the Bible—has employed a variety of approaches in the history of biblical interpretation. In the historical horizon of the early church, the initial biblical study methods of the church fathers, so called because they “established the doctrinal framework of Christianity,”101 were chiefly concerned with distinguishing Christianity from Judaism and Greek philosophies, defining the nature of Christian divinity and Christology, and demonstrating how the Bible should be read and applied to the Christian life.102 The patristic hermeneutical approaches, though often negatively portrayed as pre-critical and entailing allegorical, typological, or literalist methods, nonetheless presupposed the texts of the Bible to be the inspired and authoritative Word of God and, hence, sought to hear the voice of God therein. In the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, however, the church witnessed a paradigm shift in biblical hermeneutics. As is generally acknowledged in Protestant Reformation scholarship, the centerpiece of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was a hermeneutical revolution.103 Whereas the Reformation is famed for its revolt against the papal tyranny of the time and an awakening of the hurch from spiritual slumber, Luther’s influence on biblical hermeneutics in the sixteenth century was the bedrock of subsequent Protestant hermeneutical development from that time onward. Martin Luther’s hermeneutical revolution rested on four pillars of emphasis.
Luther’s Hermeneutical Pillars
Luther’s first hermeneutic pillar was his sola scriptura (Scripture alone) principle, which emphasized the Bible as the central authority for understanding Christianfaith. Although emphasis on the authority of Scripture had been upheld by the church fathers before him, especially by Tertullian and Augustine,104 Luther’s radical emphasis asserted that the authority of the Bible did not need supplementation by the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and, thus, the Church did not have the ultimate authority on scriptural interpretation. Luther argued that the Bible was “the only reliable and irrefutable source of all Christian doctrine.”105 The sola scriptura principle, which became the watchword of the Reformation, not only emancipated the Bible from ecclesiastical-hermeneutical hegemony but also affirmed the Bible as the supreme objective authority for Christian interpretation. As Luther went on to argue, “Scripture is queen and this queen must rule, and everyone must obey and be subject to her. The Pope, Luther, Augustine, Paul, and even an angel from heaven . . . these should not be masters, judges or arbiters but only witnesses, disciples, and confessors of scriptures.”106
Luther believed that the Bible did not need the interpretive magisterium of the Church because Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres (sacred Scripture is its own interpreter). Per this principle, the interpretation of each passage and each book of the Bible should be in harmony with the whole tenor of Scripture, or in accordance with “the analogy of faith.”107 Implicit in the scriptura sacra sui ipsius intepres principle was a presupposition that each passage of Scripture contained a meaning beyond that which was intended by individual historical authors. As Luther went on to argue, “the historical authors received some of their historical matter by research, and under the grace of the superintendence of the Holy Spirit.”108 Taken together, these meanings constituted the overall meaning of Scripture, or, the sensus plenior (fuller sense or meaning) of Scripture, that is, the meaning that was “intended by God though not necessarily consciously intended by the original authors of the texts of Scripture.”109 Sensus plenior, in effect, infers a two-dimensional approach to scriptural interpretation. This approach is articulated by Bruce Waltke as follows:
In interpreting Scripture, there are two horizons. First, there is the finite horizon of the inspired author that encompasses all the knowledge of the author and his historical situation. Second, there is the infinite horizon of God who sees all things holistically. The existence of this larger horizon allows modern interpreters to go beyond the specific historical context of the biblical writers and, in retrospect, pursue connections and themes in the metanarrative that embrace the whole range of biblical material.110
Thus, per Martin Luther, Scripture is both divine and human; it has self-authenticating divine power in that it is able to convict the hearer of the Word.111
Luther’s second hermeneutic pillar was his sensus literalis (literal or plain sense) of Scripture.112 Luther argued that “the literal sense of Scripture alone is the whole essence of faith and of Christian theology.”113 The sensus literalis inferred a grammatical-historical sense of Scripture. It entailed an inductive process in which the biblical interpreter studied the grammatical-philological structure of a text to tease out the primary authorial intent contained in the text in its socio-historical context.114 For this task, Luther emphasized knowledge of original biblical languages.115 The interpreter had also to be conversant with textual literary theories and designs in order to decipher the meaning conveyed in the literary structures of scriptural texts.116 For Luther, the “exegesis of the ‘letter’ of the text was the direct means to grasp the substance and content of Scripture” and, hence, his argument that secular methods of textual analysis were, in principle, appropriate for biblical interpretation.117
Whereas Luther acknowledged that there were apparently obscure words and figurative language in Scripture which did not readily yield sensus literalis, he, nonetheless, argued that “those statements which have been uttered very simply without any figurative language and obscure words interpret those which are uttered with figurative and metaphorical language.”118 He believed that “the literal meaning, rightly understood, of itself contains its own proper spiritual significance; it is from the right understanding of the words themselves that the spirit of Scripture grows.”119 Luther’s sensus literalis was, in effect, a repudiation of the uncritical piety of the medieval church with its allegorical and typological or figurative interpretations of Scripture. The allegorical and typological methods had, per Luther, transformed Scripture into myths and symbolisms.120
Luther’s third hermeneutic pillar was his Christological-hermeneutical focus. Luther argued that, since Christ is the incarnate word of God, the entire content of Scripture is none other than Christ; “all of Scripture, as already said, is pure Christ . . . everything is focused on this Son, so that we might know Him distinctively . . . To him who has the Son, Scripture is an open book; and the stronger his faith in Christ becomes, the more brightly will the light of Scripture shine on him.”121 For Luther, Scripture was simply a testimony which pointed the reader to Christ who is the infallible and inerrant word: “it is Jesus Christ working in and through the Scripture who is the infallible and inerrant word, and the Scriptures faithfully reveal Jesus Christ through the human instrumentality of the inspired writers . . . Christ is the end of the Law . . . as if to say that all Scripture finds its meaning in Christ.”122
Luther’s Christological-hermeneutical focus was sui generis in the history of biblical interpretation. The Christological focus appears to hark back to Jesus’ words to the Jews thus: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39–40 NIV). The Scriptures were, thus, not efficacious conveyors of grace in and of themselves but were pointers to the giver of life, Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, according to Luther’s explication, the Scriptures are not, in terms of semiotic theory, mere signs. Rather, they are sacramental symbols in the sense that the salvific efficacy of Jesus Christ is encountered in the proclamation and experience of the Gospel.123
On the other hand, the Christological-hermeneutical approach has been viewed in some quarters of biblical scholarship as a deductive imposition on Luther’s otherwise inductive hermeneutical method.124 Moreover, since not all texts of the Bible contain explicit Christological content, Luther is often accused of using the Christological-hermeneutical criterion to create a canon within a canon. For example, such biblical texts as the Epistle of James did not receive much attention from Luther because they did not appear to contain an explicit Christological message for the Church in general.125 In retrospect, it is apparent that Luther did not have a fully developed Christological-hermeneutical theory. Nonetheless, his Christological-hermeneutical approach, which argues that Jesus Christ is the infallible, inerrant Word of God, is an insightful attempt to overcome textual difficulties in the Bible, which appear to be problematic for the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. As Luther argues, “the authority
