The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil According to the Holy Scriptures

Christ, continually brings forth an infallible judgment in those things that pertain to faith. For the gates of hell shall not prevail against it Matthew 16:18.

§. 3

The literal sense is of the greatest importance above others.

It is the doctrine of the common Church and the Fathers that multiple senses are contained in sacred Scripture, among which the first and principal ones are the literal and the spiritual or mystical. Therefore, the Theologian must take the greatest care and discern from which of these senses he is able to derive the firmest argument to establish his doctrine. St. Thomas, 1st part, q. 1, art. 10, to the 1st, speaking of the manifold sense of Scripture, argues thus: no confusion follows in sacred Scripture, since all senses are founded upon one, namely the literal, from which alone an argument can be drawn, but not from those things which are said according to allegory. Nevertheless, nothing is lost to sacred Scripture from this, because nothing necessary for faith is contained under the spiritual sense that Scripture does not manifest elsewhere through the literal sense. According to these words of the Angelic Doctor, in confirming some truth of Scripture or Faith, no other sense should be attended to by the Theologian so constantly as the literal, as it is the one found to be alone suitable for providing a firm and solid argument, because Scripture is accustomed to manifest and express those things that pertain to faith through the literal text, as the Great Aurelius St. Augustine confirms in On Christian Doctrine, book 3, chapter 10, saying: understand that whatever in divine speech cannot be referred properly either to the honesty of morals or to the truth of faith is figurative. Hence, the Most Distinguished Alphonsus Salmeron wisely advises in Prolegomena 9, canon 33: a good interpreter must by no means depart from the words of sacred Scripture according to the rules of Grammar and the proper meaning of the words, from which an elegant and illustrious sense can be had, unless some valid reason occurs which compels...