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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 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 and infallibility of the Scriptures consist in its ability to accomplish salvation in the hearts of men who hear it . . . It is Jesus Christ working in and through the Scripture who is the infallible and inerrant word.”126

Luther’s fourth hermeneutic pillar was his emphasis on the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit in scriptural interpretation.127 Luther argued that the word of God was not efficacious in conveying its inspired message apart from the illumining work of the Holy Spirit: “the Word of God is not spiritually effective apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit depends upon the Word of God for the content and means of His revelation . . . the Word of God speaks to the reader and the Holy Spirit enables the reader to hear the Word.”128 Luther went on to observe that, apart from the illumining work of the Holy Spirit, human rationality cannot decipher the divine message in Scripture since “the Holy Spirit is not only involved in the inspirational writing of Scripture but also in the illuminating aspect of the reading of Scripture.”129 This observation was underscored by the sixteenth century reformation theologian, John Calvin, who not only observed that “the authority of Scripture derived not from men, but from the Spirit of God,” but also that the Holy Spirit, who “is superior to reason,” illumines the minds of believers to understand the Scriptures; “these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.”130

Luther’s biblical hermeneutic had both objective and subjective dimensions. Whereas the Bible is the object that is studied using objective critical methods, the biblical interpreter “is the subject who must be influenced by the Holy Spirit for spiritual discernment of the inspired message in the biblical text.”131 Luther’s hermeneutical process thus entails two moments: The first moment is a focus on the verbum externum (verbal external “word”). This involves a literal understanding of the philological-grammatical and historical aspects of the text. As Luther argued, “this literal understanding is necessary before the exegete enters interpretation of meaning.”132 The second moment is when the exegete, through the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, is enabled to discern the spiritual significance of the text. Luther was, however, careful neither to embed the Holy Spirit in the “letter” of the Bible nor to separate the Holy Spirit from the Scriptures: “The Spirit is not bound to the Word . . . the Word may exist without the Spirit, but when it does so, it is just a letter . . . Similarly, the Spirit can exist apart from the Word; He is not bound to the Word, but He cannot be God’s revealing Spirit without the Word.”133 The deciphering of the spiritual sense of Scripture is, thus, not simply an outcome of the philological exegesis of Scripture. Rather, it entails the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. Without the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, Scripture is simply letter or Law. As Luther put it, “All Scripture is Law without the Spirit; with the Spirit, all Scripture is grace.”134

According to Luther, the spiritual sense of Scripture is appropriated by faith, and faith is created by the Holy Spirit in the believer through the proclamation of the Word; “only God can create faith as the Holy Spirit works faith in man through the preaching of the Word, and the Word provides authority for the basis of faith.”135 Not only does faith resolve the hermeneutical tension between the letter and the Spirit, but faith is, indeed, central in the interpretive process. Thus, the Holy Spirit not only inspires the Word but also creates faith in the hearer of the Word in order to appropriate the Word’s spiritual sense.

The above arguments show that Martin Luther’s hermeneutic of Scripture is, indeed, pneumatic hermeneutic. The centrality of the Holy Spirit in Luther’s hermeneutic represents a sui generis integration of the third person of the Trinity, who had largely been neglected by the medieval Church, in the development of Christian theology. Martin Luther’s unique contribution to Christian theology in this regard is, arguably, the integration of Christology and pneumatology in biblical hermeneutics. This is a development in biblical theology that should be instructive for contemporary developments in biblical theology. In some quarters of the Church, the Holy Spirit is largely ignored, and hardly ever invoked, in biblical hermeneutics. In other quarters of the Church, particularly in the Pentecostal-Charismatic tradition, an overemphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit has tendentiously undervalued Christology in the task of biblical interpretation.

Luther augments his hermeneutic pillars with a significant rider that the context for biblical interpretation is the Church community. As James Smart aptly notes, “Luther sees the church as the matrix in which interpretation takes place, but is careful to ensure that the Church does not stifle the freedom of critical scholarship and also that critical scholarship does not bring alien concepts to the Church.”136 All in all, Luther’s Reformation hermeneutic constituted a paradigm shift in biblical interpretation; his hermeneutical method not only integrated biblical exegesis with Christological-pneumatic theological reflection but was, indeed, a hermeneutica sacra (sacred hermeneutics)—a biblical-hermeneutical approach which presupposed the Bible to be the sacred inspired Word of God and which, though utilizing critical or scientific methods of textual exegesis, nonetheless, sought to not only discern the divine message in the biblical text but also to render the biblical message meaningful for the contemporary communities of faith.137 As Lynn Poland remarks, concerning Luther’s hermeneutic, “the meaning of Scripture extends . . . hodie usque ad nos (even to us day).”138

