How to Talk to a Skeptic by Donald J. Johnson

Author:Donald J. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067030, REL109000
ISBN: 9781441262912
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

The Spiritual Sense of Scripture

Every book has that literal sense, the meaning that was intended by the human author. However, as inspired literature, the Bible also contains something unique to itself: a spiritual sense. This is the meaning that God intended for us but that may not have been known by the author or the original audience. It is found by examining the connection between historical revelations of God on three different levels: the analogical, moral, and anagogical.

The analogical sense is the meaning of a text that reveals Jesus. I have used this method of scriptural interpretation throughout this book, particularly in showing how people and events in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Christ. For example, we have seen how Adam, Noah, and Moses tell us something about the nature and ministry of Jesus.

The moral sense of Scripture reveals how one should live today. We can look to the Bible for insight about holy living and the nature of church life. We are to imitate the great heroes of the faith in their courage and perseverance, for instance, and, as we saw in chapter 6, understand baptism in relation to the flood and the crossing of the Red Sea.

While the analogical sense looks back to Jesus, and the moral sense looks to the here and now, the anagogical sense looks to the future. Here we interpret texts in a way that tells us something about the glory that is to come.95 Life in the church age prefigures certain aspects of heaven, and the New Jerusalem has been prefigured throughout history by both the original Jerusalem and the church.

When we read the Bible in the spiritual sense, we are simply doing what the New Testament writers did themselves. They constantly saw types of Jesus in the Old Testament and viewed their own time, the church age, as foreshadowing the age to come.

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