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THE HERMENEUTICS of the REFORMERS in This Article I Shall Not Deal with the Whole Doctrine of Scripture As We Find It in The

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THE HERMENEUTICS of the REFORMERS in This Article I Shall Not Deal with the Whole Doctrine of Scripture As We Find It in The THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE REFORMERS by KLAAS RUNIA INTRODUCTION In this article I shall not deal with the whole doctrine of scripture as we find it in the works of the Reformers, but with their hermeneutics. Naturally, the two subjects are interrelated, but they are not identical. The doctrine of scripture deals with scripture as the Word of God, its inspiration, authority, sufficiency, infallibility, and/or inerrancy, etc. In short, it concentrates on the essence of scripture and its attributes. Hermeneutics deals with the interpretation of scripture. How is it being read and used in the theology of the Reformers? It is obvious that one cannot deal with the latter question without at the same time touching again and again upon the doctrine of scripture. Yet the emphasis is on the hermeneutical question, and the doctrine of scrip­ ture itself will be dealt with only in a secondary way. But what do we mean by "hermeneutics"? In recent years there has been a considerable shift as to the meaning of the term.1 In the past, hermeneutics was that part of theology that tried to formulate the rules of exegesis. Since the Second World War the term has obtained a new meaning. Now it no longer refers primarily to a set of exegetical rules, but rather to the whole process of interpretation itself, by which con­ temporary believers are brought into an understanding relation to the biblical message. It is interesting to note that this new concept of hermeneutics applies very much to the understanding of the Bible by the Reformers them­ selves. Although they most certainly were interested in the rules of exegesis, especially as applied by the medieval quadriga, their deepest concern went far beyond this. Their real concern was hermeneutical in a much wider sense of the term. They were looking for the door that would open the treasure house of scripture and indeed believed that lSee Carl C. Braaten, History and Hermeneutics: New Directions in Theology Today, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956) pp. 130ff. and James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr., eds., The New Hermeneutic: New Frontiers in Theology, vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. Iff. 121 122 CALVIN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL they had found a new key. In this article I shall survey the new understanding of scripture that arose as a consequence of the rediscov­ ery of the gospel of justification by grace and by faith alone. This new understanding, however, did not suddenly fall from the sky. The Reformers were in many ways rooted in history and had connections with those who preceded them. Turning points in history always show both continuity and discontinuity. In the flow of history the discontinuity may stand out, but it can be truly understood only if it is seen in the underlying bedding of continuity. I want to point to three important aspects of continuity. (1) In the Middle Ages a great deal of important work in the field of biblical exposition was produced.2 Unfortunately much of this work was marred by the insistence on the fourfold interpretation of scrip­ ture. The so-called quadriga, which can be traced back to John Cassian, dominated both lecture rooms and scholarly publications.3 It was later summarized in the following lines: Litera gesta docet: quid credas allegoria. Moralis quid agis: quo tendas anagogia. (The letter teaches what has been done, the allegory what you are to believe, the moral what you must do, and the anagogy where you are heading.) Yet the awareness that the literal meaning is decisive was never com­ pletely obscured. In his Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas stated that "all interpretations are based on one, that is the literal form, from which alone we can argue."4 Afterwards Nicholas of Lyra continued this trend and thus paved the way for Luther, as also appears from the jingle: Si Lyra non lyrasset Lutherus non sallasset. (If Lyra had not sung, Luther would not have danced.)5 2See Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941). 3See A. Kevington Wood, Captive to the Word—Martin Luther: Doctor of Sacred Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1969), p. 79. 4Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1,1,10, ad 3. In this respect Thomas was a good pupil of Albert the Great. (See Smalley, Study, p. 299.) 