Understanding the Bible

Catholics are commonly accused of not being allowed to read the Bible on their own due to misinterpretation. This however is simply untrue. When, in history, Catholics were forbidden to read the Bible, this “Bible” a mistranslation of God’s word, therefore not the bible at all. Hence the banned versions were simply unauthorized editions.

We commonly hear that Catholics cannot interpret the Bible on their own. The Papal Encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritus, (Pope Pius XII, 1943) counteracted this by stating that there are but few texts whose understanding has been determined by the teaching authority of the Church; and Catholics do indeed have freedom to interpret the Scriptures.

It is interesting to note though that it is easy (and quite common) to find contradictory meanings and teachings from Scripture, this does not mean that the Scriptures are in error or are wrong, it simply means that they must be read in context.

Literal sense of interpretation
Definition: the literal sense of Scripture is the meaning which the human author directly intended and the author's words convey.

Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John is a perfect example of the Bible speaking in a literal sense. We hear Jesus reiterating the same message in different words to get a specific point across. He allows people to leave and reject Him based off this one teaching. If Christ was not speaking literally he would have told them to come back as His teaching was only figurate or he was speaking metaphorically. He did not do this, therefore we can conclude that this was not a parable, but Truth itself.

Fuller Sense
The Bible has both a human author and divine author – God. The Church teaches that there exists a more-than-literal meaning for understanding the Bible: a fuller sense.

Definition: The fuller sense is the deeper meaning intended by God as divine author. This meaning of the scripture may not have even been clearly known (or understood) by the author.

We see an example of the “fuller sense” of Scriptures in Isaiah and the New Testament. Isaiah provides no evidence that he was speaking of Jesus' conception in the womb of Mary. Isaiah speaks of an unmarried woman, not a virgin. Isaiah is not clear that he is even speaking to a distant future conception. At the time of Isaiah's words in chapter 7, the mother of the future King Hezekiah would have been unmarried.

Then in the New Testament, Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, creates an interpretation of Isaiah which is definitely not literal, but spiritual. He interprets Isaiah in the fuller sense: the unmarried woman is the virgin Mary, and God-with-us is Jesus.

Typical Sense
The definition of the typical sense of interpretation is as follows: The typical sense of Bible texts is the deeper meaning of the Scriptures that foreshadow/shadow further things.

We see an example in Paul's writings. Paul establishes similarities between the New Testament and the Old Testament. In 1 Cor 10:6 Paul compares the events which took place in Sinai to the Israelites to those things that are happening to Christians in his present day.

Another example of the typical meaning in the Bible is when Moses raises the bronze serpent, in the New Testament the evangelist John presents raising the bronze serpent as a type of Christ crucified (3:14).