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Luther and the Bible*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

John Goldingay
John Goldingay
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Bramcote, Nottingham NG9 3DS
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Extract

It is my impression that in Britain there is more awareness of the importance of John Calvin as a biblical expositor and theorist on the doctrine of Scripture than there is of the parallel significance of Martin Luther; but perhaps I am generalising from my own experience of realising the creativeness of Luther's work much later than I did that of Calvin's. Admittedly Calvin's doctrine of Scripture is more clearly formulated and his exegesis is tighter. But often the issues that are raised and not entirely solved in Luther are the ones that continue to trouble and fascinate biblical scholars and theologians. His new hermeneutic foreshadows many aspects of the problem of the status and interpretation of the Bible as these have since unfolded; indeed, he was a decisive stimulus to this development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , February 1982 , pp. 33 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1982

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References

1 The chronology of Luther's spiritual experience is notoriously controversial. He may have come to this moment of realisation earlier (e.g. while or before lecturing on the Psalms); it may even be misleading to look for one such ‘moment’. See Rupp, G., Luther's Progress to the Diet of Worms (London: SCM, 1951; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), pp. 3–6, 26–35.Google Scholar

2 Pelikan (p. 113) comments that ‘in Luther and Eck we see opposed to each other a fundamentally inductive and a fundamentally deductive method of Biblical exegesis’.

3 Ebeling, , Luther, p. 97Google Scholar. Basil Hall (CHB 3, p. 48) credits the origin of the phrase to Geiler of Kaisersberg, a pre-reformation preacher.

4 See Hall's comments, p. 85.

5 And before: see Childs, B. S., ‘The sensus literalis of scripture: an ancient and modern problem’, Beiträge zur alttestamentliche Theologie (W. Zimmerli volume, ed. Donner, H. and others, ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1977), pp. 80–93.Google Scholar

6 The account is included by Bainton, R. H. in CHB 3, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

7 Quoted from Leith, J. H., Creeds of the Churches (New York: Doubleday, 1963Google Scholar; revised Richmond: John Knox, 1973), pp. 309–11. For background, see Schaff, P., The Creeds of Christendom 1 (New York: Harper, 1884), paragraph 61Google Scholar. It is nice to be able to note that this ‘Helvetic Consensus Formula’ was drawn up by a man named Heidegger — a name which recurs in connexion with a very different approach to interpretation later. The formula had a much wider range of concerns than the doctrine of Scripture.

8 See Nineham, D. E., The Use and Abuse of the Bible (London/New York: Macmillan, 1976), chs. 1 and 4Google Scholar

9 On this development, see Frei, H., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven/London: Yale U.P., 1974).Google Scholar

10 On Luther and tradition see Pelikan, ch. 4.

11 From different perspectives see Childs, B. S., Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), pp. 139–147Google Scholar; Stuhlmacher, P., Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977/London: SPCK, 1979), pp. 31–35, 79–80Google Scholar; Bauckham, R., reviewing H. Küng's On Being a Christian in Themelios 4 (1979), p. 73.Google Scholar

12 See Bowden's, John remarks on Bultmann's conservatism at this point, in his ‘Translator's Preface’ to Schmithals, W., An Introduction to the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann (London/Minneapolis: SCM/Augsburg, 1968), p. xivGoogle Scholar; and Leer's, Ellen Flesseman-van ‘letter’, ‘Dear Christopher, …’, in What about the New Testament? Essays in Honour of Christopher Evans (ed. Hooker, M. and Hickling, C.; London: SCM, 1975), pp. 234–242.Google Scholar

13 See Calvin, J., Institute of the Christian Religion (1559), I. viiGoogle Scholar. There are hints of this understanding in Luther: it is ‘by the testimony of the Holy Spirit in his own person’ that a man recognises the gospel message as God's word, and since scripture itself can be identified as God's word (see Althaus, pp. 38, 50–3), presumably this conviction conies by the same means. For this argument in the modern period, see Berkouwer, G. C., Studies in Dogmatics: Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 30–66.Google Scholar

14 For this threefold coming of Christ in fulfilment of God's promise, see the treatment of Ps. 115: 1 (LW 11: 396–7) with Preus's comments (pp. 192–5); and more generally Luther's Preface to the Psalter (LW 35: 253–7).

