Training · Grasping God's Word
Levels of meaning
Allegory, fuller meaning, and typology — and how the New Testament uses the Old.
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What is allegorical interpretation?
Reading a text as a code in which details stand for hidden spiritual realities the author did not intend.
It was common in the early and medieval church, which often looked for four senses in a passage. It was usually done by devout people for good reasons, but it cuts the meaning loose from the author, so there is no way to test whether a reading is right.
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What is the classic example of allegorising the parable of the Good Samaritan?
Augustine read the injured man as Adam, Jerusalem as the heavenly city, the robbers as the devil, the Samaritan as Christ, and the inn as the church.
Every piece of it is orthodox, and none of it is what Jesus was saying. He told the story to answer a lawyer's question about who counts as a neighbour. The allegory replaces a hard, specific challenge with a general theology lesson.
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What is the "fuller meaning" (sensus plenior)?
A deeper meaning intended by God but not clearly understood by the human author, which becomes visible only in later revelation.
The book allows that this happens, because the New Testament writers sometimes read Old Testament texts this way. But it is cautious: only inspired writers could declare such meanings, and we are not in a position to find new ones ourselves.
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What is typology in biblical interpretation?
A correspondence in which a real Old Testament person, event, or institution foreshadows a greater reality in the New.
Adam, the Passover lamb, and the temple are examples. Typology differs from allegory in two ways: the type was a real thing in history, and it meant something in its own context before it pointed forward.
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How does Matthew use Hosea 11:1?
Hosea looks back at the exodus, when God called Israel his son out of Egypt. Matthew sees Jesus retracing Israel's story as the true son, and says the text is "fulfilled" in him.
Hosea was not predicting the Messiah; he was remembering. Matthew's "fulfilled" is typological: the pattern of Israel's history comes to its fullest form in Jesus. Seeing this stops the reader thinking Matthew misread Hosea.
When Israel was just a child, I loved him. I called my son out of Egypt.
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How do you study a New Testament passage that quotes the Old Testament?
Study the Old Testament passage in its own context, study the New Testament passage in its own context, compare the wording, then ask how the New Testament writer is using the text and what principle follows.
Comparing the wording matters because the New Testament often quotes the Greek translation of the Old Testament rather than the Hebrew. The central question is the fourth one: is the writer claiming a prediction was fulfilled, drawing a pattern, or borrowing language?
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What was the medieval "four-fold sense" of Scripture?
The belief that a passage has a literal sense, an allegorical sense about Christ and the church, a moral sense about how to live, and an anagogical sense about the life to come.
The standard example is Jerusalem: literally a city, allegorically the church, morally the soul, and anagogically heaven. The system was flexible enough to find almost anything in almost any text, which is why it could not settle disagreements.
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Why did the Reformers turn away from allegorical interpretation?
They insisted on the plain, intended sense of the text, so that Scripture could correct the church rather than the church's teaching being read into Scripture.
If a passage can mean whatever a skilled allegorist finds in it, Scripture can never overrule anyone. Grounding meaning in what the writer said is what gives the text authority over its readers.