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From Allegory to Metaphor: More Notes on Luther's Hermeneutical Shift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Darrell R. Reinke
Darrell R. Reinke
Affiliation:
Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island
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Type
Notes and Observations
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , July 1973 , pp. 386 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1973

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References

1 WA 54, 179–87. See Schäfer, Rolf, Zur Datierung von Luthers reformatorischer Erkenntnis, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 66 (1969), 151–70Google Scholar.

2 Preus, James S., Old Testament Promissio and Luther's New Hermeneutic, Harvard Theological Review 60 (1967), 145–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; From Shadow to Promise. Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar.

3 Ebeling, Gerhard, Die Anfänge von Luthers Hermeneutik, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 48 (1951), 172–230Google Scholar; Evangelische Evangelienauslegung: Eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Hermeneutik (Munich, 1942)Google Scholar; Luther: An Introduction to his Thought (Philadelphia, 1970), 93–109Google Scholar. A convenient summary of Ebeling's views may be found in Pauck, Wilhelm's introduction to Luther'sLectures on Romans, The Library of Christian Classics, XV (Philadelphia, 1961), xxivfGoogle Scholar.

4 This theme was first developed by Vogelsang, Erich, Die Anfänge von Luthers Christologie nach der ersten Psalmenvorlesung (Berlin, 1929)Google Scholar. Erik Erickson's sketch of Luther's “identity-formation” relies heavily on the work of Vogelsang, whose position he summarizes as follows: “Luther's ethical search gradually made him discard the other categories of exegesis and concentrate on the moral one; … The scriptures to him became God's advice to the faithful in the here and now.” Young Man Luther (New York, 1962), 199Google Scholar.

5 “Selbstverständnis coram deo und Gotteserkenntnis ist ein und dasselbe.” Ebeling, Anfänge …, 207.

6 Ebeling, Luther, 105f.

7 Preus, From Shadow to Promise, 226f.

8 Preus, From Shadow to Promise, 171 and 182.

9 “The abyss of despair and nothingness, the threat of ultimate abandonment and desperatio, which for man in sin is a real threat, cannot in Christ come to genuine expression. In fact, conformitas has no place here; on the contrary, the real distance between Christ and man is disconcertingly exposed … As deushomo he is not, at this most crucial point, one of us men.” Ibid., 233.

10 See the criticisms of Pilch, John, Luther's Hermeneutical Shift, Harvard Theological Review 63 (1970), 445–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also the analysis of the transformation of Luther's thought by Bayer, Oswald, Promissio: Geschichte der reformatorischen Wende in Luthers Theologie (Göttingen, 1971)Google Scholar.

11 WA TR I, 335.

12 WA 4, 317–20. See Wernle's, Hans discussion of this section in Allegorie und Erlebnis bei Luther (Einsiedeln, 1960), 18fGoogle Scholar.

13 “Vestra meditatio est mea testimonia: cum ediverso captivato intellectu testimonia dei debeant esse nostra meditatio.” WA 4, 317.35.Google Scholar

14 “Ergo noli superbire, sed obliviscere literam et sequere (id est extendere) spiritum.” WA 4, 319.12. See also WA 4, 318.39–319.6 and WA 4, 365.5–14.

15 “Quia meditari est intime cogitare et interiora rimari et semper spiritum introrsum seque et non sibi parietem facere et limitem statuere, quasi iam adeptus sis finem intelligendi aut agendi.” WA 4, 319.27.

16 The habit of mind which reads scripture as an expression of one's own experience is fundamental to monastic devotion; a passage of Cassian, well-known to monastic authors, reads: “Never ceasing to partake of this life-giving food (scripture) he so enters into the sentiments expressed in the psalms that he recites them no longer as if they were composed by the prophet but as if he himself were the author. At any rate, he feels they were made for him; and he realizes that what they speak of, has not been experienced solely in the person of the prophet but is fulfilled every day in himself.” Conferences 10.11. Bernard of Clairvaux frankly admits that textual commentary is an occasion for the expression of personal experience: “Noverint tamen qui me tanquam de otiosa et non necessaria explanatione sugillant, non tam intendisse exponere evangelium, quam de evangelio sumere occasionem loquendi quod loqui delectabat.” PL 183.86D The point here is that Luther's early allegorical method is characteristic of the monastic tradition, a tradition of exegesis fundamentally different from the scholastic method against which Luther is commonly studied; on the distinction between monastic and scholastic, see Leclercq, Jean, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York, 1961), 189–231Google Scholar; de Lubac, Henri, The Sources of Revelation (New York, 1968), 1–84Google Scholar; Chenu, M-D., Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century (Chicago, 1968), 270–309Google Scholar.