15 LW 1–8; on these, see Pelikan, ch. 5.

16 On this development, see Preus, ch. 12. In general, however, I think Preus may draw a little too sharply the distinction between Luther's hermeneutic at the beginning of his first Psalms course and the one he reached by the end of it.

17 See the treatise On the Last Wordsof David (II Sam. 23: 1–7) (LW 15: 265–352) for these Christological and Trinitarian discussions; also (on the Trinity in Gen. 1: 26) LW 1: 57–9. Bornkamm (pp. 114–15) notes Luther's relative restraint over this point, however: for instance, he does not find the Trinity in Gen. 18. Calvin in his commentary is even hesitant over passages such as Gen. 1: 26.

18 The phrase comes from Althaus, p. 273. I think Althaus underestimates Luther's persistent distinctiveness on this point; see Ebeling's, discussion of the threefold use of the law in Word and Faith (ET Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1963), pp. 62–78Google Scholar. But the law-gospel antithesis is a complex one: see Althaus, ch 19; Ebeling, Luther, ch. 7–8.

19 On this antithesis, see Ebeling, ch. 6. Luther's praise of Nicholas of Lyra is tempered further by his finding failure here: the Jewish exegetes from whom Lyra learned so much nevertheless also tended to mislead him when they inevitably (from a Christian perspective) missed dimensions of meaning beyond the merely historical (see Luther's, Treatise on the Last Words of David, LW 15: 269).Google Scholar

20 So A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels (LW 35: 117–24; quotation from p. 123); cf. Pelikan, pp. 63–5 and ch. 3 as a whole.

21 Luther often refers to this as ‘figurative interpretation’, a term which also covers exegetical approaches which avoid the natural sense of statements such as ‘God hardened Pharaoh's heart’ or ‘This is my body’. Probably Luther liked to associate these two together, but it may help clarity to keep the distinction, especially as allegory itself has several meanings.

22 cf. the remarks of Hägglund, B., ‘Renaissance and reformation’, in Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era (ed. Oberman, H. A.; Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 156–157Google Scholar. See also Ebeling's essay on ‘Luther and the beginning of the modern age’ in this volume, and ch. 6 of his Luther.

23 Kümmel, W. G., The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973/London: SCM, 1973), p. 13.Google Scholar

24 Barth, K., The Epistle to the Romans (ET London/New York: OUP, 1933), p. 7.Google Scholar

25 Commenting and Commentaries (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1876Google Scholar; reprinted Banner of Truth, 1969), p. 36; see also pp. 4–5. Calvin is here, as quite often, more literal and historical in his approach than Luther is.

26 The Treasury of David (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1884).Google Scholar

27 For recognition of this, see Smart, J. D., The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church (Philadelphia/London: Westminster/SCM, 1970)Google Scholar; Wink, W., The Bible in Human Transformation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), chapter 1Google Scholar; also various articles in Theology Today 33 (1976–7), pp. 66–73; 219–23; 354–67.

28 cf. Kümmel's, ‘conclusion’, pp. 405–406Google Scholar; Robinson, J. M., ‘The future of New Testament theology’, Religious Studies Review 2–1 (1976), p. 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 See on one hand Lindsell, H., The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), pp. 56–59Google Scholar; Montgomery, J. W., ‘Lessons from Luther on the inerrancy of holy writ’, in Montgomery, (ed.), God's Inerrant Word (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1974), pp. 63–94Google Scholar; on the other, Barr, J., Fundamentalism (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Westminster, 1977), pp. 172–186Google Scholar; Kümmel, pp. 20–6.