Martin Luther on the living word: Rethinking the principle of sola scriptura

Abstract

In this article I offer a reading of Martin Luther's hermeneutic within the context of contemporary Lutheran attempts to revise a biblicist interpretation of the sola scriptura principle. My proposal is that Luther's interpretation of scripture and tradition is often more dynamic than it has been remembered, and has something to offer a critical theological hermeneutics. Luther might have spoken about sola scriptura, but he generally did not practise it. Rather, he drew upon the tradition, and he insisted on the need to relate an interpretation of scripture to the reality of the present hearer. He spoke of scripture alone when he was at his most defensive and polemical, and when addressing the doctrinal question about the limits of the church's teaching authority over scripture's authority. Certainly, Luther put scripture first and last, but what I suggest is the most telling characteristic of his hermeneutic is that he emphasized the nature of the gospel as a living word in distinction from the written text.

Keywords

authority hermeneutics living word Martin Luther tradition

‘The uses of Scripture are in need of being discussed in frames other than sola or not sola, since sola never is sola, but contextual and traditioned.’¹

Sola scriptura: Rethinking a narrow definition

Why should theologians, exegetes and preachers be interested in rethinking the normative understanding of the sola scriptura principle? In fact, there continues to be much interest in this principle and how it has shaped Protestant biblical hermeneutics.² With this year's 500th Reformation anniversary coming ever closer, the continuing impact of Reformation hermeneutics could not be a more timely issue. There is indeed a sense among many Lutherans that the principle of sola scriptura, as it has come to be understood, is self-destructive and needs rescuing if its central intentions are to continue to inform current theology. In his application of Martin Luther's theology to a Latin American context in his 1992 work, Walter Altman considered whether sola scriptura is a ‘dogmatism to be returned to the sixteenth century with funeral honors’.³ Lutheran scholars Niels Henrik Gregersen and Jan-Olav Henriksen recognize that an uncritical application of the sola scriptura principle has opened up forms of fundamentalism that ignore the results of modern science and view the Bible as the only legitimate source of knowledge for humans.⁴ Alongside an uncritical interpretation, a number of Lutheran theologians are seeking to recover what they suggest is the true and more dynamic meaning of sola scriptura. In this vein, Henriksen insists that ‘The uses of Scripture are in need of being discussed in frames other than sola or not sola…’⁵ Reformed, Anglican and Catholic scholars have similarly sought to reinforce, re-evaluate or contest the principle.⁶ There is, as Anthony Lane says, a need to ‘move beyond the rhetoric and to discern what the term meant and the extent to which it can still be held today’.⁷ Although my focus in this article is on Luther and Lutheran theologies, contemporary interpretations of sola scriptura pose broader questions about the contested authority of scripture as a source of revealed truth in a critical, post-Enlightenment environment.

I initially found my way into the issue of sola scriptura whilst investigating the link made by several conservative Lutheran theologians between homosexuality, individualism and self-centredness in my doctoral research. I found that in order to sustain an association between homosexuality and self-centredness, these theologians fell back on a very narrow or biblicist definition of sola scriptura in their scriptural approach. By narrow or biblicist, I mean the belief in the Bible's infallibility, clarity and self-sufficiency, and the view that it has total authority as the literal will of God to the exclusion of creeds, confessions and insights from human culture.⁸ For example, some Lutheran theologians maintained that the church's acceptance of homosexuality signalled both their reliance upon the individualism of secular culture and their abandonment of biblical norms.⁹ In setting biblical norms against secular culture, they assumed that the Bible provides all there is to know about God's will for humanity, and that the results of science and critical thought only tamper with that pure and complete knowledge. While my initial contact with sola scriptura came through a highly divisive and politicized issue – the appropriate church response to homosexuality – my concern became broader. As I read, I noticed that these Lutheran theologians located the sola scriptura principle in Luther. However, I found that the claims that they made about scripture alone did not quite match Luther's statements. I came to see that they belonged more to the later development of a fundamentalist hermeneutic that claims sola scriptura as its own.

