Biblical Interpretation of the Renaissance, Luther

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Biblical Interpretation of the Renaissance,
Luther Calvin

• OT/HB Hermeneutics - 2006

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1. Weakness of Exegesis at the Beginning of the
Modern Era

• 1.1 "Much of the basic knowledge of linguistics
  that we take for granted today was present only
  in part." Sandys-Wunsch
• 1.2 "The manuscript tradition behind biblical
  works was not well-known"
• 1.3 "There was also a lack of good information
  about non-Graeco-Roman antiquity, that is, of the
  civilizations that surrounded and influenced
  biblical Israel."
• 1.4 "There was also a lack of scientific
  information about the age of the human race and
  the planet on which it lives."

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1. Weakness of Exegesis at the Beginning of the
Modern Era

• 1.5 "Even more of a handicap was the lack of a
  sense of the effects of history and cultural
  differences."
• 1.6 ". . . a lack of historical awareness meant
  that discordance between biblical verses tended
  to be explained in terms of philosophical
  distinctions rather than different periods of
  culture.

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2. Renaissance Humanism

• In General
• 1. World travel introduced the Renaissance to
  other cultures so that the historical-cultural
  difference between the Biblical period and then
  could be differentiated. (travel experience
  technology)
• 2. "Renaissance Humanism attempted to rediscover
  the classical culture of Graeco-Roman world in a
  form unalloyed by what it saw at the deformations
  of the intervening period. This meant assiduous
  attention to the manuscript tradition, grammar,
  and the niceties of word usage, as well as the
  correct interpretation of technical vocabulary.
  Resources were devoted to this effort
  manuscripts were collected, libraries were built
  to house them, and scholars were encouraged to
  use the collections. Techniques for assessing the
  age and integrity of manuscripts were developed
  and improved texts made available for all Europe
  through the printing press."

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2. Renaissance Humanism

• 3. Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) "Lorenzo Valla, a
  student of canon law, in 1440 demonstrated that
  the passage in the Decree of Gratian attesting
  the donation of Constantine (the gift of diadem
  and lands to Pope Sylvester I) was a forgery. His
  use of linguistic, legal, historical, and
  political arguments makes him one of the founders
  of historical criticism." Krentz

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2. Renaissance Humanism

• 4. "Humanists like Erasmus, Cajetan, and John
  Colet interpreted the Bible with the same methods
  they used on other ancient literature they
  looked for the literal sense. They could not
  artificially stop this mode of thought at some
  boundary erected around the Scriptures. They gave
  the first impulse to the historical understanding
  of the Bible. Erasmus coupled with this a demand
  for the use of reason in interpretation, and so
  made reason a criterion of interpretation. Thus
  historical thought and the use of reason were
  legacies to the Reformation and later
  interpreters."

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2. Renaissance Humanism

• 2.2 Primacy of Scripture
• 1. "Within the interpretative circle of scripture
  and church, Reformation exegesis no longer gives
  decisive weight to the teaching church, equipped
  with sacramental authority, but to scripture."
  Stuhlmacher
• 2. Regula Fidei in the spirit of the church's
  conscious faith This is now changed to
  understanding the Scriptures via the Spirit.

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2. Renaissance Humanism

• 2.3 Priority of Exegesis
• "Within the horizon of the so-called exclusive
  particles . . . Solus Christus, sola scriptura,
  and sola fide which belong together and cannot
  be separated, the task of scripture exposition in
  the Reformation can be unequivocally and clearly
  fixed Exposition must be an exegesis applied to
  the scriptural texts which traces out the gospel
  and serves its preaching. Stuhlmacher

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2. Renaissance Humanism

• 2.4 Exegetical Method
• 1. Rejection of the Allegorical Method
• 2. Luthers Law and Gospel
• 3. Calvins Power of the Biblical Word which
  penetrates the heart solely by the divine working
  of the Spirit.

