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The Four Senses of Scripture: Learning from Ancient Ways of Reading the Bible
In the modern era, biblical hermeneutics has been dominated by the grammatical-historical method. This represents a departure from the interpretive approach commonly used during the prior 1,700 years of the church, the four senses approach (or quadriga). Those four senses are literal (grammatical-historical), allegory (Christological), tropology (moral), and anagogy (eschatological).
Patrick Schreiner doesn't believe modern hermeneutics is wrong but believes that it is incomplete in ignoring these other aspects. Here he seeks to recover this ancient method by explaining it, defending it, and offering a coherent method for using it. With scholars, students, and pastors in view, he argues that this approach, with the senses in conversation with each other, better respects the nature, goal, and ecclesial setting of reading, interpreting, and applying the Bible.
Schreiner begins by giving a brief overview of the four senses and why early Christians used this method. He then examines each sense in detail, exploring the what, why, and how, along with providing examples. Finally, he addresses anticipated exegetical, historical, and allegorical objections to his proposal. The book includes a foreword by Jonathan T. Pennington.
Patrick Schreiner doesn't believe modern hermeneutics is wrong but believes that it is incomplete in ignoring these other aspects. Here he seeks to recover this ancient method by explaining it, defending it, and offering a coherent method for using it. With scholars, students, and pastors in view, he argues that this approach, with the senses in conversation with each other, better respects the nature, goal, and ecclesial setting of reading, interpreting, and applying the Bible.
Schreiner begins by giving a brief overview of the four senses and why early Christians used this method. He then examines each sense in detail, exploring the what, why, and how, along with providing examples. Finally, he addresses anticipated exegetical, historical, and allegorical objections to his proposal. The book includes a foreword by Jonathan T. Pennington.
- GenresTheologyNonfiction
269 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 4, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 27, 2026
This is a very interesting and stimulating book written in an irenic tone. It has prompted me to think further about the question. However, I remain unconvinced that, as an evangelical Protestant, I need to recover the Quadriga. Personally, I did not experience a divide between seminary and preaching in church.
The quadriga arose from the need to explain incomprehensible or shocking passages of the OT. It was also useful to ensure exegesis would never contradict the authority of the church because anything could be allegorised without officially departing from the "literal" sense. It collapsed at the end of the Middle-Ages for various (good) reasons: the humanist movement and the return ad fontes (biblical languages) and, especially the Protestant Reformation and its emphasis on appropriating the promises of Scripture. It is true that the early reformers were not always consistent in their hermeneutics and continued using something like the quadriga but it was soon abandoned. Why recovering it now? Even the great 20th c. Roman Catholic theologians like Lubac or Congar who wrote about hermeneutics and tradition do not think it should be.
My question reading the book was: what is wrong with our Protestant reading of Scripture? Schreiner says that “we need a scriptural hermeneutics that responds to a secular, disenchanted, naturalistic and materialistic reading culture.” Isn't the Protestant hermeneutics adequate?
Schreiner's big divide in the book is "pre-modern v. modern" reading of Scripture. But the fact is that the Reformers were "pre-modern" and they did not read Scripture like the medieval. If the Quadriga was so great, how come it did not lead to the rediscovery of the great truths of the gospel in the 16th c.?
It is striking that Schreiner never mentions the notion of "covenant" which is the heart of Protestant hermeneutics. For example, Patrick Fairbairn in his "Typology of Scripture" (1848) provided very convincing hermeneutical principles. The medieval quadriga saw Old Testament characters like Abraham as types of Christ but the Reformed idea of "one covenant of grace" turned them into brothers in Christ which was a decisive move.
Schreiner spends a long time defending the term "allegory" and he rightly notes that the term was used interchangeably with type throughout the early and medieval church. However, when a term has acquired such a negative baggage for such a long time, is it worth retrieving?
Schreiner gives few examples of Quadriga and some are not very convincing (to me at least!)
The piece of wood in Exodus 15 an allegory of the cross? We may think of it as an illustration but the notion of type/ allegory should be much more carefully defined.
The armour of God in Eph.6 a tropological application of Saul's armour in 1 Samuel 17? Really? Again, I confess I am far from convinced.
The quadriga is also typically medieval in its rigid "fourfold" distinctions. Why not simply say that there is one literal/ Christological sense (yes, not easy to define but covenant theology helps us) and several practical applications as the 17th c. Orthodox Protestant like Turretin would say.
