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Understanding the Bible

In: Religion Topics

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Specific (Catholic) Literary Principles for Interpreting the Bible

What is the literal sense?

Speaking of the “literal” sense or meaning of the Bible from a Catholic perspective can be very confusing because the Catholic Church does not mean by the term literal what is often meant by the word “literal” in popular American culture and vernacular. “Literal” as used by modern twenty-first century Americans assumes that the words of text describe something that factually happened. This restrictive meaning of “literal” is not what the Catholic Church means by the literal sense, literal level, or the literal meaning of the Bible. Rather, this modern contemporary American understanding of “literal” is closer to what is called literalism, which means, “fidelity to observable fact.”[1] The literal sense of some Biblical texts may require “fidelity to observable fact” but this is not always the case. Thus, in Catholic teaching, the “literal sense” is not synonymous with literalism.

What the Catholic Church means by the literal sense is that the “literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation” (CCC[2]116).[3] It is called “literal” because the English word literal is derived from the Latin word “littera,” which is the Latin word for “letter.” So the literal sense, according to Catholic teaching, is not a literalist reading of the text based upon literalism but is the “meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture” (CCC 116) or the letters that comprise the words:

The literal sense is not to be confused with the “literalist” sense to which fundamentalists are attached. It is not sufficient to translate a text word for word in order to obtain its literal sense. One must understand the text according to the literary conventions of the time. When a text is metaphorical, its

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