By ‘narrow’ I am criticizing the transformation of sola scriptura into nuda scriptura, the view that scripture alone is the only authoritative source for theology to the exclusion of church tradition.¹⁰ The problem is that the nuda view is perpetuated in the name of sola and the Reformation intentions of the phrase, which, as Lane points out, did not preclude church tradition, human reason and culture as legitimate theological resources or sources.¹¹ In defending these intentions, I am not suggesting that the sola scriptura principle represents the only legitimate position concerning authoritative sources in theology or the relationship between church and biblical authority. However, I am concerned to highlight this biblicist misinterpretation of sola because it gets in the way of a constructive and reasonable use of sola in contemporary theology. To be sure, the narrow approach that I am describing as fundamentalist or biblicist may be held by evangelical or mainline Protestants. Not all conservatives or evangelicals hold to this view, and many seek to resist the narrow use of sola among fellow theologians, which, they point out, essentially masquerades as nuda scriptura.¹² Further, the ‘conservative’ Lutherans I have referred to above seem to adopt a narrow view of sola when addressing divisive issues such as homosexuality, whereas in other work they demonstrate openness to cultural insights in seeking to interpret biblical teachings.¹³ Thus, as Christian Smith notes, biblicism is not a unified doctrine that is held to uniformly and some of its characteristics are emphasized more by some than others.¹⁴

In this article I share the reading I put forward of Luther's hermeneutic within the context of contemporary Lutheran debates about the real meaning of sola scriptura. By ‘Luther's hermeneutic’, I am speaking of his developed or evangelical theology. While I refer to writings from throughout Luther's life, I largely draw on positions he formulated in light of his ‘Reformation breakthrough’ concerning how God deals graciously with the sinful person (exceptions are some earlier lectures on books of the Bible where he is first articulating his new insights). My proposal is that Luther might have spoken about sola scriptura, but he did not usually practise the narrow sense of sola scriptura in his interpretation. Rather, he used church traditions and human reason, and he insisted on the need to relate the living address of scripture to the existential reality of the present hearer. I draw out this argument by making three main points. First, Luther mainly spoke of the necessity of scripture alone in the context of the doctrinal matter of the church's claim of supreme teaching authority for Christians. Second, in regard to his interpretive approach, he drew on the theological traditions and critical thought in addition to scripture in his own theologizing. Third, when speaking about the necessity of scripture, Luther more talked about the word of God alone rather than scripture alone. By the word of God, he is referring to the gospel, which he describes as a living word, as distinct from the written text of scripture. This notion of the gospel as a living word is an insight that can inform contemporary hermeneutics, I suggest, by restoring a more dynamic sense of sola scriptura. When people bring to mind Luther and a Protestant hermeneutic more generally, they are perhaps more likely to think of a narrow sense of ‘scripture alone’ rather than ‘living word’. Thus in shedding light on this lesser known aspect of Luther's hermeneutic, I wish to problematize the common view that Luther's hermeneutic can be encapsulated in the narrow definition of sola scriptura.

By seeking to demonstrate that it is problematic to ground a narrow definition of sola scriptura in Luther alone, I aim to broaden knowledge of Luther's hermeneutic, and to revise this normative, narrow conception of sola scriptura. Because the sola scriptura principle is first located in the reformers, particularly Luther, these two aims complement one another: broadening understandings of Luther's hermeneutic can help revise understandings of the authority and character of scripture in contemporary Protestant hermeneutics, which usually grounds the narrow interpretation in Luther. This narrow, biblicist view appears to hold sway as the normative definition of the sola scriptura principle, yet I suggest that it neither provides the full picture of Luther's scriptural approach, nor profits the practice of a dynamic contemporary hermeneutics.¹⁵ Rather, the narrow definition sustains a reductive methodology of scriptural interpretation that goes hand in hand with a suspicion of extra-biblical theological sources. Because Luther's sola scriptura is commonly thought to describe an interpretative approach to scripture, I respond in these three points both by clarifying what he meant when he did speak of sola scriptura, and by explaining how he did approach the interpretation and authority of scripture. I then briefly consider the relationship between Luther's approach and later stages in the development of the sola scriptura principle in the Protestant traditions. In the final section of the article, I canvass some of the ways that Lutherans are attempting to rethink narrow interpretations of sola scriptura. These contemporary reinterpretations of the principle offer up alternative models that I suggest more faithfully strike at Luther's core concern to treat scripture as a living word.

