Senses of the Scripture

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Hi! I’m Alexs, a Religious Education student from the University of Santo Tomas. I would like to ask for your opinion. Do you think the different senses of the scripture (allegorical sense, spiritual sense, etc.) would help everyone to fully understand the Bible?
 
alexs18 said:
Hi! I’m Alexs, a Religious Education student from the University of Santo Tomas. I would like to ask for your opinion. Do you think the different senses of the scripture (allegorical sense, spiritual sense, etc.) would help everyone to fully understand the Bible?
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Well, they are the senses of the Scripture, so I would think they would.

It’s not like the ancient Church just said, “Ok, we’re going to throw out a bunch of senses of the Scriptures so we can confuse everyone! Let’s see, where’d that die go? Ah, here it is! Ok, let’s see, the first sense of Scripture is… rolls die Moral, alright! Ok, the next sense of Scripture is… rolls die Allegorical! No idea what that terms means but okay, the third sense of the Scriptures… rolls die Literal! Nice, we can use that one in Genesis to attack evolution. (“What’s evolution?” piped up a Bishop in the back”) Okay, the final sense of the Scripture is… rolls die Anagogical! Weeeee! My favorite word! That was fun."

(Sadly that’s how some people think the Church actually came up with the four sense of Scriptures)
 
alexs18 said:
Hi! I’m Alexs, a Religious Education student from the University of Santo Tomas. I would like to ask for your opinion. Do you think the different senses of the scripture (allegorical sense, spiritual sense, etc.) would help everyone to fully understand the Bible?
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Prima Pars Question 1 Article 10 of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica should answer your question.
 
Yes, very much. You totally have to get the different senses to really understand the Bible.

Some examples:
You can learn about the plagues on Egypt until you are blue in the face and they will never mean more than God’s punishment until you understand that the Egyptians considered each of these things Gods and it was God’s way of saying… I am the only REAL God.

Why are the Gospels all slightly different? It isn’t just because they were written by different people, they were written for different audiences… for the Jews, for the Gentiles, for the pagans… some things were more meaningful to the Jews for example because they knew their history and mosaic law… whereas, the pagans knew nothing of the history and had previously worshiped idols.

Historically, how do we know what casing pearls to swine meant? Or dogs getting the crumbs of the Jews? Who were the swine, who were the dogs? It helps to know what they considered such back then doesn’t it?

There are many more examples but I don’t have time at the moment
 
alexs18 said:
Hi! I’m Alexs, a Religious Education student from the University of Santo Tomas. I would like to ask for your opinion. Do you think the different senses of the scripture (allegorical sense, spiritual sense, etc.) would help everyone to fully understand the Bible?
Click to expand...
Hey Alexs, welcome to CAF! I think this website will help you out, Bible Christian Society. Click on free MP3 downloads and listen to Catholics and the Bible. The website also has booklets that go with the talks that can also be downloaded. Hope this helps.

God bless,
ZP
 
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