The Spiritual Sense of Scripture

The first thing to understand is that the plurality of senses is not a defect nor a license left to the reader’s imagination. It arises from the very nature of the Bible: a word that is both human and divine, where God uses not only the words of the authors but also the realities and events they recount.

A Word Both Divine and Human

A purely human book has only one sense: that which its author intended to convey through words. The Bible is different because it has two authors: the sacred writer and God Himself, the “principal author” who inspires the writer without overriding him^[7]. Now God, unlike man, does not limit Himself to signifying things by words: He can make the things signified by the words themselves signify others. This is exactly the distinction Saint Thomas makes:

“The author of Holy Scripture is God, to whose power it belongs not only to adapt words to express something — which man can also do — but also to adapt the things themselves. […] And this is why, in Holy Scripture, the very things signified by the words can themselves signify something else.”
— Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 1, a. 10^[8]

This sentence contains the whole doctrine. The literal sense is carried by the words; the spiritual sense is carried by the realities that the words designate. When Exodus recounts that the people crossed the sea on dry ground, the words describe a historical fact (literal sense); but the fact itself — a passage through waters that saves from death and slavery — is arranged by God to foreshadow another: Christian baptism (spiritual sense)^[9].

The Scriptural Foundation: “The Letter Kills, but the Spirit Gives Life”

Spiritual reading was not invented by the Fathers: it is commanded by the New Testament itself, which constantly rereads the Old as speaking of Christ and the Church.

“These things happened to them as examples” (1 Cor 10)

The foundational text is from Saint Paul. Recalling the Exodus — the cloud, the crossing of the sea, the manna, the rock from which water flowed — he writes:

“Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.”
— Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:11^[10] The Greek word used is typos (“type,” “figure”) and the adverb typikôs (“in a typical manner”)^[11]: the events of the Old Testament are types, real prefigurations willed by God, of which Christ and the sacraments are the fulfillment. This is the root of what is called typology, the heart of the allegorical sense. For a catalog of these prefigurations, see Figures of Christ in the Old Testament.

The Allegory of Sarah and Hagar (Gal 4)

Saint Paul goes even further. Commenting on the story of Abraham’s two sons—one born of the slave Hagar, the other of the free woman Sarah—he explicitly uses the verb allègoroumena:

“Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. […] But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.”
— Saint Paul, Galatians 4:24-26^[12]

The Apostle himself thus authorizes a reading in which the characters and institutions of the Old Testament figure spiritual realities: the two covenants, the earthly Jerusalem and the heavenly Jerusalem. This is not a literary device added afterward, but the way the Holy Spirit—who inspired Paul just as He inspired Genesis—re-reads His own Word.

Christ Opening the Scriptures (Luke 24)

The key to all spiritual reading is given by the risen Christ himself, on the road to Emmaus:

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
— Gospel according to Saint Luke, 24:27^[13]

Christ affirms that all Scripture speaks about him: “You search the Scriptures […] and these are they which testify of me”^[14]. Spiritual reading is therefore not a pious over-interpretation imposed on the text: it is the reading that Christ himself inaugurated and entrusted to his Church. To read the Old Testament without seeking Christ would, according to tradition, be to stop at the letter that “kills” and miss the Spirit that “gives life.”

“The New Hidden in the Old”: Saint Augustine’s Formula

This entire dynamic was summed up by Saint Augustine in a now proverbial formula, which the Catechism still cites today^[15]:

“The New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old is unveiled in the New.”
— Saint Augustine, Questions on the Heptateuch, 2, 73^[16]

The Old and New Testaments are not two juxtaposed books, but one single economy of salvation that God unfolds in two stages. The Old contains the New “in figure”; the New reveals the hidden meaning of the Old. This is precisely the space where the spiritual sense unfolds.

Before ascending to the spiritual sense, one must secure the ground: the literal sense. Contrary to a common misconception, the Catholic tradition—and Saint Thomas above all—gives the literal sense an absolute primacy. The spiritual sense is never an escape from the text: it is what the text, taken seriously in its letter, carries further.

What the Literal Sense Is (and What It Is Not)

The Catechism defines it precisely:

“The literal sense. This is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis which observes the rules of sound interpretation. ‘All the senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.’”
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 116^[17]

Three important clarifications. First, the literal sense is not the “material” or “literalistic” sense: it includes metaphors, parables, hyperboles, poetry. When the Psalm says that the mountains “skip like rams,” the literal sense is the poetic image intended by the author, not the absurd idea that mountains literally jump. Second, accessing the literal sense requires real work: knowing the language, the literary genre, the historical and cultural context—as Dei Verbum § 12 expressly demands^[18]. Finally, the literal sense is the meaning intended by the inspired human author: it sets the starting point and prevents interpretation from drifting.

