though it is still a helpful reminder as we may be tempted to neglect or bypass or wrongly order these senses or steps. The questions alone, of course, do not answer the "how", where it would be possible to go wrong in many ways. We can have correct conclusions which we imposed on the text. But at least we are reminded to seek Jesus in this text. And that our reading should terminate in praise, Christ-like life and orientation to heaven and the new creation, not only to centuries past or to the present.

The Bible proceeds by a series of covenants. It's theme is the kingdom of God (p234)

We could say that the Bible commences, centres and culminates in Christ. Every text therefore has a Way to Christ. (cf. p234)

Schreiner argues that most of the church fathers spent most of their time on the literal sense, and so should we (p235)

It’s pretty obvious from a kind of literal reading that David is the Christ. He is the surprising Saviour-Shepherd who comes from his Father’s house to visit his brothers in need. He wins a victory by strange and unworldly means, defeating the evil death-bringing Giant, bringing peace, and becomes King.