Froehlich is one of our most distinguished church historians. Here, with the collaboration of Mark Burrows, he has given us an interesting and fascinating book on the historic fourfold “senses of Scripture” (Lat. quadriga) that dominated medieval hermeneutics from the time of Augustine to the Reformation. The book began as Warfield Lectures at Princeton Seminary in 1997 and now stands as a compact and wise discussion of the “senses of Scripture” with which Froehlich links a physical “sense” as a counterpart to each.
The window into this is “Arminadab's chariot.” This is from a confusing passage in the Song of Songs (6:12), the Hebrew of which is uncertain, and which the NRSV translates as “Before I was aware, my fancy set me in a chariot beside my prince.” But amid all the uncertainties relating to various biblical figures called “Aminadab” and variants in biblical texts, Froehlich indicates that the “Latin Vulgate follows the Greek and reads ‘propter quadrigas Aminadab’ (‘on account of the quadriga of Aminadab’); the Latin plural designates a chariot with a team of four. This finally provides the Aminadab from whom the title of this book derives, because for centuries during the Middle Ages, this ‘Aminadab's chariot’ with its four horses was among the common biblical images suggesting the one Bible (chariot) with its fourfold interpretation (the four horses)” (6).
The pairing of the fourfold sense of scripture is with the bodily senses. We call forms of scriptural understanding as well as forms of physical perception, “senses.” So physical senses belong to the work of perception—of reality itself. The classical tradition, says Froehlich, “reckoned with a wide variety of ways of perceiving” (13). At the very least, “hermeneutics as the theory of interpretation, and aesthetics as the theory of perception, belong closely together in the Western tradition” (13).
In the history of biblical interpretation, some have articulated “rules” and “principles.” Methods and rules could deal with biblical texts in terms of trying to interpret questions the texts present. But these are not enough. For Froehlich, “the knowledge of methods and rules may make an exegete, but does not yet make an interpreter” (17). Needed also is an understanding of the “why” of the text—the expectation of “what the text was ultimately going to do,” a “grasp of the religious goal of interpretation, the theological parameter into which the interpretation is supposed to move the text in the mind of the hearer and reader” (18). Augustine exemplified this when he formulated the rule that “any interpretation of a biblical passage is ‘correct’ if it serves to promote the double love of God and neighbor” (20). By the late Middle Ages, “people of all sorts took delight in any opportunity to interpret Scripture, finding with amazement ever new levels of meaning.” So “Aminadab's chariot” presented “unlimited opportunities for discovery.”
Froehlich tells the fascinating story of the fourfold sense of scripture through the “senses” of scripture: 1) Littera: Touching the Ground; 2) Allegoria: Seeing the Beauty; 3) Tropologia: Hearing the Truth; and 4) Anagogia: Tasting Reality.
Literal sense. In Aristotle's hierarchy, touch is the lowest sense. But it has a foundational place in our perceptions. The “literal” sense of scripture fulfilled this place in Gregory the Great's delineation: “First the foundation is laid (littera) then the walls are erected (allegoria), then the house is decorated with paint (tropologia, the other word for moral interpretation). Medieval authors added the roof—anagogia, anagogy (38). Aquinas said, “All spiritual senses are founded on the literal.” Luther redefined the single literal sense as “including rather than excluding the dynamics of the spiritual ascent in its scope” (42). God is the sovereign Lord over the Word, despite human authors and interpreters (43).
Allegorical sense. Allegory stresses an inner vision. So “sight” enables us to see something while also seeing something else. Allegory is a sustained metaphor (Quintilian; 47). Great allegorists, such as Origen and Augustine, recognized “the Bible is full of the most wonderful figures once one has trained one's eye to look for them and ‘see’ them” (55). Allegorical interpretation in the Middle Ages was to instruct in the truths of the Christian faith and illumine Christian doctrine. Originally, allegory helped interpret the Old Testament's relation to the New Testament. It has been “the ‘glue’ that held the two together” (62). Above all it helps us to “recognize” Christ, as did the travelers to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35).
Tropological sense. Hearing is more comprehensive than seeing. A German saying is, “the eye guesses, but the ear measures” (69). Hearing sets the context for teaching and learning. The tropological sense is the moral sense of Scripture. It tells how to live the Christian life. New waves of medieval preachers elevated tropology over allegory as the stuff of sermons. Sermons were full of moral instruction. Indeed, says Froehlich, later protestant theology and preaching after Kant “approached the Bible as a guide to a moral goodness that reflected God's general providence” (78). In tropology, the Bible is applied to the human soul, the daily here and now.
Anagogical sense. The final sense is the “high point” (85). It is to “taste and see” (Psalm 34:8), the goodness of God, centered for many in the experience of God's presence in the Eucharist. For Augustine God's presence is the highest form of sweetness. The movement here is upward and forward-reaching eschatology. It is ultimately “the eternal happiness of the blessed above” (94; De Lubac).
Froehlich's intriguing work shows the complexity of biblical interpretation and confirms Gregory the Great's saying that Scripture is like a river “in which the lamb walks and the elephant swims” (120). Biblical interpretation is always incomplete. So also, “sensing the Scripture” remains, as Froehlich says, “a never-ending task for Christians” (142).
