The Four Senses of Scripture

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Jonathan T. Pennington

“Patrick Schreiner boldly retrieves the quadriga, the ancient fourfold sense of Scripture, not as a flight from literal meaning (or biblical authority) but as its fulfillment. He adores the allegories that Luther abhorred but only because the spiritual senses are rooted in the literal sense, present Christ, and guide Christians in their earthly lives and heavenly hopes. A timely and important proposal to recover a mode of reading proper to the church's Scripture rather than the academy's Bible and to heal the long-standing breach between critical biblical studies and theological interpretation.”

Kevin Vanhoozer

“In his fantastic The Four Senses of Scripture, Patrick Schreiner says we must we recover the medieval four senses of Scripture. Why? Because they uniquely lay out a way of reading that comports with the way God's world is and the way God's Word runs. Because the quadriga puts the Bible back into the hands of the people and helps heal the breach between the academy and the church. And because reading according to the four senses draws us more deeply into communion with the living God.”

Peter J. Leithart

“Revive the quadriga? Seriously?' Those were my initial thoughts when I got wind of this book. And, confessedly, I did not expect to find Patrick Schreiner's ambitious result as persuasive or enjoyable as it turned out to be. He accomplishes three main wins in this excellent project. He provides an accessible account of key issues in ancient and modern biblical interpretation. He ploughs a path forward for reinvigorating what many evangelicals already do with Scripture—namely, build from grammar and history to Christ and the life of the church. And he makes a compelling attempt at retrieving the fourfold sense not only from the ancients but from the Bible itself. Schreiner aptly shows that allegorical, tropological, and anagogical reading strategies do not compete with traditional literal/historical exegesis but flower from within it. As it turns out, maybe we should listen to Paul when he tells us that 'allegory' is not so bad—and that the Scriptures of old were 'for our instruction'! Even where you disagree, you will learn something in this book.”

Gregory R. Lanier

“In recent years, due in no small part to the significant philosophical and cultural shifts of the twentieth century, the evangelical church is awakening to the intellectual resources of the great tradition. Patrick Schreiner's new book is an important contribution to this conversation that I hope is read widely. The book is a thorough yet accessible engagement with the quadriga that threads together philosophical, theological, and biblical considerations in the history of biblical interpretation, separating the wheat from the tares along the way. Anyone interested in learning to read God's Holy Writ with the theological giants of the past should pick up a copy right away.”

Stephen Presley

“Everyone who believes in Christ has made a decisive hermeneutical choice. The Bible is one book, with one overarching divine author, with one relentless message. Yet seeing Jesus Christ as the high scope and aim of both the Old and New Testaments implies that divine intent goes beyond historical events and contexts. The living God speaks through his living Word to living Christians, leading them to see Christ in Scripture, to apply texts to their own contexts, and to look for Christ to return in glory. Patrick Schreiner organizes into useful categories things that Protestants already do and know that we need to do when we read and preach the Bible. Ultimately, he gives us a path not only toward working hard to grasp what the Bible says but toward praying hard over why the Bible says what it says and where God is leading us through it. This superbly challenging and useful book might make us better, and more honest, readers and preachers by confirming the instinct that we really should see Christ in Scripture, do something with the text, and remember where our lives are headed.”

Ryan M. McGraw

“Addressing concerns that the quadriga is a license for hermeneutical anarchy, Schreiner argues that reading Scripture with a fourfold sense more closely conforms to the text itself, is in keeping with the best of the Christian tradition, and represents a more principled and integrated way of approaching forms of interpretation that are already commonplace in conservative Protestant circles. This is a book that will equip readers to better discover the riches of Christ throughout his Word.”

Alastair Roberts

“Patrick Schreiner's The Four Senses of Scripture reflects not only the expertise of a biblical scholar but also the wisdom of someone who has read widely and deeply in the Christian tradition. Schreiner does not seek to retrieve the quadriga as it was but instead unearths its interpretive logic to propose a distinctly evangelical version of it. If all modern exegetes read premodern interpreters as much as Schreiner has, we would be the richer for it!”

Erik Lundeen

“Schreiner analyzes how Holy Scripture interprets itself. He argues that what we call the four senses of Scripture is actually rooted in how words in Scripture function. He drills down into the issues of biblical semiotics and the metaphysics of Scripture and how these relate to our understanding of it. I commend this book to you!”

Richard C. Barcellos