Post-Reformation Protestant Hermeneutics

Luther’s grammatical-historical method of biblical interpretation became the foundational paradigm for the development of Protestant biblical hermeneutics from the sixteenth century onward. However, whereas Luther espoused the grammatical-historical method in order rescue biblical interpretation from the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church and to provide a secure historical and rational foundation for biblical faith, the subsequent developments, under the influence of the eighteenth century European ‘Age of Reason’ (the Enlightenment), reduced the historical critical method to historicism. This ideologically -driven hermeneutical approach viewed biblical texts as mere historical phenomena which had value of their own without any relevance for the contemporary communities of faith. Thus, biblical faith was reduced to a preoccupation with historical phenomena.139 A variant of historicism, the so-called minimalist view of biblical history, held that the narratives contained in the texts of the Bible had little or no historical connection to the events they depicted. They were thus viewed as mere religious legends to be studied as literary artifacts from the past.140

Historicism, as it applied to biblical hermeneutics, was enunciated in the hermeneutic thought of the nineteenth-century German theological scholar, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who developed a universal hermeneutic. Schleiermacher’s universal hermeneutic posited that “a text is a text, whether secular or religious.”141 Schleiermacher’s universal hermeneutic thus maintained that the Bible did not require any unique interpretive approach. Schleiermacher, in effect, “collapsed the distinction between hermeneutica sacra and hermeneutica profana in order to create a universal hermeneutic.”142 Unlike Luther’s hermeneutica sacra which, though utilizing secular methods of textual exegesis, held that the biblical texts were divinely inspired and that they revealed God’s will for humankind in all time, the universal hermeneutic reduced biblical interpretation to a Religionsgeschichte Schule (history of religions school) approach which, akin to the minimalist view, argued that “the Bible represents only what certain people thought at a particular time about divine matters, but their thoughts carry no absolute truths for today.”143 Little wonder that Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, disparaged historicism, calling it “historical sickness.”144 Nietzsche observed that “we require history for life and action . . . but there is a degree of doing history and an estimation of it which brings with it a withering and degenerating life.”145

Historicism also postulated that the Bible was plausibly fallible as a historical source and diverse in its origins as a literary entity. The Bible was thus tendentiously atomized into various hypothetical source components.146 Moreover, historicism presupposed that the Bible, as a religious and theological document, might be less unique than had been supposed.147 The Bible was, hence, studied anti-supernaturally with “cold objectivity” and as mere religious literature.148 Moreover, the anti-supernaturalistic bias tended to privilege the hypothetical source components over the extant texts of the Bible, in their canonical form, in deciphering the meaning conveyed in the Word of God. As Hans Frei laments concerning the modern historical-critical approaches, “Interpretation was a matter of fitting the biblical story into another world with another story rather than incorporating that world into the biblical story.”149

In the course of its development, historicism also tended to disaggregate the texts of the Bible into what was considered to be authentic and inauthentic sources and, hence, introduced a hermeneutic of suspicion into the task of biblical interpretation.150 Furthermore, the idea of a canonical context for the study of the texts of the Bible was largely spurned by the tradents of historicism; they held that the texts of the Bible should be studied in their own right as independent texts freed from the “arbitrary constraints” imposed upon them by the Synagogue and the Church in the act of canonization.151 Failure to read the texts of the Bible in their canonical context negated Luther’s dictum that scriptura sacra sui ipsius intepres (sacred scripture is its own interpreter). This dictum, as noted above, meant that each text of Scripture should be interpreted in terms of the theology of the Bible as a whole.

The early part of the twentieth century saw the rise of a nuanced form of literary criticism, the new literary criticism, which, as Brevard Childs notes, “shifts biblical study away from historical referentiality.”152 As Gerald Bray observes, the new literary criticism “abandoned history as a model and insisted that works of art be judged primarily on aesthetic grounds.”153 Thus, the new literary approach tendentiously undermined the historical veracity of the biblical accounts. The new literary criticism also sought to break up the Christian canon by incorporating into its repertoire of texts extra-canonical epigraphic materials that were discovered in the course of the twentieth century. In particular, such epigraphic finds as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nagi Hammadi texts were read as though they were at par in meaning and theological value as the texts of the Christian canon.154 In some extreme cases, the new literary criticism went as far as attempting to emend the texts of the Christian canon in the light of the twentieth century epigraphic finds.155 Hence Peter deVilliers’ notion of attempts to “contaminate” the Christian canon.156 As deVilliers observes, the attempts to emend the texts of the Christian canon in the light of the recently discovered texts is, in effect, an attempt to revise the Christian canon.

