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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
During the last ten years or so there has been a greatly increased awakening, among Christians all over the world, to the importance of the spiritual sense of Scripture, to the value of the symbolic approach to Scripture, and to a consciousness of the influence of biblical symbolism upon the spiritual life of the Christian. The fact that the deliberations of this meeting are devoted to a study of the relationship of Scripture to the spiritual life is one more witness to this renewed interest. It is all the more important that we should have in our minds clear ideas about the nature of the spiritual sense, especially in view of the neglect of such studies during the nineteenth century and until recent times, and also because of the accusation of fancifulness which is easily levelled against its exponents in the present, as it was in the earlier ages of the Church. Furthermore, great prudence is needed in a spiritual exposition, as the recent papal encyclicals have warned us, so that any irresponsible fancies may be avoided.
1 The text of the opening lecture of The Life Of The Spirit Conference, Bishton Hall, 15th September, 1953.
2 There is a particularly good technical exposition of the Senses of Scripture in Fr Reginald Fuller's article on ‘The Interpretation of Scripture’ in the Catholic Commentary, esp. 39c-40k. The example of Genesis 3, 15 for the plenary sense is taken from there (39k).
3 Those who read the Breviary know so well St Jerome's preoccupations with the ‘son of Barachias’ in Matthew 23, 35 (Homily for December 26th), and with the meaning of Volo mundare in Matthew 8, 3 (Homily for Third Sunday after Epiphany); and likewise St Augustine's symbolic interpretation of the man's thirty-eight years of illness in John 5, 5 (Homily for Friday Ember-Day in Lent), and his explanation of Jacob's mysterium non mendacium (Second Sunday of Lent).
4 For this and the subsequent historical analysis I am indebted to Dom Célestin Charlier's book La Lecture Chrétienne de la Bible (Third Edition, 1951), the opening chapter. An article written à propos by the present writer in The Life Of The Spirit for February 1952 goes into the historical question more fully than in the present paper.
5 Canon G. D. Smith's translation (C.T.S. ed., n. 49) of ‘nativus sensus'.
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