5It should be noted that Luther in his first lectures as professor of biblical exposition still applied the customary fourfold interpretation of scripture. As a matter of fact, in this period he was very critical of Lyra. See W. Kooiman, Luther en de Bijbel (Baarn: Bosch and Keuning, n.d.), p. 28. Luther only gradually freed himself from the allegorical method and returned to the literal meaning of the text. THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE REFORMERS 123 (2) In the late Middle Ages a tension became visible between the authority of scripture and the authority of the magisterium of the church. While the general opinion was that the magisterium was the authoritative interpreter of scripture, there were also voices maintain­ ing that infallibility in the strictest sense must be ascribed only to the scriptures. One such voice was that of William of Ockham. Naturally, as a child of his time he expected every Christian to accept the doctrine of the church. Yet he also maintained that "what is not contained in the scriptures or cannot with necessity and obvious consistency be de­ duced from the contents of the same, no Christain needs to believe."6 He further maintained that in the (hypothetical) case of a contradiction between scripture and the magisterium the final authority and infalli­ bility belong to scripture.7 This view of scripture also paved the way for Luther,8 although we must not lose sight of the fact that for Ockham and the other nominalists this sola scriptura principle functioned en­ tirely within a judicial, church-political view of both scripture and church.9 (3) In the fourteenth century (in Italy) and in the fifteenth century (in Germany and the rest of Europe) the new humanism gave a fresh impetus to the study of scripture, especially through its emphasis on the study of the original biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek. Three names in particular come to the fore here: Laurentius Valla, Johannes Reuchlin, and Desiderius Erasmus.10 This movement too has been of inestimable value for the Reformation. Without it the work of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the other Reformers would have been well nigh impossible. And yet the humanist movement does not "explain" the Reformation. The leading humanists, including Erasmus, still worked within the framework of the traditional hermeneutics of the Middle Ages. Theirs was a reform movement, not a reformation. What, then, was the new insight of the Reformers that turned the whole understanding of scripture upside down? What was the secret of the new hermeneutics of the Reformers? We can put it in a nutshell: the 6J. Michael Reu, Luther and the Scriptures (Columbus: Wartburg Press, 1944), p. 24. 7Hermann Sasse, "Luther and the Word of God," in Accents in Luther's Theology, ed. Heino O. Kadai (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967), p. 59. 8Before coming to Wittenburg Luther had studied at Erfurt, where the influence of Ockham was very strong. 9See H. W. Rossouw, "Klarrheid en Interpretasie" [Clarity and Interpretation] (Doc­ toral dissertation, Free University, Amsterdam, 1963), pp. 155ff. 10See Peter Stuhlmacher, Vom Verstehen des Neuen Testaments: Eine Hermeneutik (Göt­ tingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1979), pp. 86ff. 124 CALVIN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL Reformers did not recover the Bible as such, but the Bible as the bearer of the gospell Or to put it into the words of Jaroslav Pelikan: "The church did not need a Luther to tell it that the Bible was true. But it did need a Luther to tell it what the truth of the Bible is."11 The secret of the hermeneutics of Luther and the other Reformers was their rediscovery of the kerygmatic nature of scripture. The Bible is not the law book of the church, but it is the preaching text of the church. And this means that the door was opened to an altogether new understanding of scripture. The first one to discover this was the monk Martin Luther. LUTHER Anyone who wants to understand Luther must see him first of all as biblical theologian. So he understood himself and so he wanted others to understand him.12 Paul Althaus starts his standard work on Luther's theology with the following statement: "All Luther's theological think­ ing presupposes the authority of Scripture. His theology is nothing more than an attempt to interpret Scripture. Its form is basically ex­ egesis."13 Luther never claimed to be a systematic theologian, even though he wrote many books dealing with aspects of systematic the­ ology. He always maintained that he was only a doctor of sacred scripture.14 It was also as a biblical theologian that he made his great discovery. As far as this discovery is concerned, we are usually referred to Luther's so-called "tower experience." As a matter of fact, he himself does this in the well-known description of this experience in the preface to the Latin edition of his works in 1545.15 According to some scholars, traces of this discovery are already to be found in his first exposition of the Psalms in the years 1513-1515.16 However this may be, it cannot be denied that the new insight into scripture came into sharp uJaroslav Pelikan, Obedient Rebels (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p.
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