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2. Renaissance Humanism

• 2.5 Exegetical Goal
• The goal of the exegetical procedure is to
  facilitate the preaching of the gospel. The
  exegete no longer ascends from the word of the
  scripture to eternal rest in God, but traces the
  incarnate mission of Jesus Christ in human
  history and comes to a kerygmatic encounter and
  confrontation of gospel, church, and world.
  Stuhlmacher

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Result

• "Once the Bible was seen as the sole
  authoritative basis of the Churchs life,
  biblical criticism designed to maintain and
  strengthen the position of the various churches
  that claimed this basis against other churches of
  the Reformation and against the, Roman Catholic
  Church and heretics became a central and crucial
  activity. Ten new German universities were
  founded between 1527 and 1665 to provide for this
  need." ONeil

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3. Luther

• 3.1 Sola Scriptura
• 1. Only the historical sense gives the true and
  sound doctrine.
• 2. Rejection of traditionalism
• 3. Scripture is its own interpreter
• 3.2 Sola Fide
• 1. True understanding can come only by
  experiencing the Word.
• 2. The whole Bible is about Christ
• 3.3 Historical Sense
• 1. Literal History
• 2. Literal Prophetic

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3. Luther

• 3.4 Scripture is the Word, therefore Scripture is
  above all human thinking.
• 3.5 The Role of Reason
• Our intellect must adjust itself to the Word of
  God and to Holy Scripture.
• The more you distrust yourself and your
  thoughts, the better a theologian and a Christian
  you will become.
• 3.6 Luthers Criticism Esther, James, and Jude
  were unimportant.

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3. Luther

• "When Luther collapsed the fourfold scheme into a
  single literal sense, he lost an important
  instrument of biblical criticism. His single
  sense now had to carry the burden of the total
  meaning of the text. Luther himself eased the
  problem by concentrating on an internal criticism
  of the biblical text under the theological axiom
  Scripture is everywhere about Christ. It led
  him to critical decisions about rank both within
  the canon and on the fringes of the canon. It
  also led to his use of the new philological
  criticism which the humanists had developed for
  literary texts in general. It was only in the
  period of Protestant Orthodoxy that the
  reductionist potential of his insistence on the
  one literal sense was fully implemented. Verbal
  inspiration, contrary to Origens understanding
  of it, came to mean that the literal level of the
  biblical text in its identity with history was
  its only true meaning." Froehlich

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4. Calvin

• 4.1 Parallels with Luther
• Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide
• 4.2 Out-Luther, Luther
• Less Allegory Calvin engaged in much less
  allegorizing than Luther. Although Luther railed
  against allegorism, he continued to indulge in it
  from time to time. But Calvin, almost in the
  spirit of Theodore, is very slow to find direct
  references to Christ (even typologically) in the
  OT, unless the NT gives specific warrant, or the
  teaching is clearly in the context of the
  expectation of the future Messiah. And Calvin
  avoids even the illustrative or adornment use
  of allegorical interpretation. McCartney
  Clayton

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4. Calvin

• Not as Open to Criticism . . . Calvins
  adherence to sola scriptura made him less free
  with his criticism of Scripture. Rather than
  reject James, Calvin attempted a synthesis of
  James and Paul. His closer examination of what
  James was actually saying removed much of the
  apparent conflict between the two. And instead
  of focusing on the rather narrow matter of
  justification by faith, Calvin took the much
  larger rubric of the glory of God as his
  interpretive viewpoint and was able to hold
  together the array of biblical teaching much more
  easily. McCartney Clayton

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4. Calvin

• 4.3 Conviction of the Holy Spirit
• The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent
  than all reason. For as God alone is a fit
  witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word
  will not find acceptance in mens hearts before
  it is sealed by the inward testimony of the
  Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who has
  spoken through the mouths of the prophets must
  penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that
  they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely
  commanded. Even if it wins reverence for itself
  by its own majesty, it seriously affects us only
  when it is sealed upon our hearts through the
  Spirit. Therefore, illumined by his power, we
  believe neither by our own nor by anyone elses
  judgment that Scripture is from God but above
  human judgment we affirm with utter certainty...
  that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of
  God by the ministry of men.

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Emergence of the Historical-Critical Methodology
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1. Pietism

• 1.1 . . . Philip Jacob Speners (1635-1705)
  famed Pia Desideria best illustrates what was
  cardinal in Pietism. In conscious dependence on
  Luther, Pietisms intention was to encounter the
  scriptural word anew, in order from that point to
  refine and deepen Christian faith and life within
  the circle of the brotherhood. The orthodox
  doctrine, honed to a fine point in theological
  debate and rationally articulated in the grand
  manner, did not achieve this refinement.
  Stuhlmacher, 36

