How Ambiguity Reveals Different "Senses" in the Bible

Last night, reading the Book of Revelation, we reviewed the "four senses" in which scripture is traditionally interpreted: the literal, and three "spiritual" senses, the allegorical (typological), tropological (moral), and anagogical (the future). This article quoted the Catechism (No. 118):

The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites a medieval couplet which summarizes these four senses: Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. (The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; the Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.)

Robert Sokolowski has some interesting things to say about how different meanings can be discerned in ambiguity. In Eucharistic Presence (at p. 156-57), he says, of the literary trope of ambiguity:

"Ambiguity as a literary form does not mean inexactness in expression. . . Rather, ambiguity as a trope is the deliberate expression of two meanings in one phrase. It is the use of one set of words that can be taken in two senses. . ." Sokolowski uses as an example, some lines from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton:

". . . as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness."

Sokolowski says the word "still" is triply ambiguous: "'Still' can be taken as an adjective, an adverb, or a conjunction. The phrase could say that the Chinese jar is motionless (still) and yet moves; it could say that the ancient jar moves even now (still); and it could say that despite its stillness the jar nevertheless (still) moves. It is the interplay of all these meanings that gives the lines their force."

Sokolowski cites examples in the Gospel of John 5:24-26, in which the word "life" is used to mean not only the life that Jesus communicates to believers, but also the life that his Father shares with him:

Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.

25

Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

26

For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to his Son the possession of life in himself.

Jesus' mission from his Father is to share the life he possesses with us. "However, we can without straining read in the phrase another sense. We can hear an overtone to the dominant meaning. The second sense would refer to the eternal life that the Son has from the Father within the Holy Trinity. The obvious 'economic' sense of the statement is not without allusion to the 'immanent' trinitarian sense. "

Sokolowski goes on to say (p. 158) : "The literary ambiguities in the Fourth Gospel are possible because of the play of presentational dimensions that occurs in Christian belief. The simply worldly can be taken just as it is, but it can also be seen in an iconic way, as a manifestation of a dimension that transcends it. . . Such hints and ambiguities are not deficiencies but disclosures. . ."

In other words, the different senses in scripture's "ambiguities" make manifest to us not only the life that Jesus gives us, but also the eternal trinitarian life in which he participates. "The redemptive mission is profiled against the eternal procession. If the life Christ brings were not related to the life he has eternally from the father, the sense of our Redemption would be incompletely expressed." Ibid., p. 158.

Looking at it this way, we see that scriptural ambiguities "layer in" multiple truths and senses which must be unpacked for a fuller understanding of the God who created and loves us. The different senses do not lead us astray, and are not conflictual, but are part of scripture's richness and blessing.