The primacy of the divine authority in scripture over the human authority of the church

First of all, yes – Luther did advocate scripture alone. What did he mean by this? Luther spoke of the need for the church and for Christians to rely on scripture alone within a specific context: regarding the authority of the church to make final decisions about doctrine. He famously affirmed the primacy of ‘the testimony of the Scriptures’ for determining doctrine at the Diet of Worms in 1521, where Holy Roman Emperor Charles V called him to recant his teachings.¹⁶ His concern was to affirm the prior authority of scripture's teachings over the authority of papal and conciliar decisions. He held that the church's teaching about justification by good works was not biblical and that looking to scripture alone was therefore essential to safeguard the Christian's gift of justification by faith alone. Thus, as Henriksen says, ‘sola Scriptura is a dogmatic and not a hermeneutic principle’.¹⁷

Luther's position is first verified during his debate with the Dominican theologian Johann Eck at Leipzig in 1519. This occurred two years after he had circulated his Ninety-Five Theses and had been called to defend his views against other theologians. Eck had a reputation as an enthusiastic defender of the church, concerned to eradicate heresy. During the debate, he pressed Luther into admitting that a church council could err – in this case, the Council of Constance, which condemned Jan Hus in the 15th century.¹⁸ Luther did not enter into the debate with the intent of making these kinds of extreme claims. Eck was therefore very successful in publicly aligning Luther with a condemned heretic. The Leipzig debate, as it is called, is an important moment in Luther's relationship with the established church because he was cornered into publicly confirming his position – that scripture is the final norm according to which all other authorities should be judged, including the Pope himself. Eck made Luther realize that this was the natural progression of his criticism of the church's teaching authority. This debate would lead to Pope Leo X's excommunication of Luther the following year (issued in 1520 and confirmed in 1521). Luther thus worked out his position about the final authority of scripture while he was under increasing attack. He comes down so strongly in favour of scripture because it is in the context of his opposition to the church hierarchy's claim to the ultimate teaching power.

When Luther calls for scripture alone in this context, he is not suggesting that Christians eradicate all other authorities other than the Bible; rather, he is making a crucial distinction between divine knowledge and human teachings. For Luther, scripture is primary because, as God's own word, it is a Christian's only divine authority. Thus: ‘Neither councils, fathers, nor we, then, even with the greatest and best advice, will do as well as the Holy Scriptures, that is, as well as God himself has done’.¹⁹ Because scripture embodies God's wisdom, Luther maintains that church teachings should be judged by scripture and not the other way around. His central concern is thus with elevating the authority of ‘the word of God’ over the authority of ‘the words of men’, which he equates with innovations in the church's teachings.²⁰ He stated at the conclusion of a Christmas sermon preached in 1522:

You see from this wordiness of mine how immeasurable the difference is between the word of God and all human words, how not one person may sufficiently reach and explain a few words of God with all their words… . Therefore go, go [to the Bible] dear Christians, and let my exposition and those of all teachers be only a scaffold upon which to build aright, so that we can grasp, savour and there dwell in the pure, sincere word of God.²¹

His concern was to make the teachings of the scriptures available for Christians, which he and his colleagues facilitated through his German Bible translations. He believed that in the last few hundred years the church had developed and enshrined in canon and papal laws and the system of the scholastics numerous harmful teachings and practices that had no support in scripture. He also believed that most Christians were not familiar with the scriptures themselves.²² Thus by centralizing scripture, his main concern is with prioritizing the teachings of God's word in scripture over church teachings, and not with eradicating church decisions or traditions altogether.²³ It is the church's interpretation and teaching of tradition, rather than the tradition itself, that Luther finds fault with. By sola scriptura, then, Luther did not practise a biblicism that rejected the authority of the tradition, as Eric W. Gritsch argues; he rejected traditionalism – the church's use of previous conciliar and papal decisions to test teachings (which he saw as past decisions frozen in time), rather than the renewed interpretation of scripture in each historical moment.²⁴

