Everyone who reads the Bible wants to know what it means. For most of us, that looks like grasping the plain or verbal meaning of the words of Scripture. Sometimes, we call this the literal sense of Scripture. What the words verbally say, they mean.
Yet the word “literal” is slipperier than it first appears. As Kevin Vanhoozer observes, “Both exegetes and theologians often assume we know what ‘literal’ means. We do not.” Literality, he agrees, is an “essentially contested concept.” Everyone thinks they know what it is; most of us really don’t. We may have a favoured definition, but that is not the same as being correct.
This intuitive definition—that the literal sense is simply the verbal meaning—struggles to account for different opinions about what the text means. Try explaining how Isaiah 53 speaks of Christ to an atheist, a Muslim, or a Jewish person. Each will agree on the verbal meaning of the text: a suffering servant suffers and dies for his people. Where we probably will disagree is on who this text refers to.
Like the Ethiopian eunuch, we might ask, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” (Acts 8:34). The atheist scholar might answer that Isaiah speaks of some ancient symbolism, the Jewish reader about the nation of Israel, and the Muslim about a prophet. With Philip, however, Christians answer that the text is literally about Jesus.
We agree on the verbal construction of the words in front of us, but we all think the text literally refers to different people. As a consequence, the literal or plain sense of Scripture cannot be exclusively identified with the verbal meaning of a text. It includes the verbal meaning, but something other than only the verbal sense determines who or what the Bible is about.
Here is how I put it:
The literal sense of Scripture includes the verbal meaning of words on a page within the context of the whole canon of Scripture, whose internal pressure points eschatologically to Christ because the Spirit inspires not just the words of Scripture but the realities to which the words of Scripture refer.
That was a lot. I know. Let me take that definition apart one phrase at a time before showing how it all fits together. At the end, I will return to Isaiah 53 to point out how this definition of the literal sense helps us grasp why four different people can agree on the verbal and historical meaning of words on a page but believe the words refer to different people or things.
Five Senses of “Literal”
Before unpacking the definition, it helps to see why the word “literal” causes so much confusion. Vanhoozer outlines at least five distinct ways people have used it: verbal, authorial, historical, literary, and “ruled.”
The verbal sense is what the words mean by their dictionary definition. The authorial sense locates meaning in the author’s intent. The historical sense concerns whether a passage refers to real events that happened. The literary sense, associated with Hans Frei, treats the text as a story and asks what it conveys within itself. And the ruled or plain sense appeals to a standard—the rule of faith, the believing community, or the canon—by which the literal sense is discerned.
The mere fact that “literal” can mean five different things should make us cautious. Anyone who claims we are or are not reading the Bible literally first needs to define their terms. My own definition draws several of these together, as the rest of this essay shows by explaining my definition of literal, which was given above.
Verbal Meaning of the Words on a Page (Augustine)
First of all, the literal sense of Scripture includes the verbal meaning of words on a page. Or again: what the Bible says by its words foundationally matters when it comes to reading the Bible in its plain sense.
The person who most clearly clarifies this relation between words on the page and what they refer to is Augustine of Hippo. In his On Christian Teaching, Augustine aims to help readers interpret and teach Scripture. He notes that the words of Scripture are like signs that point to real objects. The term “cross,” for example, is a sign made up of five letters in English, and these letters form a word. This word “cross” points mentally to an actual, historical wooden cross that Christ died upon in the first century.
Now, if someone thinks that crosses did not exist or that Jesus did not die on one, we might still agree on the written sign in front of us (the word “cross”), but we would definitely disagree about what that sign refers to in reality.
Christians, however, believe that Jesus died on a real cross in the first century. So the signs of the text (the letters that form words) run to the reality outside of the text (the Roman cross).
In short, the verbal meaning of the words on a page signifies real things. And we generally agree on this particular part of the literal sense with virtually everyone. But this verbal meaning alone does not determine what a text means plainly, since, as was noted with Isaiah 53, something else comes into play when we move from verbal meaning to external referent.
The real debate, therefore, boils down to what the things in the text refer to. I’ll return to this question in my final point, but in the meantime, we need to identify the literary context of the literal sense of a passage.
Within the Context of the Whole Canon (Childs)
The words in Scripture appear in a text within the whole Bible. And those who put the Bible together as a collection of writings did so for a reason. Minimally, we can infer that this collection of texts was meant to be read together.
