Did Vatican II Reject the Sensus Plenior?

When theologians talk about a sensus plenior they are referring to a fuller sense of Scripture, which is a sense which goes beyond the literal sense of the text.

Sometimes, it is said of Vatican II that:

The Vatican Council deliberately left the sensus plenior as an open question. (The Sensus Plenior of Scripture)

Is that really so?

1. The Literal Sense of Scripture

The Church has consistently taught that the most basic and important sense of Scripture is the literal sense. Pope Pius XII reiterated that view in 1943, when he stated:

Let interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal… so that the mind of the author may be made abundantly clear. (Divino Afflante Spiritu 23)

The importance of the literal sense was also stressed in the 1992 Catechism, which stated:

The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.” (CCC 116)

Those two texts affirm the critical importance of the literal sense. But they do so with slightly different nuances. Pope Pius XII identified the literal sense with authorial intent. The Catechism explained the literal sense in terms of textual meaning.

The difference in those nuances shows that although the Church has repeatedly insisted upon the importance of the literal sense of Scripture, that does not mean that there is necessarily a single sharply defined theory of what a literal sense actually is.

2. The Spiritual Sense

In addition to the literal sense, the Church has consistently taught that there is a spiritual sense of Scripture. Pope Pius XII noted that point in 1943, when he stated:

Just as… [the exegete] must search out and expound the literal meaning of the words, intended and expressed by the sacred writer, so also must he do likewise for the spiritual sense. (Divino Afflante Spiritu 26)

The 1992 Catechism made a similar point when it said:

According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual… The latter [includes]… the allegorical sense. (CCC 115)

The Catechism clarified the spiritual sense, partly in terms of an allegorical reading of Scripture. But allegorical readings can be problematic. For example, St. Augustine (d. 430) explained Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30) in an allegorical way. He said that the parable’s reference to an innkeeper was an allegorical reference to St. Paul. (See “Augustine’s Commentary on the Good Samaritan.”) But was Jesus really referring to St. Paul in this parable?

If Jesus wasn’t, then St Augustine’s allegorical reading is just reading St. Paul INTO the text of the Good Samaritan (i.e., eisegesis), rather than reading a legitimate meaning of Scripture OUT-OF the text (i.e., exegesis).

If a spiritual (allegorical) sense of Scripture can arise by reading meaning INTO Scripture, then it raises the very serious question of whether a spiritual sense is really a sense of Scripture at all?

3. Christological Texts

One of the reasons why the Church has traditionally talked of a spiritual sense is that it can help to explain “Christological texts.” Those are the New Testament texts which interpret (or reinterpret) Old Testament texts, as claims about Jesus, or about his mother.

One of the classic examples occurs in Matthew’s Gospel, when Matthew 1:22–23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 (Septuagint version), as prophesying the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

This is not a unique example. In another context Matthew 2:15 interprets Hosea 11:1 as a text foretelling how Jesus will return “out of Egypt” after the massacre of the Innocents. In a different example, St. Paul interprets Exodus 17:6 as applying to Jesus in 1 Corinthians 10:4. There are even examples of Jesus interpreting Old Testament texts as being about himself (Luke 24:27).

If those examples are legitimately interpreting a genuine meaning of the Old Testament, then it is difficult to see how they can be examples of a literal meaning of the Old Testament. This is because all of the relevant texts can be interpreted in plausible (literal) ways which fit their historical context, and which do not refer to a future Jesus. Indeed, the Isaiah text (about the Virgin Birth) would not have been a meaningful text about a “sign” in its original context, if it was pointing to an event (the birth of Jesus) which was not due to take place for another 700 years.

So, either the divinely inspired authors of the New Testament have erred by mistakenly interpreting the literal sense of the Old Testament when they apply it to Jesus, or there must be an additional spiritual sense of some Old Testament texts, which can apply to Jesus.

