From the course notes for Bull’s Bible School.
The Bible’s own built-in interpretive maps are far superior to the helpful but limited human guidelines.
Introduction
The Scriptures are full of symbols that require interpretation. They do interpret some of the symbols for us as a guide, but most of the work is left up to the reader. This was deliberate because the work of interpretation trains God’s people in wisdom.
However, this factor also means that the symbolism of the Bible, like its text in general, has been prone to a great deal of misinterpretation through the ages.
All sorts of claims have been made about what certain symbols were intended to mean. Some of these interpretations were received as correct by the Church at large. However, some interpretations were simply incorrect, and others were fanciful, far-fetched, absurd, bizarre, and even heretical. And, like the text itself, the study of biblical symbolism can also be deliberately distorted to provide the appearance of “divine authority” for human traditions and agendas.
The two most helpful safeguards provided by the Church for the interpretation of Scripture are the ancient quadriga and the modern historical-grammatical method. Both of these are useful, as far as they go, so we need to be aware of them and how they work. But since they do not go far enough, after we take them into account, we will begin our study of the Bible’s own interpretive guides. These built-in “maps of meaning” are far superior to the human attempts, and they enable us to expertly navigate the Bible’s historical, literary, and typological landscapes.
The quadriga
The quadriga is a traditional method of biblical interpretation developed in the early Church and widely used in medieval theology. It reflects the belief that Scripture, being inspired by God, has both historical and divine significance, and thus contains multiple layers of meaning.
These layers, from the literal to the spiritual, are given to us to guide our faith, doctrine, and practice. This understanding is valid because it is based upon the way in which the biblical writers themselves, along with Jesus, interpreted previous Scriptures.
A quadriga was a chariot drawn by four horses abreast and favoured for chariot racing in classical antiquity and the Roman Empire. The word was borrowed to describe this fourfold approach to understanding the meaning of Scripture, where a single passage can be interpreted in four distinct but equally-important senses.
These are:
a) The literal sense: This is the historical or plain meaning of the text—what the passage says in its immediate context, as intended by the human author. For example, the exodus narrative describes the historical event of the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt.
b) The allegorical sense: This sense seeks a deeper, symbolic meaning, often connecting the Old Testament to Christ or the Church. For instance, the exodus is interpreted allegorically as symbolising Christ’s redemption of humanity from slavery to sin.
c) The moral (or tropological) sense: This focuses on the ethical or practical application of the text, guiding believers on how to live virtuously. Using the exodus example, the moral sense teaches perseverance through trials or obedience to God’s guidance.
d) The anagogical sense: This sense points to the eschatological or future-oriented meaning, relating the text to eternal realities, such as heaven or the end times. The exodus is seen anagogically as a foreshadowing of the soul’s journey to eternal salvation or the heavenly promised land.
As an interpretive grid, the quadriga allowed for a rich, multifaceted engagement with Scripture, accommodating both historical context and spiritual insight. However, it did not prevent subjective or overly speculative interpretations. Despite its use, the Bible’s symbolism was still open to abuse and error.
Because it offered no comprehensive or authoritative means of validation, the quadriga fell out of favour to a great degree, along with the study of biblical symbolism itself. Moreover, stricter rules were eventually formulated to avoid misinterpretations.
The historical-grammatical method
The modern era, with its focus on scientific evidence, brought with it a commendable desire for verification in biblical interpretation. As with the scientific method, nothing was to be believed without sufficient solid evidence.
The historical-grammatical method is such a standard for interpreting the Bible. It focuses on the historical context and grammatical structure of the texts to ascertain the intended meaning as understood by its original author and audience. Its key components are:
a) Historical context: It examines the cultural, social, political, and religious circumstances surrounding the text’s writing. This includes understanding the author’s background, the audience, and the historical events or customs referenced. For example, knowing the practices of first-century Judaism helps us to interpret Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels.
b) Grammatical analysis: It focuses on the language, syntax, and word meanings in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. It considers the grammar, literary forms (e.g., poetry, narrative, prophecy), and figures of speech to determine precise meanings.
c) Authorial intent: It aims to discern what the author actually intended to communicate, prioritising the text’s plain meaning unless context suggests symbolism or metaphor.
d) Scripture interprets Scripture: It assumes the Bible is consistent, so any unclear passages are to be interpreted in the light of clearer ones.