17 “Sed primo grammatica videamus, verum ea theologica.” WA 5, 27.8.Google Scholar

18 “Non autem allegoricum dico more recentiorum, quasi alius sensus historialis sub eo sit quaerendus, quam qui dictus est, sed quod verum et proprium sensum figurata locutione expresserit.” WA 5, 51.36. The terms “allegory” and “metaphor” are suggested by this passage. As the discussion indicates, however, the shift involves not so much linguistic forms as a change in the relationship between self-consciousness and the linguistic tradition — a shift from “indentification” to “alienation,” expressed in the methodological rejection of allegory.

19 “Ad allegorias non facilis sum, praesertim quando legitimum et proprium illum germanumque sensum quaero, qui in contentione pugnet et fidei eruditionem stabiliat.” WA 5, 75.2. It was Karl Holl who first pointed out that Luther rejected the fourfold allegorical method in 1518 (WA 1, 507,33): Luthers Bedeutung für den Fortschritt der Auslegungskunst, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, I (Tübingen, 1923), 552fGoogle Scholar.

20 “Ego interim de Christo interpretabor, motus eodem quo Augustinus argumento quod quintus versus non videatur apte de quoquam intelligi alio quam Christo.” WA 5, 75.12.Google Scholar

21 “Historiam intelligi occasionem fuisse, qua futura prophetae spiritu illustrante monstrata intelligerent.” WA 5, 76.1.Google Scholar

22 “Zum andern sollst du meditieren, das ist: nicht allein im Herzen, sondern auch aüsserlich die mündliche Rede und buchstabische Wort im Buch immer treiben und reiben, lesen und widerlesen, mit fleissigen, Aufmerken und Nachdenken, was der Heilige Geist damit meinet.” WA 50, 659.22f.Google Scholar

23 “Zum dritten ist da tentatio, Anfechtung. Die ist der Prüfstein, die lehret dich nicht allein wissen und verstehen, sondern auch erfahren, wie recht, wie wahrhaftig, wie süss, wie lieblich, wie mächtig, wie tröstlich Gottes Wort sei, Weisheit über alle Weisheit.” WA 50, 660.1f.Google Scholar

24 For example, the Cistercian Aelred of Rievaulx writes: “Ita eius profectus corporalis, noster est profectus spiritalis, et ea quae ab eo in cunctis aetatibus acta describuntur, in nobis per singulos profectuum gradus spiritaliter agi a bene proficientibus sentiuntur.” De Jesu Puero Duodenni, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis I. Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia (1971), 258.

25 “Crucifixio Christi est sacramentum quia significat sic crucem poenitentiae in qua moritur anima peccato, exemplum quia hortatur pro veritate corpus morti offerre vel cruci.” WA 9, 18.19f.Google Scholar

26 “Primum itaque, quod Christus sua passione nobis ostendit, est quod nobis materiam cognitionis det et ostendat quales simus intus coram Deo, ut his agnitis non cessemus plangere, dolere, flere et poenitere.” WA 1, 337.34.Google Scholar Martin Elze has recently discussed these sermons (WA 1, 336–345), and argues for a date earlier than 1518 for their composition: Das Verständnis der Passion Jesu im Ausgehenden Mittelalter und bei Luther, Geist und Geschichte der Reformation (Berlin, 1966), 127–51Google Scholar.

27 “Quod Christi passionem nondum intelligit, qui non se ipsum in illa depingi cernit, et vane Christo compatitur, qui sibi ipsi ex illa non discit compati.” WA 1, 318.12f.Google Scholar

28 WA 1, 337.19f.

29 WA 5, 637–40.

30 “Tunc autem noscis in spiritu passionem Christi, quando pleno affectu fidei in ipsam raperis non dubitans, pro te esse Christum haec omnia passum.” WA 5, 638.15.

31 Concerning Luther's understanding of man, Ozment, Steven E. writes: “The Christian receives a full humanity, which he can in no way — substantively, generally, or accidentally — identify either with God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit.” Homo Viator: Luther and Late Medieval Theology, Harvard Theological Review 62 (1969), 287Google Scholar.