Saint Thomas: “All Senses Are Based on the Literal”

Saint Thomas’s golden rule, echoed word for word by the Catechism, is that spiritual richness never dispenses with the letter but depends on it:

“All the senses [of Scripture] are based on one, the literal sense, and it is from this alone that one can draw an argument, and not from those said to be allegorical.”
— Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1^[19]

In other words: one does not prove a doctrine by an allegory. If a Father sees in the two denarii of the Good Samaritan the two Testaments, this is an edifying spiritual reading—but one would never base the dogma of the two Testaments on this detail: it is founded on what the text literally affirms elsewhere. This rule is a crucial safeguard: it has allowed Catholic theology to avoid the excesses of allegorism while preserving the fruitfulness of spiritual reading.

Why Only the Literal Sense Makes Argument in Theology

The reason is logical. The spiritual sense presupposes that the realities signified by the words signify others; but to know which realities are involved, one must first establish what the text says—i.e., the literal sense. The spiritual is grafted onto the literal like fruit on a branch: cut the branch, and you lose the fruit. That is why an authentic spiritual sense is recognized by its extension of the literal without contradicting it, and by its confirmation elsewhere in the explicit teaching of Scripture or the Church. A “spiritual sense” that contradicts the letter, or rests on nothing, would not be a sense of Scripture: it would be a projection of the reader.

Upon this foundation rises the spiritual sense, traditionally divided into three according to the object it illuminates: what one must believe (allegorical), what one must do (moral), and what one aims for (anagogical). Together with the literal sense, these form the famous four senses of Scripture.

Definition: Reading in the Spirit, in the Light of the Paschal Mystery

The best contemporary definition is that of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1993). The spiritual sense is defined there as:

“the meaning expressed by the biblical texts when read under the influence of the Holy Spirit in the context of the paschal mystery of Christ and the new life that results from it.” — Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, II, B, 2 (1993)^[20]

Three elements are essential and guide spiritual reading against distortions: (1) it is done under the influence of the Holy Spirit, not by personal virtuosity; (2) its center is the paschal mystery — the death and resurrection of Christ; (3) it leads to a new life, not merely an intellectual exercise. The Commission adds that there is no reason to oppose the spiritual sense to the literal sense: the spiritual sense is not a floating second level, it is the literal sense itself “re-read” in the light of Easter^[21].

The Allegorical Sense: What You Must Believe

The allegorical sense (from the Greek allègorein, “to say something else”) recognizes in the persons, events, and institutions of the Old Testament figures of Christ and the Church. The Catechism gives the canonical example:

“The allegorical sense. We can gain a deeper understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign of Christ’s victory, and therefore of Baptism.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 117^[22]

Allegory answers the question “What must I believe?”: it nourishes faith by showing the unity of God’s plan. Noah’s ark figures the Church that saves from the waters; the paschal lamb figures the sacrificed Christ; the bronze serpent lifted up by Moses figures the Cross (Christ himself makes this connection, Jn 3:14); Isaac carrying the wood of sacrifice figures Christ carrying his Cross. This is the spiritual sense par excellence, the one most practiced by the New Testament.

The Moral (Tropological) Sense: What You Must Do

The moral sense, also called tropological (from the Greek tropos, “way of acting”), draws from Scripture lessons for Christian conduct:

“The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture can lead us to right action. They were written ‘for our instruction’ (1 Cor 10:11).” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 117^[23]

It answers the question “What must I do?” David’s fight against Goliath becomes the Christian’s fight against vices; the Exodus becomes the departure from sin; the virtues of Abraham, Ruth, or Tobit become a program for life. This sense was especially dear to the monastic tradition, which read Scripture less to speculate than to be transformed. Saint Gregory the Great made it the framework of his Moralia in Job^[24].

The Anagogical Sense: What You Aim For

The anagogical sense (from the Greek anagôgè, “elevation,” “ascent”) reads biblical realities as signs of Heaven and the last things:

“The anagogical sense. We can see realities and events in their eternal significance, leading us (in Greek: anagogè) toward our homeland; thus the Church on earth is the sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 117^[25]

It answers the question “Where am I going?” The Promised Land figures Heaven; the Sabbath rest figures eternal rest; the Jerusalem of stone figures the “Jerusalem above” (Gal 4:26; Rev 21). Anagogy directs the entire movement of reading toward hope: it prevents faith from being confined to the present and draws it toward eternity.