Some versions of the new literary criticism, notably the ideologically-driven reader-response critical approaches, argue that meaning is not derived from the texts of the Bible; meaning is “created by the readers in the act of reading.”157 Thus, as historicism privileged a hypothetical extra-biblical world over the texts of the Bible, the new reader-response critical approaches have tended to privilege the extra-biblical world of the reader who searches for the meaning conveyed in the Bible’s texts. The implication of this ‘privileging’ is that the extra-biblical worlds impose their meaning upon biblical texts. The biblical-textual meanings derived therefrom are, hence, idiosyncratic and indeterminate.158 Stanley Fish, an ardent reader-response proponent, argues that “Since the locus of meaning has proved so elusive, perhaps we should entertain the possibility that there is no determinate meaning in the text to begin with . . . The text yields no meaning. The only option is to play with the text.”159 Little wonder that the contemporary discipline of biblical studies is, in the words of Brevard Childs, “in crisis.”160

By ignoring the canonical context of the texts of the Bible, both historicism and the new literary-critical approaches have attempted to “de-canonize” the texts of the Bible.161 Also, as already noted above, both historicism and the new literary-critical approaches have misused textual criticism (which is usually the first stage in their methodological processes) by rewriting the texts through unwarranted emendations.162 The Bible reader who comes to the biblical text to hear the Word of God is therefore ill-served by the extant historical-critical and the new literary-critical methods of biblical interpretation. Hence a continuing search is needed for hermeneutical paradigms that serve the needs of the communities of faith, both in the academy or in the church.

Echoes of Luther’s Hermeneutics in Canonical Criticism

Some recent developments in the canonical-critical approach to biblical interpretation have been billed, in some quarters of biblical scholarship, as constitutive of a hermeneutical paradigm that seeks to interpret the Bible, not as an antiquarian artifact studied for its literary artistry only, but as the Word of God. As explained below, some aspects of the novel canonical criticism, particularly in the works of the Yale University biblical scholar, Brevard Childs, resonate with Martin Luther’s Reformation hermeneutics.

The canonical approach to biblical interpretation is often viewed as having had its modern provenance in the early twentieth century Anglo-American biblical theology movement. The movement appears to have been a reaction against the historicism of European theological liberalism, which, as noted above, tended to ‘de-canonize’ the Bible and atomize it into hypothetical source components. Instead, the biblical theology movement advocated for a study of the received textual corpus of the Bible as a canonical whole as well as a theological unity of the Old and New Testaments. As Brevard Childs notes, the task of the biblical theology movement had been “to engage in the continual activity of theological reflection which studies the canonical text in detailed exegesis, and seeks to do justice to the witness of both Testaments in the light of its subject matter who is Jesus Christ.”163

The term ‘canonical criticism’, at least in its modern usage, appears to have been popularized by James Sanders of Claremont School of Theology, California, with reference to the hermeneutical presuppositions of the compilers of the Hebrew Torah, and, in a more nuanced fashion, by Brevard Childs of Yale University.164 Sanders argued that the starting point of biblical interpretation is the received canon, that is, the final form of the texts of the Bible in their canonical context.165 Robert Carroll, in his critical review of Sanders’ canonical approach, remarks that:

This concentration on the final form of the literary units making up the Bible takes seriously the work of the editors and tradents who put together the various traditions and attempts to discern their intentions . . . it was the final product of their work which was canonized rather than the primary or original traditions, so the central issue for the theologian must be the canonical form of the work. Taking the canon seriously means treating the books of the Bible as they stand and relating them to the concerns of the community which gave them their canonical status166.

Thus, as Sanders goes on to argue, the texts of the Bible, taken separately, may not appear to present a univocal message. However, taken together, they bear witness to God’s manifold revelation of His character and will for His covenant people.167 This point is also reiterated by John Barton who remarks that biblical critics “were not wrong to identify detailed points of diversity and inconsistency, but they were in danger of not seeing the wood for the trees, ignoring the equal and greater volume of evidence that pointed to unity and singleness of purpose” in the canon of Scripture.168

Reading the texts of the Bible in their canonical context implies that the meaning of the text is not only informed by its literary and thematic designs but also by the canonical inter-textual context. The interpretation of any one text of the Bible must thus be cognizant of the overall message of the canon of Scripture. Moshe Halbertal makes a cogent observation that the canonization decision was, ipso facto, an interpretive act.169 The canonical meaning is, therefore, “the meaning the text has when it is read as part of the canon, with full allowance made for the other texts that also form part of the canon, in their overall coherent pattern.”170

