The Four Senses of Scripture

Learning from Ancient Ways of Reading the Bible
This book challenges modern hermeneutics, arguing that the patristic and medieval “four senses” approach better respects the nature, goal, and ecclesial setting of reading the Scriptures.
Recovering the Church’s Classical Approach to Biblical Interpretation

For nearly 1,700 years, the church read Scripture through four interwoven lenses–literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical–known as the quadriga. Modern biblical hermeneutics has largely set this tradition aside. In The Four Senses of Scripture, Patrick Schreiner argues the church hasn’t moved beyond the ancient approach so much as it has lost something essential.

Schreiner doesn’t reject the grammatical-historical method–he recovers what it leaves behind. This book

covers all four senses–literal (grammatical-historical), allegorical (Christological), tropological (moral), and