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I have found Thomas\u2019s explanation of the quadriga convincing. He argues that the multiple spiritual senses are not \u201clocated\u201d in the words but in the things that the words name. One might say that for Thomas the words have a single, namely literal, sense; but the things they name are themselves signs, the \u201cwords\u201d with which God writes history, and these things foreshadow later things. <\/p>\n
Barbara Lewalski ( Protestant Poetics and Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric <\/em> ) raised some questions about this formula: <\/p>\n \u201cAs William G. Madsen perceived, there is some literary problem with this Catholic position, in that it involves deriving metaphorical meaning only from the significance of the thing (the tenor), bypassing any real interplay between vehicle and tenor, God\u2019s arm and operative power [\u2018God\u2019s arm\u2019 is Thomas\u2019s example of figurative language in Scripture]. This disposition to move immediately to the \u2018true\u2019 meaning rather than regarding metaphorical language as itself constituting such meaning, is evident in Thomas\u2019s justification of the presence of poetic language in scripture. Since poetry deals with matters unable to be grasped by reason, poetic language \u2018leads the reason aside\u2019; it is appropriate to scripture, which is above reason, and it is necessary to aid the simple to grasp intellectual things through sensible objects.\u201d <\/p>\n In sum, for Thomas \u201cthe poetic language of scripture does not convey truth directly,\u201d and \u201cthe figures in scripture serve chiefly to intimate the disproportion between these formulations and the divine reality,\u201d since \u201csimilitudes often obscure truth, leading the reader to look beyond the figures.\u201d Thomas\u2019s view of poetic language is thus rooted in and serves an apophatic thrust to his theology. <\/p>\n Thomas is following Augustine here: \u201cneither assumes that the particular verbal formulations and figures are to be seen as the precisely appropriate vehicles for conveying truth, whether of natural things or of God.\u201d Protestantism, with its emphatic prioritization of the Word, saw figures and tropes as theologically weighted: \u201cthe Reformation focus on the literal text led Calvin and his English followers to pay the closest attention to the tropes and figures of scripture as the very vehicle of the Holy Ghost. Tropes are now perceived as God\u2019s chosen formulations of his revealed truth which man must strive to understand rightly, in themselves, and not as a stimulus to a higher vision.\u201d Protestants were more <\/em> interested in the precise rhetorical strategies of Scripture than were their medieval counterparts. <\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to reconcile Thomas\u2019s view with this Protestant poetics. Tropes and figures in Scripture are among God\u2019s methods for revealing Himself and His intentions for the world, but for Protestants (as Frei emphasized) the text of Scripture gives us direct access to historical persons and events. A figure both tells us what happened, and, by its figurative character, describes the meaning of what happened. The thing that makes \u201cwhat happened\u201d pregnant with future possibilities is not, strictly, the figure, but the fact that God providentially foreshadows later events in the former. Lewalski has an important corrective to Thomas, though, insofar as he treats poetic language as an \u201caccommodation\u201d and insofar as he encourages us to skip too quickly past the way <\/em> God has spoken about what He does. <\/p>\n (Thanks to Doug Wilson for pointing me to Lewalski\u2019s very rich book.) <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have found Thomas\u2019s explanation of the quadriga convincing. He argues that the multiple spiritual senses are not \u201clocated\u201d in the words but in the things that the words name. One might say that for Thomas the words have a single, namely literal, sense; but the things they name are themselves signs, the \u201cwords\u201d with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hermeneutics"],"yoast_head":"\n