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1. Pietism

• 1.2 "Pietisms bold, critical research into the
  original biblical text the revival of knowledge
  of the biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek and
  the equally daring move toward scientific
  discussion of the original meaning of the Old and
  New Testament writings served-as the examples of
  August Hermann Francke and Johann Albrecht Bengel
  indicate-this encounter with scripture in its
  pure originality, an encounter which revived the
  insight and missionary courage of faith.
  Stuhlmacher, 36-7

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2. Early Non-Clergy

• 2.1 Spinoza (1632-77) (Tractatus
  Theologico-Politicus) One portion of this
  discipline must describe for all the prophetic
  books i.e., the whole of the Christian Bible
  the circumstances of which we have record, the
  life, character and aims of each books author,
  who he was, what occasioned his writing, when he
  wrote, to whom, and in what language.

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2.1 Spinoza

• "Taking his departure from the dark hints which
  Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain died 1167) had planted
  five centuries earlier in his commentaries on the
  Pentateuch (e.g., on Gen. 126 The Canaanites
  were in the land, Ibn Ezra says It would seem
  that Canaan Noahs grandson had taken
  possession of the land of Canaan from someone
  else. But if this was not the case, there is a
  secret here. But let him who understands keep it
  quiet) and adding many observations of his own,
  Spinoza concludes that the Pentateuch was not
  written by Moses or Joshua by Joshua. He
  suspects that all twelve of the books from
  Genesis to II Kings were written by one man and
  that this man was Ezra, though he admits that he
  cannot prove it."

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2.1 Spinoza

• "The books of Chronicles he thinks were written
  long after Ezras time, perhaps even after Judas
  Maccabeus he is surprised that they were
  admitted into the canon. He notices the
  chronological disorder in Jeremiah. Following
  Ibn Ezra, he thinks that Job was perhaps written
  by a Gentile in another language than Hebrew.
  Daniel, Ezra, Esther, and Nehemiah he supposes to
  have been written by one man, whose identity he
  refuses even to guess, at some time after the
  restoration of the temple service by Judas
  Maccabeus."

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2.1 Spinoza
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2. Early Non-Clergy

• 2.2 Jean Astruc (1684-1766)
• 1. Repeated narratives of the same event
• 2. The strange distribution of Elohim and
  Jehovah.
• 3. Chronological confusion.

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2. Early Non-Clergy

• 2.3 Grotius Huig de Groot, 1583-1645
  (Annotationes) The right to study, analyze and
  scrutinize the books of the scripture exactly as
  one does any other book.
• Commentary on the OT in 1644. . . . SOS as
  Solomon's writings to a wife. - Koheleth
  collected others opinions. - Job was not earlier
  than the exile.

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2. Early Non-Clergy

• 2.4 Hobbes (1588-1679) (Leviathon) The light
  therefore that must guide us in this question
  i.e., authorship of biblical books must be that
  which is held out unto us from the books
  themselves and this light, though it shows us
  not the writer of every book, yet it is not
  un-useful to give us knowledge of the time
  wherein they were written.
• "Hobbess real interest is neither in scripture
  nor in theology but in the theory of the state.
  Seeking a source of ultimate authority for the
  state, he turns his candid and rational eye to
  examine the Authority of authorities, the
  Christian scriptures."

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2.4 Hobbes

• "For Hobbes, titles of books are no reliable
  guide to their authorship, certainly not in the
  case of the Pentateuch. Moses, he notes, could
  not have written the last six verses of
  Deuteronomy or Gen. 126. In fact, the five
  books of Moses were written after Moses time,
  though how long after is not manifest to him.
  From Josh. 49 he reasons that Joshua was written
  long after the time of the man Joshua, and from
  Judg. 1830 that judges was written after the
  Captivity. Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, are all
  later than the Exile, just as Ezra and Nehemiah
  obviously are. The Job of Ezek. 1414 Jas. 5
  11 is to him undoubtedly a historical person, but
  the book of Job, which he finds no way to date,
  is not a history but a moral tract on the
  paradoxical faring of the wicked and the upright."

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2.4 Hobbes

• "The Psalms are mostly by David, but Ps. 79, at
  least, is from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.
  The Proverbs, though mostly by Solomon, include
  other authors, and the edited collection must be
  post-Solomonic. The titles or inscriptions (see
  KJV) of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon are
  non-Solomonic, but he does not question the
  Solomonic origin of the body of either book.
  Hobbes recognizes that Jonah is not prophecy -all
  the prophecy it contains is Yet forty days,
  and Nineveh shall be overthrown! -but is
  narrative, with Jonahs frowardness as its
  subject, so that there is small probability that
  he was also the author of it."

