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.