This method is widely used in evangelical and conservative scholarship to ensure fidelity to the original meaning of the Bible’s texts. It aims to avoid imposing interpretive traditions or modern assumptions on the text, prioritising the application of historical and linguistic reality to the task.
These principles expand upon the first sense of the quadriga, providing a solid foundation for interpretation. However, a foundation is not enough.
Due to its commendable desire for historical and linguistic evidence, conservative scholarship permits little in the way of speculation. Because there is no apparent way to verify many of the claims of those who venture beyond the obvious in the study of biblical symbolism, the subject is generally avoided. The problem with this approach is that a refusal to deal with the Bible’s symbolism limits our ability to interpret, understand, and apply much of the text.
Firstly, because the work of interpretation is more like getting a joke than carrying out a scientific experiment, making sense of biblical symbolism is mostly beyond the scope of this otherwise excellent method. As we have seen, the Bible is not a textbook. It is literature. This means that it contains much that is only inferred. This cannot be observed or categorised because such connections are made in the reader.
Secondly, it is abundantly clear from the way that the prophets and the New Testament writers use previous Scriptures that the meaning intended by God in both the historical events and the literature far exceeded the understanding and intent of the human authors.
The caution of modern conservative academics is understandable, but by roping off the study of biblical symbolism as dangerous, they have done to some degree precisely what Paul warned about in Romans 1. Since God speaks to us through the created order and the biblical symbols derived from it, these historians, linguists, and Bible scholars have unwittingly silenced Him. They claim to be protecting the Bible, but they are suppressing the truth, and their pupils are warned against reading the Bible in the way God intended it to be read.
Two-factor authentication
Modern biblical scholarship usually prioritises the historical-critical method, focusing on the literal sense, though some theologians still value the quadriga for its spiritual depth. While both approaches are helpful, neither is up to the job of plumbing the depths of the Word of God.
The problem with the historical-grammatical method is its unwillingness to deal with anything much beyond what is obvious, and there is much in the Bible that is not obvious.
Besides the general use of symbolism, the authors also arranged their texts and gave them wonderful depths through the use of such devices as numerical symbolism, large parallel sequences, intricate symmetrical patterning, and references to the constellations.
This method’s reluctance to explore such things results in a crippling inability to achieve its stated goal. God has given us the literary equivalent of a multimedia experience, but modern scholarship is tuned in for something akin to Morse code.
The problem with the quadriga is that the text of the Bible often mixes its layered senses together as a four-part harmony. The Spirit of God plays them in concert like four strings, or breathes through them like four pipes. He is constantly dancing across the registers in a way that can make them difficult to separate. Even if we identify all four, we need to learn to interpret them simultaneously with a “musical” sensibility that is informed by the text itself.
Any training in theology must include learning to discern correct interpretations from flawed ones, and the true meanings of symbols from errors and counterfeits. Sadly, the academy’s rules for interpretation, and its best attempts to find method in the apparent chaos of the biblical texts, have all failed. But there remains a nagging feeling that, since God is not the author of disorder, there is still some unseen mechanism governing the entire body.
Centuries of attempts to find the door to the Bible’s prophetic pyramid (with God presumably watching on like a riddling sphinx) could have been avoided if we had in our possession the plans of its ancient builders. As it turns out, we always did.
Like the key to a secret doorway, this mechanism was hidden in plain sight. It is the Bible’s use of sequences in the arrangement of its texts.
The human methodologies described above focus on the content of the text. Comparing one scripture with another is a basic form of two-factor authentication. If we find two or more instances that testify to the same thing, we can be confident that we are on the right track.
But as a single process, the comparison of isolated texts is only one-factor authentication. The Bible gives us a means of comparison that takes the shape of entire sequences into consideration. This gives us a truly “two-factor” means of authentication: not only the content of the text, but also its structure.
Structure and content are the “two witnesses” that corroborate and confirm the meaning of any given biblical text. We have not only the words, but also their arrangement, as two “coordinates.” Together, as the literary equivalent of “forming and filling,” structure and content comprise the Bible’s own built-in means of verification. Instead of merely comparing one statement with another, we are comparing entire passages with each other. Only this twofold means of analysis has the scope and strength to open the multifaceted richness of the Scriptures.
The importance of such a practice cannot be overestimated. The renewed awareness of the significance of typology is an advance on the typological “illiteracy” of modern academia. But our ignorance of the Bible’s own rules for typology only makes us “illiterate” in a fresh way. We must lay foundations for the future without repeating the errors of the past.