It is, I suggest, a more accurate assessment to affirm that Luther advocated and practised prima scriptura – scripture first – more than sola scriptura. In other words, Luther advocated the primacy of scripture's authority over the church's teaching authority, rather than its singularity. Scripture should be the primary basis of Christian teaching.²⁵ However, by ‘scripture alone’, he did not mean that scripture, without the historical and continuing witness of the church, is the only source of theological or interpretive authority. More particularly, scripture is the only divine authority, while the church's leaders and traditions act as theological authorities that aid the theologian or preacher's interpretation of scripture. The word of God in scripture may hold more weight than the words of church leaders, yet scripture still finds its primary purpose within Christian communities; the church is the necessary forum for its use.

Tradition and reason fortify our understanding of scripture

While he rejected numerous church teachings and traditions because he held that they did not accord with scripture, Luther also drew on theological traditions as well as scripture in his own theologizing. In other words – as was implied in the first point – he did not generally practise scripture alone as it is currently understood in the narrow sense. He held to the ecumenical creeds formulated by the early church and affirmed the central role of the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist in the life of the faithful. When instructing Wittenberg students and parishioners in his teaching, preaching and writing, Luther relied upon the church's interpretive traditions. As Jaroslav Pelikan says, ‘Luther could not have been the exegete he was without the help of the church's tradition’.²⁶ As with his contemporaries, Luther utilized the glossa ordinaria and the glossa interlinearis to aid his interpretations, as well as to support his critique of church authority. However, he used them judicially rather than systematically, supporting or refuting their insights with sources he held in higher authority. Aside from the scriptures, these included some of the fathers (particularly Augustine), medieval interpreters and some contemporary works such as Erasmus’ recent translation of the New Testament.²⁷

As well as relying upon the authoritative interpretive traditions of the glossa and the fathers, Luther also sought to use contemporary biblical scholarship to support his interpretations. In his rejection of marriage as a sacrament, for example, he utilizes Erasmus’ revised translation of Ephesians 5:32, upon which the church had justified the sacramental status of marriage. In his recent translation of the New Testament, Erasmus had replaced the word sacramentum in the Vulgate with the word mysterium, based on the Greek used in the manuscripts, so that the verse now read ‘This is a profound mystery’.²⁸ While less noticeable than his insistence on the primacy of scripture, Luther recognizes the need for extra-biblical ‘scaffolding’ to strengthen Christians’ knowledge of ‘the pure, sincere word of God’, as he says in the statement I quoted above under the first point.²⁹ These works of critical human thinking should lead the reader to scripture rather than outshine it; they are at once inferior to scripture and necessary to its understanding. As Henriksen says, ‘The sola scriptura principle did not exclude critical approaches to the biblical texts at the time of the Reformation…’³⁰ Luther made his stand against the Emperor at Worms in 1521 on the basis of the testimony of scripture, but also on the basis of ‘clear reason’.³¹ Although he insisted on the primacy of scripture's teaching authority in relation to the church's authority, he did not usually rely on scripture alone in his theological interpretations. He saw that tradition and reason helped illuminate scripture. For this reason, any exclusive statements he makes about scripture alone need to be held in concert with his own interpretive practice.

I said that Luther usually did not practise sola scriptura. However, there are times when he does rely on biblical proof-texting to prove his point against an opponent. Once again, this approach is usually found in polemical contexts. For example, in a 1521 writing directed against German theologian Hieronymus Emser, Luther asserts that the message in scripture is clear and to be found in the literal meaning. He was opposing Emser's argument, founded within the allegorical tradition of scriptural interpretation based on the teachings of Origen, Dionysius and Jerome, that scripture has a twofold literal and spiritual meaning. For Luther, this split the scripture in two and created a ‘two-fold Bible’. Certainly, the words of scripture point to something more – a spiritual, Christological meaning – but this is for Luther given through the one simple word.³² He argues that the fathers’ allegorical interpretations of scripture must be judged in light of the clear word of scripture, not the other way around.³³ Emser and Luther both use the same Pauline passage on the letter that kills and the spirit that gives life (2 Cor 3:6) to support their very different positions. Maintaining that this passage clearly proves his point, Luther says:

