Before we turn to prophecy
for today, we need to say a little something about the sensus plenior—a Latin
phrase referring to a “fuller” or “deeper” meaning of a prophetic text. We see
this kind of interpretation taking place on a number of occasions in the New Testament
in relation to Old Testament texts: For example, “So was fulfilled what the
Lord had saith through the prophet: ‘Our of Egypt I called my son’” in Matt
2:15.
Sensus plenior is
a somewhat controversial idea insofar as it stretches a text’s “meaning” beyond
that of which the original writer and audience would have been aware and
therefore breaks the “first rule” of interpretation. And yet it’s something we
see the New Testament writers doing when it comes to messianic prophecies, in
particular. So what does this mean for us?
The first thing to say is
that just because the New Testament writers do this it does not give us license
to—they were themselves writing inspired Scripture in their sensus plenior interpretations,
we would not be. Once we lose the anchor of the original meaning of a text, the
sky is the limit when it comes to finding “meaning” in something. The more
creative a proposed reading is, the more potentially prone to error it will be.
The second thing to say is
that because a sensus plenior reading can only be identified in
hindsight adds to its riskiness. Losing our mooring in the original meaning
means we are into the realms of speculation.
That said, it somewhat depends
on what we mean by “meaning!” We know that at a personal, devotional level, the
Holy Spirit can and does speak meaningfully to us through texts outside
the original meaning. Btu this is never the same thing as that text’s “meaning.”
Whether something is the Holy Spirit speaking (or not) is to be discerned
through its consonance with Scripture as a whole, and specifically whether it
sounds like something Jesus would say: whether it accords with the nature and
character of God.
Tangential to sensus
plenior is seeing an implication that can be derived from a text
through a present within it as such. Stein cites a helpful example—outside
of a messianic context in 1 Cor 9:9, where Paul quotes Deut 25:4 (“You shall
not muzzle the ox when it is treading out the grain”) in justification of
ministers of the gospel receiving financial support for what they do; if oxen
are allowed to share in the benefits of their work, how much more so ministers?
The point here, however, is not so much a fuller or deeper meaning, but an
inference that may reasonably be drawn by analogy.
A further possibility may be
a second meaning in a subsequent event (the prophetic words being fulfilled
more than once). For example, a prophecy that was first fulfilled in concrete
events in an earlier time being fulfilled once again in a messianic event in
New Testament times. (Stephen Burnhope, Reading the Bible With Its Writers:
What They Were Saying, Why They Said It, How They Said It [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade
Books, 2025], 212-13)
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