The Medieval Distich: “Littera gesta docet…”

All this was summed up around 1260 in a mnemonic distich of remarkable effectiveness, by the Scandinavian Dominican Augustine of Denmark in his Rotulus pugillaris^[26]:

“Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.”
“The letter teaches the facts; allegory, what you must believe; the moral sense, what you must do; anagogy, what you aim for.”
— Distich of the four senses, cited by the Catechism, § 118^[27]

This verse summarizes a thousand years of tradition in eight key words: gesta (the facts), credas (believe), agas (act), tendas (aim). It structured all medieval teaching on Scripture and remains today the best entry point into the doctrine of the senses. Note a variant of the last hemistich in some manuscripts — “quid speres anagogia” (“anagogy, what you must hope for”)^[28] — which says the same thing: anagogy is the sense of hope.

The doctrine of the four senses did not fall fully formed from the sky: it was slowly developed, from the early Greek Fathers to the scholastic synthesis, purifying itself of excesses along the way.

Origen and the Triple Reading (Body, Soul, Spirit)

The first great theorist of the spiritual sense is Origen (c. 185 – c. 253), in Alexandria. In his treatise On First Principles (Book IV), he compares Scripture to man, made up of body, soul, and spirit, and therefore proposes a triple reading:

“Each one must describe in his soul, in a threefold manner, the thoughts of the Holy Scriptures: so that the simple may be edified by the body, so to speak, of Scripture — this is the name we give to the immediate sense; while the one who has progressed will be edified by the soul; and the perfect […] by the spiritual law, which contains the shadow of the goods to come.”
— Origen, On First Principles, IV, 2, 4^[29]

Origen bases this triple reading on a verse from Proverbs (22:20) which he reads as “write these things three times”^[30]. His genius opened spiritual exegesis to the entire tradition; but his allegorical boldness, sometimes detached from history, also called for corrections. It is from his triple reading that the scheme of the four senses would gradually take shape and become more precise.

The Schools of Alexandria and Antioch: Allegory versus Typology

Christian antiquity experienced a fruitful tension between two schools^[31]. Alexandria (Origen, Saint Cyril) cultivated allegory, sometimes to the point of dissolving history into symbol. Antioch (Saint John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia) emphasized the historical sense and preferred typology — which respects the reality of ancient facts while reading a prefiguration in them. Catholic wisdom retained the best of both: a typology grounded in real history (Antioch) open to the mystery of Christ (Alexandria), while avoiding allegorism that dissipates the text. This distinction still guides discernment today between a sound spiritual reading and arbitrary symbolism.

John Cassian and the Example of Jerusalem

It is to John Cassian (c. 360 – c. 435), who transmitted the wisdom of the Desert Fathers to Western monasticism, that we owe the classic exposition of the four senses. In his fourteenth Conference, he takes a single word — Jerusalem — and shows that it can be read in four ways:

“These four figures converge, if one wishes, in a single subject, so that one and the same Jerusalem can be understood in four ways: historically, the city of the Jews; allegorically, the Church of Christ; anagogically, the heavenly city of God, ‘which is the mother of us all’; tropologically, the soul of man.”
— John Cassian, Conferences, XIV, 8^[32]

This example became the school model for the entire Western tradition: it shows that the four senses are not four different texts, but four depths of the same text, unfolding without contradiction. Cassian here fixes the vocabulary (history, allegory, tropology, anagogy) that would be taken up throughout the Middle Ages and, ultimately, the Catechism.

Saint Gregory the Great and the Monastic Reading

Pope Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540–604) popularized the spiritual reading in the Latin West, especially through his immense Moralia in Job^[33]. He compares Scripture to a river “where the lamb walks and the elephant swims” — simple enough for the unlearned, deep enough for the scholar. He favors the transition from the historical sense to the moral sense (the tropology), making Scripture a school of interior conversion. His method, more contemplative than technical, shaped centuries of monastic lectio divina: Scripture is read to be judged and transformed by it, not to dominate it.

The Scholastic Synthesis of Saint Thomas Aquinas

In the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas effected the decisive synthesis (Summa Theologica, I, q. 1, a. 10). He accomplishes three things. First, he grounds the doctrine in metaphysics: the spiritual sense is possible because God, author of history, can make things themselves signify. Next, he orders the senses: one literal sense, three spiritual senses, all grafted onto the literal. Finally, he disciplines exegesis: only the literal sense provides argument, which protects theology from arbitrariness. With Thomas, the doctrine of the four senses ceases to be a spiritual practice and becomes a rigorous theology of the Word of God — the one that the Catechism would later adopt.

