How to Read Scripture Like Jesus and the Apostles

Here Paul talks of the Israelites being "baptized into Moses" when they crossed the Red Sea, yet Exodus never speaks of this. Similarly, Exodus does not describe any food or drink as "supernatural," nor does it describe a rock that followed the Israelites. Paul is seeing the Old Testament in a new way. This is why he lists several of the excesses of the Israelites and remarks, "Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come" (1 Cor. 10:11).

The Old Testament is written for our instruction. It is a morality play in which every event really happened and at the same time points beyond itself to eternity. Peter, Paul, James, Jude -- each was inspired by God to demonstrate this new clarity of vision. Through the epistles, God shows us that the four-fold sense of Scripture is necessary for an accurate understanding of New Testament events. Indeed, even simple references to Jesus like "Lamb of God," "the Good Shepherd," and "the Paschal Victim" are shallow at best outside of the four-fold sense.

The apostles, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, were inspired to begin unlocking the scriptures. This process continued throughout the early Church. The great Christians of the first millennia knew the technique intimately and wielded it like a two-edged sword against heretical opponents. They saw the apostolic reading of the Old Testament as the beginning of a process they were to bring to fruition.

This is why we never see Jesus or the apostles whipping out a dictionary to check the gender of a noun or the aorist tense of a verb. Paul never diagrams a sentence. The task begun by Jesus and the apostles is not yet complete -- indeed, it may never be complete. It is still necessary for us today to search out the four-fold sense of Scripture in order to grasp the fullness of the divinely intended meaning in the Old and New Testaments.

This article was first published by Catholic Answers and is reprinted with permission.

Steve Kellmeyer, is director of adult formation at Sacred Heart Parish, Norfolk, Nebraska and the author of numerous books on Catholic teachings.