Medieval Hermeneutics

The schoolmen fell into the fundamental error of supposing that an elaboration of phraseology is a science of theology, and that we can add to our knowledge of God by dialectic formulae about Him. Can any other name but nonsense be given to discussions as to whether the Father begets the Divine Essence, or whether the Divine Essence begets the Son? Whether the Essence begets the Essence, or whether the Essence itself neither begets nor is begotten? Such questions, as Erasmus says, it is more learned to ignore than to know. For all these years, he says, we have been frivolously caviling in the schools whether we should say that Christ is composed or that He consists of two nature; and whether the right word to use respecting their union is “conflate,” or “commixed,” or “conglutinate,” or “coagmentate,” or “copulated,” or “ferruminate.” What again, are we to say of the immense and long-continued discussions as to whether the host still continued to be the body of Christ if it was eaten by a mouse, or the wine to be his blood when tasted by an insect which had fallen into the chalice?

Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation, Bampton Lectures 1885 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961), 292-293.

Thomas Aquinas

The multiplicity of these senses does not produce equivocation or any other kind of multiplicity, seeing that these senses are not multiplied because one word signifies several things; but because the things signified by the words can themselves be types of other things. Thus in Holy Writ no confusion results, for all the senses are founded on one – the literal – from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory, as Augustine says. Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scripture perishes on account of this, since nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense.

Summa Theologica 1.1.10 in McCartney, Let the Reader Understand (Bridge Point, 1994), 92.

Thomas Aquinas

The author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify his meaning, not by words only (as man also can do) but by things themselves. So, whereas in every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property that the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification. Therefore that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal. That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and presupposes it. For as the apostle says (Heb. 10:1) the Old Law is a figure of the New Law and [Pseudo-] Dionysius says: “The New Law itself is a figure of future glory.” Again, in the New Law, whatever our Head has done is a type of what we ought to do. Therefore, so far as the things of the Old Law signify the things of the New Law, there is the allegorical sense; so far as the things done in Christ, or so far as the things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do, there is the moral sense. But so far as they signify what relates to eternal glory, there is the anagogical sense. Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confessions xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Writ should have several senses.

Summa Theologica 1.1.10 in McCartney, Let the Reader Understand (Bridge Point, 1994), 91.