Not everything is spiritual sense in what is sometimes called “spiritual reading.” The Catholic tradition carefully distinguishes several realities, some of which are true senses of Scripture (intended by God), others mere pious uses without authoritative value. Confusing the two is the main source of errors.

Typology: A Sense Intended by God in the Facts

Typology is the core and most reliable part of the spiritual sense. It is based on the fact that God arranged real events and persons (the “types”) to prefigure others (the “antitypes”). Adam is the type of Christ (the “new Adam”, Rom 5:14); the flood and the ark prefigure baptism (1 Pet 3:20-21); Melchizedek prefigures the priesthood of Christ (Heb 7). Typology respects history: the type truly existed, and it is in its very reality that it carries the announcement. This is why it fully belongs to the spiritual sense and why the New Testament makes abundant use of it.

Allegorism: The Temptation to Dissolve Everything

Allegorism (to be distinguished from legitimate allegorical sense) is its caricature: it consists of imposing arbitrary meanings on the text, unrelated to the literal sense or the faith of the Church, to the point of dissolving history into symbol. When every number, every color, every detail begins to “mean” anything at the whim of the interpreter, one is no longer in Scripture but in imagination. The Thomistic rule — only the literal sense argues — and rooting in the Church’s Tradition are the two bulwarks against this drift. The allegorical sense is legitimate when it extends the literal and is received by the Church; it becomes allegorism as soon as it breaks free from it.

The Accommodative Sense: Pious Use, Not Doctrinal Authority

The accommodative sense consists in “accommodating” a biblical text to a situation it did not originally intend — for example, applying a verse written for Wisdom to a holy foundress. The liturgy does this constantly, and it is legitimate and fruitful as a spiritual use. But — a crucial point — it is not a sense of Scripture: accommodation proves nothing, because it comes from the reader, not from the divine intention inscribed in the text. Confusing it with typology would be a mistake: one cannot base a dogma on an accommodation, however beautiful it may be.

Sensus Plenior: The “Fuller Sense”

Modern exegesis has coined the notion of sensus plenior (“fuller sense”): a deeper meaning, intended by God but not clearly perceived by the human author, which is revealed in the light of completed Revelation or the development of dogma. A classic example: the prophecy of the “Emmanuel” born of a “young woman” (Is 7:14), reread by Saint Matthew as an announcement of the virginal birth of Christ. The Pontifical Biblical Commission (1993) accepts this notion with caution, linking it either to an enriched literal sense or to the spiritual sense, and requiring that it be verified by a later inspired text or by authentic Tradition — otherwise it would be mere opinion^[34].

The spiritual sense is not primarily a matter for specialists: from the beginning, it has been the living mode of reading of the Church in prayer. Liturgy and lectio divina are its native ground.

Liturgy, the Native Place of the Spiritual Sense

It is in the liturgy that the Church most spontaneously reads Scripture in the spiritual sense. On the night of Easter, the Vigil rereads the entire sacred history — creation, Isaac’s sacrifice, the crossing of the Red Sea, prophecies — as a single announcement of the risen Christ. The crossing of the Red Sea is not a past event there: it is sung as a figure of baptism received that night by the catechumens. Typology is prayed there, not demonstrated. This is why tradition affirms that liturgy is “the privileged place” of spiritual reading: what exegesis analyzes, liturgy celebrates.

Lectio Divina: The Four Senses as a Ladder of Prayer

Lectio divina — prayerful reading of the Bible practiced by monks since Cassian and Gregory — naturally embraces the four senses. The monk reads the text (its letter: lectio), meditates on what it reveals about Christ and faith (allegory: meditatio), allows himself to be converted in his actions (moral sense: oratio), and rises toward God and Heaven (anagogical sense: contemplatio). The four senses thus become the four rungs of a ladder leading from the page to prayer. This method remains recommended by the Church today; Pope Benedict XVI made it one of the core elements of his exhortation Verbum Domini (2010)^[35]. For practical guidance, see How to Read the Bible Catholicly.

The Psalms Prayed in Christ

The case of the Psalms is the most striking. Israel composed and prayed them (literal sense); the Church prays them every day in the voice of Christ (spiritual sense). When the Christian sings “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 21), he first prays the lament of a persecuted just man, but above all he prays the prayer of Christ on the cross, who made this word his own (Mt 27:46). The entire Liturgy of the Hours rests on this Christological reading of the Psalms: the same words, infinitely deepened by the paschal mystery. This is the spiritual sense at work, not in a commentary, but in the daily prayer of the Church.