The act of canonization has, however, as noted above, been viewed in some quarters of biblical scholarship as a subjection of the texts of Scripture to some external magisterium of the synagogue and the church, a “subjugation of Scripture to external authority.”171 Nonetheless, as Brevard Childs argues, “although historically the decision of the Church actually shaped the canon, the Church itself envisioned its task as acknowledging what God had given.”172 In other words, the act of canonization was simply the Church’s recognition and delineation of God’s revelation to the community of faith. The Church was simply the receptor and preserver of the divine revelation.173 The canon is, therefore, both a collection of divinely inspired authoritative texts as well as an authoritative compendium that is constitutive of the rule of faith for the community of believers. On the other hand, the canonical approach neither ignores apparent textual problems or peculiarities of individual texts of the canon nor does it overlook tensions among the texts of the canon. As John Peckham, commenting on the canonical approach, remarks, “Where apparent tensions arise, they should be properly acknowledged rather than glossed over. However, it should be recognized that apparent tensions do not necessarily rule out undergirding theological consistency, especially if consistency is not improperly conflated with simplistic univocity.”174

A further question that is often raised in biblical scholarship is: which canon is authoritative? For example, there are variants of the Hebrew canon (Old Testament), namely, the Hebrew Version (notably the Masoretic text) and the Greek Version (the ‘Septuagint’ or the pre-Christian Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, often referred to as the ‘Alexandrian canon’). The two versions differ markedly in a number of texts; for example, the Septuagint edition of the book of Jeremiah is much shorter than the Hebrew version of the book and has a different ordering of its contents.175 There are also other collections of texts, the so-called deuterocanonical texts, notably the apocryphal texts, some of which are included in the canons of some Christian traditions but regarded as extra-canonical in other Christian traditions.176 Brevard Childs wades into the question of ‘which canon’ and argues that the Masoretic text (the Hebrew Bible version that was preserved by Jewish rabbinic scholars known as the Masoretes) should be the normative canon because it is what the Jews and Christians have in common.177 On the contrary, Albert Sundberg argues that the Greek canon (the Septuagint) has primacy over other Old Testament versions because it was the canon of the early church.178 The debate rages on, but as some critics have pointed out, the canonical controversy plausibly boils down to differences between inspired autographs and corrupt transmissions.179 Nonetheless, the Masoretic text, which was preserved by the Jewish rabbinic scholars, the Masoretes, has generally been accepted, both in the academy and the Church, as the canonical norm of the Hebrew Bible.180

Whereas Sanders’ canonical approach is essentially a holistic literary reading of the Bible in canonical context, Brevard Childs’ canonical approach is more nuanced and is, indeed, a canonical theology that harks back to Luther’s hermeneutica sacra. Childs readily embraces the historical-critical study of the texts of the Bible in a canonical context utilizing scientific exegetical tools. However, Childs’ canonical approach is more focused on the presuppositional-hermeneutical paradigm which guides the exegetical methods. His approach is, thus, not simply a technical method of biblical interpretation. Rather, it is a hermeneutical paradigm in which the Bible is read as the divinely inspired and authoritative Word of God. As Earle Ellis aptly points out, “Method is inherently a limited instrumentality, and, indeed, a secondary stage in the art of interpretation. More basic are the perspective and presuppositions with which the interpreter approaches the text.”181 Childs’ canonical approach is, indeed, hermeneutica sacra, or confessional hermeneutics. As he argues:

Biblical theology has, as its proper context, the canonical scriptures of the Christian Church . . . The Christian Church responded to this literature as the authoritative Word of God, and it remains existentially committed to an inquiry into its inner unity because of its confession of the one Gospel of Jesus Christ which it proclaims to the world. It was therefore a fatal methodological mistake when the nature of the Bible was described solely in categories of the history of religions.182

Childs’ confessional approach to biblical criticism is also noted by John Barton, who remarks that it “is currently the most influential” attempt to rescue biblical studies from “secular specialism.” John Barton goes on to observe that:

In the work of Brevard Childs (more properly called the canonical method or approach) it aims at a new, post-critical reading of the finished form of biblical texts; but unlike holistic literary readings with their addiction to modern literary theory, a ‘canonical’ reading is concerned with the religious meaning of the Bible. At the same time, it tries to help the critics themselves to be more theologically and religiously sensitive . . . It wants to bring the critics with their skills back into the fold of the Church; to enable them toshare with simpler believers the experience of finding again in the Bible the living word of God.183