The Church has traditionally taken the second approach, albeit cautiously, so as to avoid the risk of mistakenly reading allegorical (figurative) senses INTO Scripture. Pius XII summed up the Church’s position in 1943, when he said:

What was said and done in the Old Testament… prefigured in a spiritual way those that were to come [in the New Testament]… Let Catholic exegetes… expound this spiritual significance, intended… by God, … but let them scrupulously refrain from proposing as the genuine meaning of Sacred Scripture other figurative senses. (Divino Afflante Spiritu 26–27)

Even if there are potential dangers in over-appealing to a spiritual sense (dangers which he reiterated in 1950 in Humani Generis 23), Pius XII nevertheless recognized that there is an unavoidable theological need to appeal to a spiritual meaning of some Old Testament texts.

The Biblical Commission stated the point even more explicitly:

It is a proposition of faith that, in addition to the literal sense of Holy Writ, there is also a spiritual or typical sense. (August 20, 1941; see original Italian text)

4. The Fuller Sense

When theologians discuss the spiritual sense of Scripture, there is a very real risk of confusing the different issues of problematic allegorical readings (such as the example of St. Augustine’s in section 2, above) and inspired Christological meanings (such as the examples from the New Testament, in section 3 above). This is because those very different sets of issues all tended to be referred to as examples of a spiritual sense.

To reduce the risks of confusion, from the mid-1920s theologians began using the phrase sensus plenior or “fuller sense” to describe the spiritual sense, particularly when it was applied to Christological texts relating to Jesus or Mary.

We can see the equivalence in terminology in some Church documents. For example, in 2011 the ITC (International Theological Commission) wrote:

Exegesis searches for the literal sense and opens itself to the spiritual or fuller sense (sensus plenior) of scripture. (Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria 22)

The language of a fuller sense of Scripture developed out of phrases used by popes referring to the “fullness” of Scriptural meaning(s). For example, in 1883, Pope Leo XIII said that:

There is sometimes in… [Scriptural] passages a fullness and a hidden depth of meaning which the letter hardly expresses and which the laws of interpretation hardly warrant. (Providentissimus Deus 14)

In 1920, Pope Benedict XV was even more explicit in Spiritus Paraclitus, when he referred to the “full sense” (plenum sensum) of Scripture.

However, it was theologians like Raymond E. Brown who developed and popularized the idea of a fuller sense of Scripture, especially in the years immediately before Vatican II. (See “The Roman Catholic Debate Over Sensus Plenior.”)

In the 1940s and 1950s, theologians agreed that there was a serious doctrinal need for the idea of a fuller sense. Henri de Lubac (d. 1991) even went so far as to affirm that its existence was part of the Church’s divinely inspired Tradition. (See “Henri de Lubac and the Spiritual Sense of Scripture.”)

But despite the doctrinal need, theologians continued to struggle with articulating how a fuller sense could have got into Scriptural texts, and how it could fit with the Church’s doctrine of divine inspiration. This is because the Church has always taught that divine inspiration left human authors with their own free will. But if divinely inspired human authors willed and intended the fuller sense of Scripture, then wouldn’t that make it a literal sense, not a fuller sense?

And if the fuller sense is not a literal sense, because it is put into the Biblical text by God, without passing through the minds of the human authors, then wouldn’t that conflict with the Church’s teaching that divine inspiration involved God and human authors cooperating to produce the Biblical text?

On the eve of Vatican II, theologians generally agreed that there was a serious doctrinal need for the fuller sense. But they were still struggling to articulate a theologically satisfactory account which would explain the nature and existence of a fuller sense.

5. Vatican II

When Vatican II reviewed the document which would become Dei Verbum, we know that the issue of the fuller sense was discussed on November 20, 1964. (See “Vatican II on the Interpretation of Scripture.”)

However, the final draft of Dei Verbum contains no explicit reference to a fuller sense (or to a spiritual sense). Instead, there is an ambiguous sentence which reads as follows:

The interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words. (Dei Verbum 12)

That sentence could be a claim that there is a single literal sense in Scripture, which is what God wanted the human authors to affirm. Or, that sentence could be saying that there is a literal sense conveyed by the human authors, and there is another sense (i.e., the fuller sense) which is what God also wanted to reveal through their words.