In the field of biblical scholarship, Brevard Childs pointed this out over the course of his career. He recognized that scholars in the mid-twentieth century tended to read Scripture in isolated paragraphs or as mere historical artifacts of the past. Their frame of reference was largely grammatical, critical, and historical.
However, ancient believers placed the canon of Scripture together in a collection, and that collection of writings created a literary and figural context for reading any biblical text. That means when God promises Abraham that in his “offspring” all the families of the earth shall be blessed, Paul can literally affirm that this offspring “is Christ” (Gal. 3:16).
That also means that Old Testament books like Isaiah exist within a literary and theological stream of tradition. Isaiah 54:9 speaks of God’s promises to Noah, while 55:3 reminds us of God’s promises to David. To understand either of these passages literally, we would need some background knowledge of the Genesis flood or the promises made to David in 2 Samuel.
I am not here making a purely historical argument, however, because I would add that the Spirit of God so inspired the Bible that we can read any part of it as part of a singular story from Genesis to Revelation.
The verbal meaning of words within a text means that any passage must be read within the whole text of the Bible, that is, the canon. Historically, Christians took this approach not only because of the existence of the canon and the communities that fostered it. But it also makes sense theologically, because Christians believe in the Holy Spirit, who inspired the prophets. “He spoke through the prophets,” as the Nicene Creed maintains.
As a consequence, Christians believe Isaiah was carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21) to speak truthfully about the past promises of God and their future fulfilments. So the literary context is not only the historical context of humans writing a literary work of theology; it is also a work of the Spirit of God, who inspires the words of Scripture and also shapes and guides created reality to bring about these words. His words do not return void (Isa. 55:11).
Whose Pressure Points Eschatologically to Christ (Seitz)
Even if we grant the Spirit’s role of inspiration, if the verbal meaning or canonical context of a text does not point forward in time to Christ, we might still have no reason to believe a passage like Isaiah 53 does in fact speak about Christ literally. But believers affirm that Isaiah 53 and passages like it are about Christ.
Indeed, followers of the Way have generally affirmed that Christ fulfils the promises and prefigurings within the Old Testament. Martin Luther spoke of Christ being hidden in the manger of the Old Testament. Paul can say, “For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Cor. 1:20, KJV), or that Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4).
We live in a time of fulfilment, of ancient promises coming to realization. In fact, the language of the New Testament places us in the last days. As Paul notes, the Old Testament was written for us, “upon whom the end of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11). Or, as John simply notes, we are in the last hour (1 John 2:18).
Christopher Seitz, a student of Brevard Childs, however, clarifies that it is not just the New Testament but also the Old Testament Scriptures themselves that have an internal trajectory toward the future. He suggests that when we read the prophets (e.g., Joel), we can see a forward-looking pressure in the text itself. The common prophetic phrase “the last days” indicates that the prophets are looking forward to an eschatological event, for example. And Christians recognized such eschatological weight and saw Christ as the end of this trajectory.
As a general pattern too, the Old Testament draws readers toward the future. Yes, the prophets promise a future salvation. But we also learn that in Abraham’s offspring, the world will be blessed. We hear of an offspring from the line of David whose kingdom will have no end. And we hear that in the last days, Israel will be restored from her exile. Finally, we read in the Psalms of an eschatological king who brings about God’s will on earth.
The literal sense includes a text’s verbal meaning within the context of the whole canon, which itself points forward to an eschatological salvation. While these aspects of the literal might be contested by others at a historical level, at least to a degree, what Christians see in the text fundamentally differs from what others see because of our view of the Holy Spirit and Providence. That is the last aspect of my definition of literal.
Because the Spirit Inspires Not Just the Words but Also the Things They Refer to (Thomas)
This last part of my definition may sound abstract. It is not. I mean that God inspired the Bible to refer to Christ because, by God’s providence, he can bring about the words he inspires.
What makes Scripture unique is that it not only refers to things with words—anyone can do this—but that the things Scripture refers to have God-given meaning to them. So Moses can show Israel the tabernacle that he saw on the mountain in Exodus 25:40, and God can intend that tabernacle to signify Christ’s body (see John 1:14; 2:19–21; Heb. 10:20).
This is how Thomas Aquinas describes the uniqueness of the Bible. As he puts it, “The author of Holy Scripture is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but also by things themselves” (ST I.1.10).
