The Holy Spirit and the Reformation Legacy. Группа авторов

87. Hinlicky, Paths not Taken, 128.

      88. Hawksley, “The Freedom of the Spirit,” 182.

      89. Mangina, “Bearing the Marks of Jesus,” 270.

      90. Hawksley, “The Freedom of the Spirit,” 183. Attention is called to the non-personal pronoun of “its” rather than “his.”

      91. Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology 13.

      92. Theos agraptos is originally a term coined by Gregory of Nazianzus; Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology 16.

      93. Hinlicky, Paths not Taken, 154–155.

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      Hermeneutica Sacra

      Echoes of Martin Luther’s Reformation Hermeneutics in Canonical Criticism

      Samuel W. Muindi

      Introduction

Hermeneutics is an epistemological paradigm; it is, in the words of Friedrich Schleiermacher, a “theory of understanding.”94 More specifically, hermeneutics is a discipline that deals with the understanding or interpretation of texts.95 However, a ‘text’ is a nuanced concept. Paul Ricoeur, the French philosopher renowned for his extensive work on textual interpretation, notes that a text is “not only expressions fixed in writing but also mediation exerted by all the documents and monuments which have a fundamental trait in common with the written word.”96 Hermeneutics is, thus, not simply a method or a set of techniques but an epistemological paradigm and, hence, not synonymous with exegesis. It is both the translation and application of the meaning of a text into a socio-cultural context as well as an attempt to understand the context in the light of the meaning. As Kenneth Archer argues, hermeneutics “cannot be reduced to a static, distinctive exegetical methodology, but must include the important element of the social location of the readers and their narrative tradition.”97 This task entails a dialogic interaction of a text with the “inter-texts” or the experiences of life and worldviews, including belief systems, which one brings to the text as presuppositional analogies for understanding the text.98 In this sense, therefore, hermeneutics can be viewed as a dialogic meaning-making encyclopedic process and exegesis as the application of hermeneutical principles.99

The above definition of hermeneutics is germane to our understanding of the various methods that have been employed in the discipline of biblical interpretation. Far from being objective methodological approaches akin to the dated scientific-positivistic approaches which are, supposedly, not colored by the faith commitments or the ideologies of the interpreters, the worldviews and faith persuasions of the interpreters do, indeed, enter the hermeneutic meaning-making process. As Kevin Vanhoozer rightly observes, “our hermeneutical theories themselves are dependent on our theologies (or a-theologies).”100

Biblical hermeneutics—the discipline that is concerned with the interpretations of the texts of 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