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Hobbes Leviathon
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3. The Rise of OT/NT Criticism

• 3.1 Richard Simon (1638-1712)
• 1. The problem with sola scriptura ". . .
  Scripture alone was far too uncertain a basis for
  Christianity, unless there should also exist an
  authoritative teaching office in the Church."
  ONeil
• 2. "For the first time in a theologians work, he
  dares to assert that Moses cannot be the author
  of all the books attributed to him (in later
  editions toned down to ...of all that is in the
  books attributed to him)."

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3.1 Richard Simon

• 3. "He proceeds to show that the other historical
  books of the OT cannot have been written in the
  times they describe but are the result of gradual
  compilation and a much later final redaction."
• 4. "His own theory of a guild of public scribes
  who kept the original records and handed them
  down is pure imagination, but his recognition of
  the long process of compiling and editing can
  never be completely lost."
• 5. "Although his work had been passed by the
  ecclesiastical censor, enemies within the church
  caused the edition to be confiscated and
  destroyed within a few months of its printing."

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3. The Rise of OT/NT Criticism

• 3.2 Robert Lowth, De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum
  studied "parallelism" and Hebrew poetry, while
  Von Herder, Vom Geist der Ebraischen Poesie - ".
  . . demonstrated not only that the OT is full of
  poetry, but also that the very genius of the
  Hebrew language is poetic."
• Herder was interested in ANE studies along with
  comparative religions.

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3. The Rise of OT/NT Criticism

• 3.3 Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827)
• Eichhorn wrote the first great Einleintung (3
  Vol).
• At first he followed Astruc concerning the
  sources of Genesis, but later concludes that the
  sources were compiled a long time after Moses.

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3. The Rise of OT/NT Criticism

• 3.4 Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Witte (1780-1849)
• de Witte connected Deuteronomy with the book
  found in the Temple at the time of Josiah.

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3. The Rise of OT/NT Criticism

• 3.5 Friedrich Schleiermacher
• 1. No text is intended in such a way that its
  hearers could not possibly have understood it.
• 2. The understanding of a given statement is
  always based on preliminary knowledge of the
  subject.

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3. The Rise of OT/NT Criticism

• 3.6 Julius Wellhausen
• Along with Eduard Reuss (1804-91) and his pupil
  K. H. Graf (1815-69) established the classical
  documentary hypothesis.
• Rewrote the History of Israel by arguing that the
  prophets were before the Law.

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3. The Rise of OT/NT Criticism

• 3.9 Ernest Troeltsch
• 1. Criticism A systematic skepticism which the
  historian applies without partiality to all
  historical traditions.
• 2. Analogy the assumption of an intrinsic
  similarity in all historical occurrences.
• 3. Correlation of the coherence and reciprocal
  action of historical events.

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Dialectical Theology
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1. Dialectical Theology

• It is highly interesting to note the course of
  this debate, since Barth in so many words refers
  to Calvins view of scripture together with his
  doctrine of the testimonium spiritus sancti
  internum, intending to give new value to this
  doctrine. Bultmann, on the other hand, comes
  from the Lutheran tradition for which the word of
  God in the true sense is only the oral, preached
  gospel, and for which the true working of the
  Spirit must be assigned and granted only to this
  orally proclaimed kerygma. Stuhlmacher, Peter,
  Historical Criticism and Theological
  Interpretation of Scripture, p. 49

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2. Karl Barth

• 2.1 A Post-Critical Exposition of Scriptures
• 2.2 More Critical than the Historical Critics
• 1. Historical Criticism as the starting point.
• 2. Penetrating through the text to the mystery
  which lies concealed within.
• 3. Returning to the text, to seek to understand
  it anew, this time in the light of the subject
  matter.

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3. Rudolf Bultmann

• 3.1 Bultmanns Background Kant, etc.
• 3.2 Bultmanns Greatness
• 1. Greek
• 2. His interest in theology and its application
• 3.3 Historie and Geshchichte

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3. Rudolf Bultmann

• 3.4 History of Religion
• 1. Criterion of Dissimilarity
• 2. Oral, Form, and History of Tradition
• 3.5 Demythologization
• 3.6 Anthropology as the Center of the NT