God can inspire writers to speak of things such as the rock that Moses struck in Exodus 17, so that it also prefigures Christ, who is the rock (1 Cor. 10:4). Why? Because God intended the rock and its symbolism to prefigure Christ. From the rock that Moses struck, living water flows to satisfy God’s people, which is an image Christ makes good on, out of whose side came living water (John 19:34).
So we have words (signs) that point to things (the rock), which by God’s providence point to other things (Christ). Thomas calls this latter significance the spiritual sense of Scripture. And he insists it is not divided from the literal: “the spiritual sense is always founded upon the literal and proceeds from it” (QVII.6.A1). Later writers like Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples would simply fold both into one literal sense, which he defines as “the intention of the prophet and the Holy Spirit speaking in him.” And he continues: “This is what I call ‘literal’ sense, but a literal sense which coincides with the Spirit.”
But do note here we enter into the central problem of literal exegesis: to whom or what does the text refer?
A Word on Figural Reading: Typology and Allegory
The traditional name for this Christ-directed reading is figural interpretation, which gathers up two related practices: typology and allegory.
A type is a pattern in Scripture that repeats across time until it finds fulfilment in Christ. God tells Moses to build a tabernacle where God and humans meet; Solomon builds a temple; then Jesus “tabernacles” among us in his own body (John 1:14; 2:21). That is a type. So too Paul names Jesus the new Adam (Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15).
Allegory, in turn, reads some thing or story as signifying something else: the rock that Moses struck “was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4), or Sarah and Hagar standing for two covenants (Gal. 4). Christians across the centuries have read this way, which is why Vanhoozer can call figural reading “as universal (catholic) a reading practice as literal interpretation.” Far from competing with the literal sense, figural reading is, in his words, “its prolongation and culmination.”
With these definitions aside, let me illustrate my definition of the literal sense or the plain reading of Scripture by answering the question, just what or who is Isaiah 53 about?
Isaiah 53
When the Ethiopian eunuch read about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, he asked Philip a key question: “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” (Acts 8:34). Indeed, that is the right question to ask. What does the text literally mean? What is the plain sense?
Did Isaiah refer to himself? That’s one opinion. Many Jewish readers today will say that Isaiah referred to the servant as the people of Israel. Others might simply think the servant is a stock image of ancient prophetic discourse.
Everyone agrees, however, on the basic verbal meaning: a suffering servant dies for his people. But the difference lies in who that servant is. To what does the text refer?
Philip simply answers that it is about Christ. That is what the text is about. But surely this requires that the Spirit intended the suffering servant to be about Christ, and that God, through his providence, sent Christ in the fullness of time to be this servant.
And so our frame of reference here includes the fact that the Spirit inspired Isaiah to talk about a servant (a thing) that refers to Jesus of Nazareth (another thing). A non-believing historian simply could not accept that as the plain sense of Scripture, because that would require believing in inspiration and Providence as part of the plain sense of Scripture.
Such a frame of reference admits only interpretations within an immanent horizon, with no place for the Spirit’s inspiration or God’s active work in history (Providence).
So again: the problem of the literal sense is also the problem of subject matter, of what Scripture is all about. Is it about Christ or someone else? Christians can and do argue that the text is literally about Christ. That, we maintain, is the plain sense. This is true of Isaiah 53 or Psalm 2 or any other like passage.
Why? Because we believe in the Holy Spirit and in God, whose word does not return void. We believe that any text should be read within the whole canon, which collectively pushes us into the future where Christ fulfils the promises of God. We, upon whom the end of the ages has come, read Scripture therefore to see not only what the words verbally refer to (the things), but what God does with those words and things to bring about a Christological fulfilment of them.
Conclusion
To read the Bible literally includes what most Christians have called the spiritual sense, but which we often call today the Christological sense of Scripture. Christ pulls prior writings to himself as an eschatological gravitational field. And we see him, canonically speaking, as the end to which the prophets set their hope. We can do so because we believe the Spirit carried along the prophets to speak of Christ.
Any frame of reference that does not allow for these pre-commitments might be accused of reading the Bible with atheistic presuppositions. Or as Kevin Vanhoozer writes, “The problem with grammatical-historical exegesis is that it can be done with an immanent frame of reference.” But that is not literally true of the text, because God speaks in it and orders reality to bring his word about.
Christ is the rock that Moses struck (Exo. 17:6; 1 Cor. 10:4), out of whose side came living water (John 19:34; John 7:38–39), because the Spirit intended this correspondence across the canon and time for us to know, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor. 10:11).
That is what the text is literally about.