It is right to recover what is good about patristic and medieval theology. Christ did not start building his church in 1517. However, we run the danger of going too far in the other direction and give the impression that the Protestant Reformation was only a minor adjustment when in fact it was a life-changing and world-changing rediscovery of the fundamental truths of the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ. I don't believe this theological revolution could happen without a hermeneutical revolution (as per Gerhard Ebeling and contra Alister McGrath quoted in the book).
Anyway, as I said, a stimulating book. I'm still thinking about it...
The quadriga arose from the need to explain incomprehensible or shocking passages of the OT. It was also useful to ensure exegesis would never contradict the authority of the church because anything could be allegorised without officially departing from the "literal" sense. It collapsed at the end of the Middle-Ages for various (good) reasons: the humanist movement and the return ad fontes (biblical languages) and, especially the Protestant Reformation and its emphasis on appropriating the promises of Scripture. It is true that the early reformers were not always consistent in their hermeneutics and continued using something like the quadriga but it was soon abandoned. Why recovering it now? Even the great 20th c. Roman Catholic theologians like Lubac or Congar who wrote about hermeneutics and tradition do not think it should be.
My question reading the book was: what is wrong with our Protestant reading of Scripture? Schreiner says that “we need a scriptural hermeneutics that responds to a secular, disenchanted, naturalistic and materialistic reading culture.” Isn't the Protestant hermeneutics adequate?
Schreiner's big divide in the book is "pre-modern v. modern" reading of Scripture. But the fact is that the Reformers were "pre-modern" and they did not read Scripture like the medieval. If the Quadriga was so great, how come it did not lead to the rediscovery of the great truths of the gospel in the 16th c.?
It is striking that Schreiner never mentions the notion of "covenant" which is the heart of Protestant hermeneutics. For example, Patrick Fairbairn in his "Typology of Scripture" (1848) provided very convincing hermeneutical principles. The medieval quadriga saw Old Testament characters like Abraham as types of Christ but the Reformed idea of "one covenant of grace" turned them into brothers in Christ which was a decisive move.
Schreiner spends a long time defending the term "allegory" and he rightly notes that the term was used interchangeably with type throughout the early and medieval church. However, when a term has acquired such a negative baggage for such a long time, is it worth retrieving?
Schreiner gives few examples of Quadriga and some are not very convincing (to me at least!)
The piece of wood in Exodus 15 an allegory of the cross? We may think of it as an illustration but the notion of type/ allegory should be much more carefully defined.
The armour of God in Eph.6 a tropological application of Saul's armour in 1 Samuel 17? Really? Again, I confess I am far from convinced.
The quadriga is also typically medieval in its rigid "fourfold" distinctions. Why not simply say that there is one literal/ Christological sense (yes, not easy to define but covenant theology helps us) and several practical applications as the 17th c. Orthodox Protestant like Turretin would say.
It is right to recover what is good about patristic and medieval theology. Christ did not start building his church in 1517. However, we run the danger of going too far in the other direction and give the impression that the Protestant Reformation was only a minor adjustment when in fact it was a life-changing and world-changing rediscovery of the fundamental truths of the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ. I don't believe this theological revolution could happen without a hermeneutical revolution (as per Gerhard Ebeling and contra Alister McGrath quoted in the book).
Anyway, as I said, a stimulating book. I'm still thinking about it...
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Patrick Schreiner sets out to argue that the church should recover the four senses of Scripture: the literal, the allegorical, the tropological, and the anagogical. If that terminology is not familiar, this is a simple breakdown:
- Literal sense = The natural sense of words in their historical and grammatical context.
- Allegorical sense = The spiritual, symbolic, and figural sense that pertains to Christ and the church.
- Tropological sense = The moral sense; the moral and practical application of the text.
- Anagogical sense = The eschatological sense, how the text points forward to our ultimate hope.
Going into this book, I was sympathetic to wanting to recover or at least learn from the historic fourfold senses of Scripture. I admit I was not initially wholly convinced that it could be fully recovered, but I became more convinced of the feasibility as Schreiner continued to make his argument. I'm still not sure I'm fully convinced due to some fuzziness in real application, but dang, I was encouraged by the end of the book. Reading about interpreting Scripture brought life to me.
Even if you are not fully convinced of Schreiner's argument, I think the greatest value in his book is pointing us to allow more of the Spirit into our reading of Scripture. I think he rightly contends that our modern applications of the grammatical-historical methods have become too materialistic, too focused on the human authors, and do not, at least in theory, allow enough room for the divine author to speak. He reminds us through his application of the spiritual senses that God may intend more than the human authors ever did. We are not confined to merely what the human authors must have known or even intended; God could have intended greater meanings that point forward to Christ or to the eschaton. In some ways, Schreiner has given me better categories for how the New Testament authors read and interpreted the Old Testament.