Childs decries the historical-critical method’s tendency to disaggregate the texts of the Bible into hypothetical original or earlier sources, thus confining the Bible into the past. He also laments that the historical-critical methods not only fail to consider any dialectical relation between the biblical texts and their canonical context but also that, in their present form, the historical-critical methods fail to consider whether the canon of Scripture might have a coherent theological truth for the present community of faith, notwithstanding any biblical-textual tensions therein.184 As John Barton surmises, the apparent biblical-textual inconsistencies pointed out by the historical-critical scholars are plausibly subordinate to a higher unity. Barton grants that the texts of the Bible may not all speak with “a single voice, yet taken together, they witness to a unified truth . . . the scriptural texts have a unity of purpose and message which is more important than their mutual tensions and disagreements in detail.”185 It is the “more important” theological message arising from the canon as a whole that Brevard Childs’ hermeneutical paradigm seeks to rescue back for the communities of faith, both in the academy and the church.

Brevard Childs’ hermeneutical paradigm is, however, not a naïve attempt to harmonize apparently disparate or inconsistent texts of the Bible, as some of his detractors have argued.186 Rather, akin to Martin Luther’s hermeneutica sacra, it is a hermeneutical presupposition with which the reader approaches the texts of the Bible as the divinely inspired Word of God and the authoritative rule of faith.187 For Childs, the unifying factor in the canon is that it is sacred Scripture. Childs, much like Martin Luther, opposes the historical-critical or any other scientific critical methods of textual interpretation. His concern is that the method’s atomizing analysis of the texts of the Bible should not be an end in itself; a synthesizing attempt is necessary to discern the coherent message from the canon of Scripture. Dale Brueggemann aptly remarks that Childs’ confessional approach to biblical criticism is not a capitulation to literalistic biblicism; “literalists and fundamentalists can only take false comfort in what is happening in this regard; they should not be deceived into thinking that critical scholarship has come to its senses in repentance of its errant ways.”188 Brevard Childs’ embrace of scientific methods of textual interpretation is premised on the understanding that “interest in the sources from which the biblical books were composed, or the forms they use, or the skills with which they were assembled by redactors, is a natural consequence of attending to the givenness of the text, and of realizing that if the Bible does mediate knowledge of God, it does it through these means and not otherwise.”189

It is not just from the historical-critical scholarship’s “errant ways” that Childs’ hermeneutica sacra seeks to recover the Bible for the community of faith. It is also from the secular literary critics who read the Bible as a literary classic devoid of any divine authority. Thus, as John Barton remarks, Brevard Childs’ “canonical approach is a proposal about how Christians should read the Bible within the context of faith.”190 Nonetheless, Barton rightly cautions that “whereas biblical critics should be sensitive to the church’s call to be more theological, they should also reckon that the church is not best served by an academy that simply capitulates to the uncritical whims of the communities of faith.”191 Consistent with this caution, Brevard Childs adopts a centrist stance which, as Kathleen M. O’Connor notes, “seeks to preserve biblical studies from both the dogmatism of biblicizing conservatives and much more from the historicism of wide-eyed children of the Enlightenment.”192 Childs’ fiercest critic, James Barr, who often terms Childs’ theologies as “canonical fundamentalism” or “theological fundamentalism,” nonetheless, acknowledges that “Childs touches on aspects which for many are religiously very important, and these are likely to produce other expressions in the future.”193

The Reformation Legacy in Pneumatic Hermeneutics

Martin Luther (1483–1546), the monk of Wittenberg, has been credited with many theological, ecclesiological, and even political achievements. However, as Derek Wilson aptly cautions, “we have to resist the temptation to recreate him in our own image.”194 Nonetheless, Martin Luther is rightly renowned for fanning the sixteenth-century revolt against the papal tyranny of the time and an awakening of the Church from spiritual slumber. The particular thesis of this paper is that a critical aspect of Martin Luther’s legacy, often overlooked in Reformation studies, is his influence on biblical hermeneutics. Luther’s sixteenth-century biblical hermeneutics became the bedrock of subsequent Protestant theological-hermeneutical development. Luther’s Reformation hermeneutic was a hermeneutica sacra; it was a hermeneutical paradigm shift which not only rescued biblical interpretation from the magisterium of the church of the day but also utilized scientific tools of textual analysis to interpret the Bible as sacred Scriptures. Luther’s Christological-hermeneutical focus, and his embrace of the illumining work of the Holy Spirit in biblical interpretation, were hermeneutical moves that sought to combine biblical interpretation with theological reflection. Thus, his hermeneutical method integrated biblical exegesis with Christological-pneumatic-theological reflection.