If greater credibility for typological interpretation is to be gained, then superior, empirical, verifiable, and repeatable results need to be demonstrated. We must maintain some of the caution of the historical-grammatical method if we are to avoid the whimsical free-for-all that characterised the interpretation of types in premodern times. But, as with the quadriga, we must also be open to intended meanings that are contained in the text in ways that are not immediately obvious.
The only way to achieve such a standard is to establish a better methodology, one that analyses both the structure and the content. And since the biblical authors repeatedly break and confound all of our man-made rules, it must be one based upon the way in which they themselves used, interpreted, and reused biblical imagery.
Thankfully, their practice was not random but systematic. It engaged with symbolism in a way that vindicates the ancients, but verified its interpretations in a way that vindicates the moderns. So perhaps the best term to use for it is “systematic typology.”
Systematic typology
Working out what the Bible means requires us to work out how it means. The Word of God never comes to us without a literary “skeleton,” a framework that bears much of the load of the intended meaning. Hearers were expected to recognise the shape of the text as a guide to its contents.
This shape is the result of the arrangement of the text. Like DNA, the Bible’s fundamental method of ordering information is in cycles or sequences (see The Genetics of Scripture). This is the key to how it communicates, so if we are not tuned in to the shape or structure of the text, many of our interpretations, while plausible, are without a definite means of verification.
As a component of texts that are arranged in this way, biblical imagery is also given to us in sequences. Symbols in the Bible work as visual words, so it makes sense that they are arranged in typological sentences.
This means that mastering biblical typology is like mastering a language. It requires more than simply learning the meanings of the Bible’s symbolic “words.” God does not speak in isolated words, and neither does He use isolated symbols. Like isolated words, symbols when isolated lose much of the meaning they were given as parts of a “visual sentence.”
As mentioned, biblical symbols never travel without companions, so the entire entourage has to be entertained by the interpreter. The good news is that they are always arranged in some variation of a pattern that is common to all Scripture.
Arranged in literary chains and spatial networks, biblical symbols communicate much more than mere relationships between things in a “this is that” fashion. Like good jokes and the best literary references, they recapitulate a familiar progression that takes place within a previously-established, and thus recognisable, pattern. That pattern, the literary structure, is the “map” of the meaning.
To press the language metaphor even further, if we wish to “read” the symbolic language of the Bible, we must not only discern the meaning of each “word,” but also take into account the typological “grammar” that is employed in the composition of these sentences. Grammar, when used properly, eliminates ambiguities and prevents misinterpretations of a sentence. The Bible’s own symbolic “syntax” constrains us from mistaken misinterpretations. It exposes not only misunderstandings of the text, but also deliberate abuses of the text.
Because the system is not imposed upon the Bible but built into the text itself, it is not man-made but divine. And it is the one that governed its actual composition. As a bonus, these inspired guidelines free us from the artificial constraints of limited human guidelines, such as those described above.
To understand the importance of “systematic typology”, which is the analysis of the arrangement of symbols in sequences, it is helpful to contrast it with other means of studying the Bible.
a) Systematic theology helpfully recognises, classifies, and gathers similar items. Examples would be the doctrine of God, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of salvation, and the doctrine of the Church. While such a practice is good and necessary for important doctrines, the end result is like putting all the same-coloured tiles of a mosaic together in separate jars. Removed from their place of origin, they are also removed from the picture that gave them their full meaning.
b) Biblical theology is the study of the Bible’s general themes and concepts as they unfold organically through biblical history in their historical and chronological context, rather than organizing doctrines topically as systematic theology does. While this reveals much more of the context of the events in the Bible, it is still limited in its ability to explain why they occurred and why the text is arranged the way it is.
c) In contrast, a systematic typology recognises the repeated patterns in the beautiful mosaic of the Bible, and interprets each tile according to where it was placed as part of the picture. It not only incorporates and builds upon the study of biblical doctrines in systematic theology, and the study of general concepts and themes of biblical theology, but also provides a definite, observable, and verifiable framework for the interpretation of all the details of the text.
In this way, the literary sequences in the biblical texts are the railway track that guides the interpreter’s train of thought and keeps it from “going off the rails” into fanciful ideas and false doctrine. And if he does go off the rails, it is apparent to anyone who is trained in the biblical pattern and takes note of the track.
