Coffee & Theology: Sensus Plenior

Faith Library hosted Josh Gurango (myself) and Ptr. Joseph Mangahas (check out his blog here) for a Coffee & Theology online hangout. We discussed an often misunderstood concept in biblical interpretation termed Sensus Plenior. To guide our discussion, we set out to answer 6 main questions concerning Sensus Plenior. We were joined by over 50 participants who contributed by asking some really helpful questions along the way. If you'd like to jump right into the main questions and answers, their corresponding timestamps are found below.

A couple of notes: 1) Our host Aaron's audio was quite spotty at times, but thankfully Joseph and I came through very clear throughout the whole discussion, and we made sure to speak English (pretty much) for all our answers. 2) There are audience questions and comments spread out between these main sections.

00:04:09 - #1: Our discussion today revolves around our hermeneutical approach. So, before we get to that fancy Latin term sensus plenior, what are the basic principles of hermeneutics? (Click here to view the PDF that I used)

00:18:46 - #2: Okay, so what is sensus plenior and how does it affect our hermeneutical approach?

00:25:53 - #3: Do we have some clear examples in Scripture where we see this at work?

00:51:38 - #4: Doesn't this go against the "grammatical-historical" method?

00:57:46 - #5: What happens if we reject the concept of sensus plenior?

01:07:28 - #6: How does this affect the way we (practically) apply Scripture, especially from the Old Testament?

01:13:47 - Open Forum