Although Luther’s Reformation paradigm was foundational for Protestant hermeneutical development from the sixteenth century onward, this paradigm was derailed in the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment in which biblical hermeneutics were not only secularized but also divorced from theological reflection. Recent developments in canonical criticism not only hark back to Luther’s Reformation hermeneutics but also seek to render the biblical message meaningful for the contemporary communities of faith, for the meaning of Scripture extends hodie ueque ad nos (even to us today). Luther’s integrative hermeneutica sacra is particularly instructive for the contemporary Church, which, on the one hand, studies the Bible with cold objectivity as though the Bible has no divine relevance for the Church today; while on the other hand, the Pentecostal-Charismatic wing of the Church, whose pneumatic hermeneutic apparently underrates the value of scientific tools of textual exegesis and tendentiously privileges pneumatology over Christology in its theological reflection, has a lot to learn from Luther’s hermeneutica sacra.

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———. “Toward a Hermeneutic Idea of Revelation.” Harvard Theological Review 70 (1977) 1–37.

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———. Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism. 1984. Reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2000.

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94. Schleiermacher, “The Hermeneutics,” 85–100; see also McLean Biblical Interpretation, 44–50.

95. Fiorenza, “Method in Women’s Studies,” 207.

96. Ricoeur, “Toward a Hermeneutic Idea,” 35.

97. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 180.

98. Darr, “Glorified in the Presence of Kings,” 63.

99. Phan, “Method in Liberation Theologies,” 54; and Gadamer, Truth and Method, 146.

100. Vanhoozer, “Language, Literature,” 27.

101. Bray, Biblical Interpretation, 77.

102. Bray, Biblical Interpretation, 95–96.

103. See, for example, Sasse, “Luther and the Word of God,” 50–72. See also Cameron who observes that it was Martin Luther who led biblical hermeneutics in a new direction with his sola scriptura principle, The European Reformation,136–37.

104. Wood, Captive to the Word, 405).

105. Sasse, “Luther and the Word of God,” 58.

106. Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, 58.

107. Muller and Thompson, “The Significance of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” 335–42. This principle presupposes scriptural harmony, although Luther was quick to acknowledge the existence of textual problems in biblical interpretation. Luther, nonetheless, argued that textual problems did not endanger the sensus plenior of Scripture which constituted the article of the Christian faith. See, for example, Kramm, The Theology of Martin Luther, 116. On the other hand, Luther’s ‘analogy of faith’ concept appears to utilize Church tradition, in terms of the accumulated content of Christian doctrine, to interpret Scripture. As Shelton rightly observes, Luther appears to embrace Church tradition at times in his hermeneutical approaches, though with a caveat that tradition should be critically evaluated and must not be allowed to supplant Scripture. See his “Martin Luther’s Concept of Biblical Interpretation in Historical Perspective,” 391–95.

108. See Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 187. With this argument, Martin Luther eschewed the notion of ‘dictation theory’ with respect to divine inspiration of Scripture.

109. McLean, Biblical Interpretation, 36. However, the scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres principle, together with Luther’s declaration that there was no distinction between the spiritual capacity of the clergy and the laity in terms of scriptural interpretation, might have opened the door for arbitrary interpretations of Scripture. As Grondin points out, the Roman Catholic Church’s Counter Reformation Council of Tent (1546) saw this as the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the Reformation hermeneutic and, therefore, reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s interpretive magisterium as the sure way to prevent arbitrariness. See Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, 41.

110. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 46.

111. See also Kramm, The Theology of Martin Luther, 116.

112. As Wood notes, Martin Luther argued that the literal understanding of the grammatical-historical details of the biblical text was necessary before the exegete could enter the interpretation of the ‘sensus plenior’ of Scripture. Wood, Luther’s Principles, 24–27.

113. Farrar, History of Interpretation, 327.

114. The notion of a “primary authorial intent” has, however, become problematic in modern critical study of the Bible. As Waltke observes, “the reality of the situation is that we cannot talk precisely about an original author of biblical narratives, for these books are mostly anonymous and underwent at least some editing over long periods of time” (An Old Testament Theology, 85). Perhaps it is more appropriate to talk about “authorial intent” in terms of the meaning of the texts of the Bible in their final canonical shape.

115. See also Plass, What Luther Says, Vol 1: 95.

116. See also Wood, Luther’s Principles, 11–12.

117. See Poland, Literary Criticism, 21. Waltke equally argues that “Since the biblical message is communicated through the impersonal semiotic signs that constitute human language, they are subject to a grammatical-historical analysis.” (An Old Testament Theology, 86).

118. Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 20, Lectures on the Minor Prophets, 108.

119. Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, 40.