32 WA 10, III, 74.24f.

33 See, for example, Vorrede von der Passion Predigt and Von dem nutz des leidens Christi, WA 52, 226–36Google Scholar. About the theology of the “later” Luther, Jan D. Siggins writes: “The site of the gospel's efficacy is no longer the transaction in my soul, by which, per humilitatem, the Word of God works to make me conformable to Christ. Rather, its efficacy lies solely in what Christ accomplished. In other words, the gospel's efficacy is construed no longer as achieved within me, psychologically, but as achieved outside me historically.” Martin Luther's Doctrine of Christ (New Haven, 1970), 65Google Scholar. See also Bizer, Ernst's analysis of humility and faith in Luther: Fides ex auditu: Eine Untersuchung über die Entdeckung der Gerechtigkeit Gottes durch Martin Luther (Neukirchen, 1961)Google Scholar.

34 See the discussion of the “I” of faith as the “transcendental I” in the thought of Luther by Elert, Werner, Morphologie des Luthertums, I (Munich, 1931), 64f.Google Scholar; also Hacker, Paul, Das Ich im Glauben bet Martin Luther (Graz, 1966)Google Scholar.

35 For the following see especially Havelock, Eric, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, 1963)Google Scholar; Blazovich, A., Soziologie des Mönchtums und die Benediktinerregel (Vienna, 1954)Google Scholar; Prinz, Friedrich, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich (Munich, 1965)Google Scholar, especially part III: Zur Literatur- und Kultursoziologie des Mönchtums, 449–548; Shils, E., Tradition, Comparative Studies in Society and History 13 (1971), 122–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 It is suggestive that Wolfgang Ostermair, an Augustinian colleague of Luther's at the University of Wittenberg, attacked Luther's doctrine of justification precisely on the grounds that it destroyed the spiritual meaning of the text — its meaning for the self-consciousness of the believer; “Christus hat unns gemacht bequem diener des Newen Testaments nicht durch den buechstaben, sonder durch den gaist. Wann der buechstab der todt. Aber der geist macht lebendig.” Zumkeller, Adolf, Der Münchener Augustiner und Wittenberger Theologieprofessor Wolfgang Ostermair und Seine Karfreitags Predigt vom Jahre 1514, Analecta Augustiniana 29 (1966), 212–54Google Scholar.

37 Preus, , From Shadow to Promise, 269.Google Scholar

38 Gordon Rupp, for example, comments: “Rarely has one invention had more decisive influence than that of printing on the Reformation. Luther's Theses were printed and translated into German, reprinted and posting through Germany in a fortnight, and circulating everywhere within a few weeks.” Luther's Progress to the Diet of Worms (New York, 1964), 54Google Scholar. The point is sharpened in a comment by Helmut G. Koenigsberger: “The importance of printing in the phenomenon of the Reformation, while it has always been recognized by historians, has perhaps still been underestimated. The diffusion of the printing press throughout Europe, therefore, gives us a time limit before which a movement such as actually occurred was practically impossible,” The Unity of the Church and the Reformation, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History I (1971), 409Google Scholar.

39 See Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report, Journal of Modern History 40 (1968), 1–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McLuhan, Marshall, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical Man (Toronto, 1962)Google Scholar; Goody, Jack and Watt, Ian, The Consequences of Literacy, Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1963) 304–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Op. cit., 208. Walter Ong comments: “The first scripts arose because of the need for record-keeping attendant on urbanization … Writing and print created the isolated thinker, the man with the book, and downgraded the network of personal loyalties which oral cultures favor as matrices of communication and as principles of social unity.” The Presence of the Word (New Haven, 1967), 54Google Scholar; see also Yates, Frances A., The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1966)Google Scholar.

41 Erik Erikson only hints at this point when he writes: “Luther was the herald of the age which was in the making and is — or was — still our age: … the age of the printed word which at least tried to say what it meant and to mean what it said, and provided identity through its very effort … Literacy, and a conscience speaking the mother tongue — these pillars of our present-day identity had long been in the building. But Gutenberg had, as it were, waited or Luther.” Young Man Luther, 224. For a reassessment of the impact of humanism on Luther, see Junghans, Helmar, Der Einfluss des Humanismus auf Luthers Entwicklung bis 1518, Luther Jahrbuch (1970), 37–101Google Scholar.