The ambiguity of that sentence makes it all too easy to jump to the conclusion that Vatican II is trying to leave the issue of the fuller sense as an open question.

But some of the wider comments of the Council seem to go further, and to actually assume the existence of a fuller sense. For example, the following comment is almost a description of exactly what advocates of the fuller sense were claiming:

God… wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New… The books of the Old Testament… acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament. (Dei Verbum 16)

In another text the Council appeals to a “full” reading of Scripture to explain how a text in Genesis refers to the mother of Jesus:

The books of the Old Testament … as they are read in the Church and are understood in the light of a further and full revelation, [show that] … the woman, Mother of the Redeemer, is… prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent which was given to our first parents after their fall into sin. (Lumen Gentium 55)

In this passage, Vatican II is stating that Genesis 3:15 is communicating information about the mother of Jesus. Biblical scholars agree that that information cannot be a literal sense of Genesis. So, the words of Vatican II would make no sense at all, unless there was a further, fuller sense of the Old Testament.

Conciliar texts such as those above show that although Vatican II may have declined the opportunity to explicitly refer to the fuller sense, the Council nevertheless expressed itself in a way that presupposed precisely what advocates of a fuller sense were saying about the fuller sense.

6. Post-Vatican II

In the years following Vatican II, the Church has continued to make reference to the fuller sense (sensus plenior).

The 1975 General Instructions of the Liturgy of the Hours reminds people that the meaning of the Old Testament psalms cannot be separated from Jesus. It states:

The person who prays the psalms in the name of the Church should be aware of their total meaning (sensus plenus), especially their messianic meaning, which was the reason for the Church’s introduction of the psalter into its prayer. This messianic meaning was fully revealed in the New Testament. (109)

In 1993 the Pontifical Biblical Commission explained the fuller sense, as follows:

The fuller sense is defined as a deeper meaning of the text, intended by God but not clearly expressed by the human author. Its existence in the biblical text comes to be known when one studies the text in the light of other biblical texts which utilize it or in its relationship with the internal development of revelation. (“The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,” Part 2, Section B.3)

Throughout his pontificate, Pope John Paul II (d. 2005) made repeated use of the concept of the fuller sense, particularly when appealing to Scripture to explain Mariological doctrines. (See “The Use of the Sensus Plenior in the Mariology of John Paul II.”)

7. Conclusion

Vatican II discussed the fuller sense (sensus plenior) of Scripture. However, it declined to include a reference to it in its final documents. On the surface that looks as if the Council wanted to avoid affirming or denying the issue, thus leaving it as an open matter.

But Vatican II also expressed itself in ways which presupposed the reality of a fuller sense. The Council’s willingness to continue to explain Old Testament (Christological) texts in terms of the New Testament effectively ascribed a (non-literal) meaning to the Old Testament, thus mirroring the approach taken by popes and Church documents before and after Vatican II. That practice wouldn’t make sense if Vatican II was truly trying to sit on the fence and avoid any kind of commitment to the idea of a fuller sense.

So, did Vatican II leave the issue of the fuller sense open, or not? The answer would seem to be partly yes and partly no. The Council left the terminology of a “fuller sense” out of its documents, so Vatican II clearly did not want to be seen to endorse any current version of what contemporary theologians were calling a fuller sense. That is probably due to the fact that there were unresolved theological problems embedded in contemporary theological attempts to explain the fuller sense. (See section 4.)

However, the Council could not reject or discount the idea of a fuller sense, without thereby undermining the Church’s faith in the inerrant inspired nature of the New Testament. Vatican II endorsed the full inerrancy of the Scriptures (see “Is the Bible Still Inerrant?”), so logically the Council had to also accept, to some extent, a version of a fuller sense.

We can see a commitment to the fuller sense in the way that the Council chose to explicitly cite Old Testament texts and then insist that they had a meaning which referred to Jesus and to Mary. Those actions would make no sense if there was not a fuller sense of Scripture. Consequently, even if the Council was wary about being seen to align with any particular version of a theory of the fuller sense, it is difficult to see how the Council can really have left the issue of the fuller sense as a completely open question.