The spiritual sense experienced a long eclipse in the modern era before being fully rehabilitated by the Magisterium of the 20th century. Understanding this movement helps situate the current Catholic position, balanced between historical rigor and spiritual depth.

The Historical-Critical Method and the Eclipse of the Spiritual Sense

From the 19th century onward, the historical-critical method became dominant: it studies biblical texts as historical documents—sources, dating, literary genres, and contexts of composition. This method is legitimate and necessary: it serves the literal sense, which the Church has always sought to keep solid^[36]. However, when pushed to extremes by some rationalist exegesis, it sometimes claimed that only the meaning reconstructed by the historian mattered—reducing the spiritual sense to a pious survival or even an illusion. The risk was a Bible “frozen in the past,” learned but silent for faith.

Henri de Lubac and the Rediscovery of the Four Senses

It was the Jesuit Henri de Lubac (1896–1991), later cardinal, who carried out the great rehabilitation. In his monumental work Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture (4 volumes, Aubier, 1959–1964)^[37], he demonstrated that the fourfold reading was not a medieval fancy but a coherent theology centered on Christ, and that severing it from the Bible would mean losing the unity of the two Testaments. De Lubac summarized the fruitfulness of the scheme as follows: history (literal) grounds, allegory builds up faith, tropology converts, and anagogy consoles and elevates. His influence directly prepared the chapter of Dei Verbum on interpretation and the doctrine in the Catechism.

Dei Verbum 12: Reading “in the Same Spirit”

The Vatican II Council, in the dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum (1965), established the Catholic balance. It calls for both: on the one hand, work on the literal sense (literary genres, context); on the other, reading in the Spirit:

“Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.”
— Vatican II Council, Dei Verbum, § 12^[38]

The Council sets out three criteria for this ecclesial spiritual reading, echoed by the Catechism^[39]: to be attentive to the “content and unity of the whole Scripture” (with Christ as its center), to read it within the “living Tradition of the whole Church,” and to respect the “analogy of faith.” The spiritual sense is therefore never a private reading: it is received within the communion of the Church.

The Pontifical Biblical Commission (1993): Reconciling the Two Senses

In 1993, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, presented by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, published The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church—the most comprehensive assessment of the question. The document fully embraces the historical-critical method as indispensable for the literal sense, while strongly reaffirming the legitimacy of the spiritual sense, which it defines (see above) by the paschal mystery^[40]. Above all, it refuses to oppose them: the spiritual sense is not a subjective addition but the literal sense itself as fulfilled in Christ. The document also warns against “fundamentalist” readings that stop at the material letter, as well as against arbitrary symbolisms that disregard it^[41].

Benedict XVI and Verbum Domini

Pope Benedict XVI crowned this movement in his exhortation Verbum Domini (2010), the fruit of the Synod on the Word of God. There he advocates for an exegesis that unites the two dimensions—historical and theological—and reminds that “where exegesis is not theology, Scripture cannot be the soul of theology, and vice versa, where theology is not essentially the interpretation of Scripture in the Church, such theology no longer has a foundation”^[42]. Reading the Bible solely on the historical level, without faith, is to read a “dead letter”; reading it in the Spirit is to encounter the living Christ. Thus, at the highest level of the Magisterium, the great synthesis is closed: the literal sense and the spiritual sense are not rivals but the two depths of the same Word, one bearing the other.

“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”
— Saint Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, prologue^[43]

The doctrine of the spiritual sense ultimately has only one goal: that reading the Bible does not stop at the surface of the words but leads to Him of whom all Scripture speaks, to believe in Him (allegory), to follow Him (moral), and to reach Him (anagogy).

• Read The Bible: the formation of the canon, the 73 inspired books, and the doctrine of inspiration that underpins the plurality of senses.
• Read The Catholic Interpretation of the Bible: the Church’s rules for reading and the historical-critical method serving the literal sense.
• Read How to Read the Bible Catholicly: the practical practice of lectio divina and prayerful reading.
• Read The Figures of Christ in the Old Testament: a catalog of major typological prefigurations (Adam, Isaac, the paschal lamb, the bronze serpent, Melchizedek…).
• Remember the heart of the matter: Scripture has a literal sense (what the words say) and a spiritual sense (what God intends to signify through the realities themselves), the latter unfolding in three — to believe (allegory), to act (moral), to hope (anagogy). Every authentic spiritual sense is grounded in the literal, received in the faith of the Church, and leads to Christ.