120. See Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 392. It is, however, noted that, whereas allegory tendentiously belittled the role of history and imposed arbitrary or even philosophical readings of the Bible, typology has been viewed as having a positive role in biblical interpretation. Barr does not, however, see any methodological difference between allegory and typology; he views both as arbitrary approaches to biblical interpretation, Barr, “The Concepts,” 65–102. On the other hand, Childs has persuasively argued that, in patristic hermeneutics, typology was “viewed as an extension of the literal sense of historical events in a subsequent adumbration and served to signal the correspondence between redemptive events . . . typology was considered closely akin to prophecy and fulfillment and thought to be a major New Testament category in relating to the Old Testament.” Childs, Theology of the Old and New Testaments, 13.

121. Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol 15, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, 339. See also Doermann who observes that Christological interpretation forms the basis of Luther’s hermeneutic, “Luther’s Principles,” 24.

122. Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 190–91.

123. For a detailed explication of the semiotic differences between sign and symbol, see my analysis in Muindi, Pentecostal-Charismatic Prophecy, 186–190.

124. See, for example, Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 255.

125. See also Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 239–55.

126. Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 4, Lectures on Genesis Chapter 21–25, 68.

127. Martin Luther argued that divine illumination was necessary for the true interpretation of the Bible. Thus, the Holy Spirit was the true interpreter of the word which He had inspired: “for if God does not open and explain Holy Writ, no one can understand it; it will remain a closed book, enveloped in darkness” (Luther’s Works, vol. 13: Selected Psalms II, 17).

128. Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 239, 255.

129. Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 255.

130. See Calvin, Institutes, 1:52–55. See also Torrance, The School of Faith, 23.

131. Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 231.

132. Schultz, “The Problem of Hermeneutics,” 44. See also Poland who notes that, for Luther, “the proper understanding of Scripture concerns not only the ‘outer clarity’ of the theological content gained from exegesis, but also the ‘inner clarity’ of the reader’s heart—the experience of grace and salvation given by the Holy Spirit through the external word of Scripture.” (Literary Criticism, 19). See also Grondin, who understands Luther to mean that “the literal meaning rightly understood, contains its own proper spiritual significance,” (Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, 40).

133. Larry Shelton, “Martin Luther’s Concept,” 239–50.

134. See Wood, Luther’s Principles, 32.

135. Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 6, Genesis Chapters 31–37, 40.

136. Smart, The Interpretation of Scripture, 59. However, in the contemporary church world of denominational sectarianism, the notion of the “the church context” is problematic. Different church traditions are apt to emphasize different hermeneutical principles as their faith distinctive. Perhaps Luther’s notion of “church context” is best understood in terms of sacred hermeneutics, that is, the biblical hermeneut should be a believer rather than a secular critic who is a stranger to sacred life. As the Chicago Statement of Faith (1978) aptly states, “The Holy Spirit, the Scripture’s divine author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning” (Packer, God Has Spoken, 143).

137. Grondin defines hermeneutica sacra as “the art of practical interpretation that applies general hermeneutical rules to Scripture” while still upholding the Scriptures as sacred writings, see his Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, 58.

138. Poland, Literary Criticism, 12. See also Waltke who remarks that “Ours is a sacred hermeneutic because the Author is spirit and known in the human spirit through the medium of the Holy Spirit.” Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 80; and Brueggemann who remarks that “there is no innocent or neutral scholarship, but that all theological and interpretive scholarship is in one way or another fiduciary,” that is, based on faith or ideological presuppositions (Theology of the Old Testament, 18).

139. For a detailed account of the development of historicism, see McLean, Biblical Interpretation, 31–67.

140. For contemporary arguments for the minimalist view of the Bible, particularly with respect to the Old Testament, see Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel, 11–18; Lemche, “Is it Still Possible to Write a History of Ancient Israel,” 156–90; and Thompson, The Mythic Past, 20–25.

141. See Schleiermacher, “The Hermeneutics: Outline of the 1819 Lectures,” 85–100. See also Ricoeur, for a further development of the universal hermeneutic, Hermeneutics, 45–48; and McLean, Biblical Interpretation, 37.

142. See Ricoeur, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics,” 30. It is worth noting that the universal hermeneutic had a humanistic orientation; it was a product of the European Enlightenment which was viewed as “the era when human rationality overthrew religious myth and blind superstition and liberated civilization from ignorance, installing humanity as master of its own destiny.” See McLean, Biblical Interpretation, 83; and Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 7–32.

143. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 68.

144. Nietzsche, On the Advantage, 7.

145. Nietzsche, On the Advantage, 7.

146. The Pentateuchal documentary hypothesis associated with Julius Wellhausen, which atomizes the Pentateuch into Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly, and Deuteronomist sources, is a case in point. See Wellhausen, Prolegomena.

147. Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology, 19.

148. These ideas are readily embraced in such works as Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis and Wellhausen, Prolegomena.

149. Frei, The Eclipse,130.

150. A hermeneutic of suspicion, a term coined by Ricoeur to depict the hermeneutic methods of Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzche and Karl Marx, is the tendency to approach a text with the presupposition that there are authentic and inauthentic elements in the text and an attempt to strip away what is considered to be inauthentic. It is a deconstructionist critique which, in effect, sows doubts in the minds of readers of the text. See Paul Ricoeur’s discourse on hermeneutics of suspicion in his Freud and Philosophy. See also Stewart, “The Hermeneutic of Suspicion,” 296–307.

151. Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 79.

152. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, 16.

153. Bray, Biblical Interpretation, 483.

154. See de Villiers, “Perspectives on Canon History,” 11–26.

155. Childs considers this attempt as very absurd indeed; he argues that “a corpus of religious writings which have been transmitted within a community for over a thousand years cannot be properly compared to inert shreds which have lain in the ground for centuries” (Introduction to the Old Testament, 79).

156. de Villiers, “Perspectives on Canon History,” 11–26.

157. See Clines and Exum, “The New Literary Criticism,” in 18–19.

158. Whereas it is acknowledged that the reader’s worldview influences understanding of the text, some extreme versions of the reader-response criticism are decidedly ideological viewpoints. For extreme versions of the reader-response criticism, see, for example, Fish, Is There a Text?, 322–26; and Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum,” 182–87. A moderate reader-response approach is posited by Iser, who observes that, since the text is external to the reader, it serves as a restraint on the reader’s understanding of the text. See Iser, The Act of Reading, 19–24.

159. Fish, Is There a Text?, 108–9. Another reader-response critic, Clines, privileges the reader by arguing that “Since there is no determinate meaning, we should tailor our interpretation to meet the needs of the group we are addressing.” (Interested Parties, 113).

160. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis, 1.

161. So argues Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament, 79.

162. See also Sanders, “Text and Canon,” 8.

163. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, 78–79.

164. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis, 84–99; and Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament, 56–85.

165. See Sanders, “Biblical Criticism,” 157–165, Sanders, “Text and Canon,” 5–29, and, Sanders, Canon and Community, 2–7.

166. Carroll, “Canonical Criticism,” 73.

167. See Sanders, “Biblical Criticism,” 157–165, and Sanders, “Text and Canon,” 5–29.

168. Barton, Old Testament, 61.

169. Halbertal, People of the Book, 19.

170. Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 81.

171. Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 97.

172. Childs, Theology of the Old and New Testaments, 64.

173. See Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis, 105. Sanders, on the other hand, argues that the canon is community determined but this view is problematic in the sense that this would imply that the church has an ongoing authority to determine the canon. Sanders, Canon and Community,15. See also Peckham, “The Analogy of Scripture,” 44.

174. Peckham, “The Analogy of Scripture,” 47–48.

175. For a detailed analysis of the two versions of the book of Jeremiah, see, for example, Stulman, Jeremiah, 7–8

176. For a detailed discussion on the controversy of variant canons, see Sundberg, “The Protestant,” 194–203; and Sundberg, “The Canon,” 352–71. See also Barton, Reading the Old Testament, 91–92.

177. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament, 72–74, 659–71.

178. Sundberg, “The Protestant,” 194–203.

179. See Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 33, and Hays, “Jeremiah, the Septuagint,” 133–49.

180. It can also be argued that since, per Scripture, it is to the Jews that “the giving of the law” was committed (Rom 9:4; cf. Rom 3:2), it is the version preserved by the Jews that should be the authoritative canon for the Church. See also Waltke who underscores the need “to take seriously enough the widespread use of the Masoretic text before the Christian era” instead of capitulating to the popular opinion that the Septuagint was the canon of the early church, An Old Testament Theology, 33 n.15.

181. Ellis, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 163.

182. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, 8.

183. Barton, The Old Testament, 150–51.

184. Childs, “The Canonical Shape,” 53–55.

185. Barton, The Old Testament Canon, 59–60.

186. See, for example, Barr’s critique of Childs’ Canonical approach in “Childs’ Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture,” 12–23.

187. See also Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 79–80.

188. Brueggemann, “Brevard Childs’ Canon Criticism,” 313.

189. Barton, The Old Testament, 155.

190. Barton, The Old Testament, 50.

191. Barton, The Old Testament, 156.

192. O’Connor, “How the Text is Heard?” 91.

193. Barr, The Concept of Theology, 437–38.

194. Wilson, Out of the Storm, 34.