Leading Us Home

The entire message of Scripture might be summed up as this: The God who is love created us to bring us to a perfect union of love with him. I would argue that every other aspect of the Faith is somehow supportive of that underlying premise.

Thus, the Anagogical Sense of the Scriptures, that which leads us forward to our eternal homeland, is perhaps the most important point. The Allegorical Sense can lead to a reduction of God's revelation through the Scriptures & the history of the people of Israel to a mere intellectual exercise akin to "Biblical matching", such as, "Oh, Moses is like Jesus, Pharoah is like the devil, Miriam is like Mary, the Israelites are like the Church, the serpents that bit them are like sin, ..." These cranial gymnastics are interesting, but by themselves may become a distraction that isn't that helpful in moving one toward salvation.

Likewise, the Moral Sense alone could lead one to just try to be a good person, a mere human effort to earn God's favor through "being good." Well, my Pelagian friend, the problem is that salvation is a pure, unmerrited gift from God, which we gratefully accept.

So, you see, it's easy to get the whole Catholic system of Scripture study out of whack if first things aren't put first. The absolutely overriding desire of every human life should be this: to get to Heaven. Thus the Anagogical Sense helps us to get our Biblical priorities straight, and - to paraphrase a certain Cardinal Ratzinger - to keep from imprisoning the Word of God in the letters themselves.

Over at First Things, Mark Shea has another installment in his series about Catholic Scripture study called Coming to Our Senses, dealing specifically this time with the Anagogical Sense. God bless him for taking on this noble task.

The Moral Sense

Continuing his series on the Senses of Scripture as outlined in the Vatican II document Dei Verbum & the Catechism (109-119), Mark Shea investigates the Moral Sense. The Church teaches that we be attentive to the Literal & Spiritual senses of Scripture, with the latter subdivided into Allegorical, Moral, & Anagogical senses.

He does a nice job of tying the whole subject to common current day objections that there is no moral authority outside of the individual, & certainly not within that collection of perhaps edifying, but nonetheless fictional stories called the Bible.

There's a lot to consider about this, as in American, the conscience is routinely considered the supreme authority - even in matters of faith - over either Church teaching or decisions. But all that will have to wait for later. For now, just ponder the article (see here).

The Historical-Critical Let Down

Mark Shea is at it again (see here). He is one of the very few Catholic authors I know that is intentionally seeking to advance the state of Catholic scripture scholarship by tackling what the Council actually said about studying the Holy Writ (see here, esp. Art. III), instead of just regurgitating the same old theories, guesses, & attendant errors. Well, him & the Pope, I suppose.

A releated must-hear: Fr. Zuhlsdorf's excellent website has a wonderful podcazt (see here) that includes, among other things, John Cleese reading from the Screwtape Letters regarding the historical-critical method.