Now while the language of the quadriga (the fourfold senses) might seem strange, it really is not entirely foreign to use. We do often engage in it even if we do not wholly recognize it. While I am still not clear on application of the quadriga in all contexts—do we see anagogical readings in Revelation or only the literal sense since its natural context is eschatology?—Schreiner does helpfully include an appendix that was quite clarifying. In simple layman's terms, he contends that the quadriga is teaching the reader to ask four questions of the text:
1. "What does the text mean in its original setting?"
2. "How does the text point me to Christ and the church?"
3. "How does the text form us as people and give us instructions for how to live?"
4. "How does the text point us to our glorious future and Christ's return?"
That's it. It feels very familiar. I can get behind using those questions to guide my Scripture reading and teaching.
My main complaint is I wish there were more examples. Schreiner says in the Preface that he cut a whole section of the book that was devoted to more extended examples of applying the quadriga since the book was too long. In my estimation, that makes the quadriga perhaps more abstract than it needed to be. If that section is not restored before final publication, I hope that he will publish a follow-up book devoted to practically interpreting through the fourfold senses.
I heartily commend this book. It was a blessing to me, and I believe it will be a blessing to others.
- Literal sense = The natural sense of words in their historical and grammatical context.
- Allegorical sense = The spiritual, symbolic, and figural sense that pertains to Christ and the church.
- Tropological sense = The moral sense; the moral and practical application of the text.
- Anagogical sense = The eschatological sense, how the text points forward to our ultimate hope.
Going into this book, I was sympathetic to wanting to recover or at least learn from the historic fourfold senses of Scripture. I admit I was not initially wholly convinced that it could be fully recovered, but I became more convinced of the feasibility as Schreiner continued to make his argument. I'm still not sure I'm fully convinced due to some fuzziness in real application, but dang, I was encouraged by the end of the book. Reading about interpreting Scripture brought life to me.
Even if you are not fully convinced of Schreiner's argument, I think the greatest value in his book is pointing us to allow more of the Spirit into our reading of Scripture. I think he rightly contends that our modern applications of the grammatical-historical methods have become too materialistic, too focused on the human authors, and do not, at least in theory, allow enough room for the divine author to speak. He reminds us through his application of the spiritual senses that God may intend more than the human authors ever did. We are not confined to merely what the human authors must have known or even intended; God could have intended greater meanings that point forward to Christ or to the eschaton. In some ways, Schreiner has given me better categories for how the New Testament authors read and interpreted the Old Testament.
Now while the language of the quadriga (the fourfold senses) might seem strange, it really is not entirely foreign to use. We do often engage in it even if we do not wholly recognize it. While I am still not clear on application of the quadriga in all contexts—do we see anagogical readings in Revelation or only the literal sense since its natural context is eschatology?—Schreiner does helpfully include an appendix that was quite clarifying. In simple layman's terms, he contends that the quadriga is teaching the reader to ask four questions of the text:
1. "What does the text mean in its original setting?"
2. "How does the text point me to Christ and the church?"
3. "How does the text form us as people and give us instructions for how to live?"
4. "How does the text point us to our glorious future and Christ's return?"
That's it. It feels very familiar. I can get behind using those questions to guide my Scripture reading and teaching.
My main complaint is I wish there were more examples. Schreiner says in the Preface that he cut a whole section of the book that was devoted to more extended examples of applying the quadriga since the book was too long. In my estimation, that makes the quadriga perhaps more abstract than it needed to be. If that section is not restored before final publication, I hope that he will publish a follow-up book devoted to practically interpreting through the fourfold senses.
I heartily commend this book. It was a blessing to me, and I believe it will be a blessing to others.
August 20, 2026
This book helped me identify and label a lot of things I have been doing for a long time. Schreiner is kind to those who disagree with him but relentless and exacting in his defense of the senses. He is careful to give numerous, Scriptural examples, and he is crystal clear again and again both in word and demonstration that his aim is to use the literal reading as the genuine foundation of hermeneutical work, not to dispense with it. This book bridges the gap between exegetical work and homiletical work, a gap that many entries on biblical interpretation fail to fully cross, in my experience.
One of the best books on hermeneutics I have read.
One of the best books on hermeneutics I have read.
August 26, 2026
Good read and introduction on a contested area when it comes to Biblical Interpretation. The author comes at it and defends the quadriga from an evangelical reformed perspective. While some pertinent questions remain; the author does a good job showing what is meant by each of the four senses. The book is worth it for the final three chapters answering common objections.
August 14, 2026
Absolute heater.
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