''Sensus plenior'' is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

phrase that means "fuller sense" or "fuller meaning". It is used in Biblical

exegesis Exegesis ( ; from the Ancient Greek, Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation (logic), interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Bible, Biblical works. In modern usage, ...

to describe the supposed deeper meaning intended by

God In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...

but not by the human author. Walter C. Kaiser notes that the term was coined by F. Andre Fernandez in 1927 but was popularized by

Raymond E. Brown Raymond Edward Brown (May 22, 1928 – August 8, 1998) was an American Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar. He was regarded as a specialist concerning the hypothetical "Johannine community", which he speculated contributed to the a ...

. Brown defines ''sensus plenior'' as That implies that more meaning can be found within scripture than the original human authors intended and so the study of scripture that isolates a particular book and concerns itself only with the details of the author's time and situation can be incomplete. ''Sensus plenior'' corresponds to rabbinical interpretations of the

Hebrew Scriptures The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

John Goldingay John Edgar Goldingay (born 20 June 1942 in Birmingham, United Kingdom) is a British Old Testament scholar and translator and Anglican cleric. He is the David Allan Hubbard Professor Emeritus of Old Testament in the School of Theology of Fuller T ...

suggests that the citation of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23 is a "stock example" of ''sensus plenior''. Conservative Christians have used the term to mean the larger or whole teaching of scripture.

References

Additional references

, "The History and Development of the Theory of a ''Sensus Plenior''," CBQ 15 (1953) 141 - 162. * ''The Jerome Biblical Commentary'' Vol. 1 1971, Geoffry Chapman Publishers, London, pp. 605–23. * David H. Stern, ''Jewish New Testament Commentary'' 1992, Maryland, pp. 11–4.

External links

* * {{cite journal , author=Matthew W.I. Dunn , year=September 2007 , title=Raymond Brown and the sensus plenior interpretation of the Bible , journal=Studies in Religion , volume= 36 , issue=3–4 , pages=531–551 , doi=10.1177/000842980703600306 Biblical exegesis Latin religious words and phrases

See also

References

Additional references

External links