Is not Scripture here clearer than all of them [the fathers] put together? With what do I test, judge, condemn, and defeat them all so that no one can deny it, other than with the same passage of St. Paul… . Is not the text itself so clearly against them that everyone is forced to say ‘Yes’?³⁴

Here Luther uses his interpretation of the ‘plain’ or literal meaning of the passage to prove its truthfulness against the spiritual meaning advocated by the fathers and Emser. His statements (here and elsewhere) about the clarity and self-interpretive authority of scripture seem to undercut his otherwise dynamic hermeneutic.³⁵ Luther was aware of the impetus to division that could threaten to issue from his claim that all believers are priests and ought to read the scriptures themselves: ‘Now that we, by God's grace, have opened the gospel to the Germans, everyone claims that he is the top expert and alone has the Holy Spirit’, he complained.³⁶ However, he is quite removed from current debates about the contingent and plural nature of interpretation. As Scott Hendrix points out, Luther did not occupy an environment in which any literate Christian could freely interpret the Bible and extensively broadcast their interpretations.³⁷ We need, then, to situate Luther's statements about scripture's clarity within their historical and hermeneutical context. We also need to judge Luther in relation to Luther to fully appreciate the complexity of his positions: to lie each of his statements next to each other and weigh them according to the particular problem he was responding to. Luther's statements about scripture mean different things with regard to his purpose and context, whether addressing a doctrinal matter in polemical contexts or following a particular interpretive approach in instructive contexts. This is a distinction that would help rectify the contemporary biblicist misinterpretation of sola scriptura.

The living word of God in scripture

My third and final point in my assessment of Luther's hermeneutic is that Luther put the emphasis on the word of God alone, referring to the oral proclamation of the gospel, more than the scriptural text. When he says that all teachings must be judged by scripture alone, it is the spoken and living gospel that is attested to in scripture that he has in mind. For Luther, scripture has ultimate authority because it contains the word of God, and, in particular, the most important gift of God, the gospel of justification by faith in Christ. He is very clear on the content and purpose of the gospel: it communicates the saving work of Christ's death and resurrection for humanity.³⁸ His assessment of scripture is thus highly Christocentric and gospel-centred: he prioritizes those parts of the Bible where he believes Christ is preached the loudest (such as Paul's epistle to the Romans), and is willing to omit or downgrade certain parts if they do not ‘show you Christ’.³⁹ While the gospel contains the living word about Christ, he generally identifies the letter of the law with Moses and the prophets. Law and gospel are equally important as the two chief ways that God addresses humanity in scripture; however, Moses and the prophets are a letter for Luther because they do not have a soteriological import for Christians, but speak of past events and history. While Moses speaks primarily to the Jews, in the new reality that God has instituted through Christ, the gospel is that ‘living voice which resounds and is heard everywhere in the world’.⁴⁰ While he holds to the supersession of Moses by Christ, however, as did most of his fellow theologians, he also sees that there is gospel in both Testaments, as the laws of Moses and stories of the patriarchs and prophets contain fine examples of faith, love and suffering.⁴¹

What I suggest is most significant in Luther's characterization of the gospel as a living word about Christ is that he draws a distinction between the true form of the gospel as a spoken word and its written form in scripture. In a 1521 instructional pamphlet that he wrote as a preface to his 1522 Christmas Postil, he says: ‘the gospel, which is called a good news or proclamation, should be impelled not with the pen but with the mouth’.⁴² For Luther, the gospel is properly a spoken word because it is living in its function. It does not simply communicate a truth to which we are called to assent, but enacts a transformation in people's lives.⁴³ Indeed, scripture's word about Christ is addressed to you and me and evokes a response of faith.⁴⁴ In his ‘Exposition of 1 Peter’ written in 1523 he says:

The gospel however is nothing other than a preaching and proclamation of the grace and mercy of God, earned and acquired by the Lord Christ with his death. And it is really not something which is written in books and in letters, but more an oral proclamation and living word, and a voice.⁴⁵

As well as Predigt, the other word that Luther uses for proclamation here is an earlier form of Geschrei, which means yelling, shouting and generally making a fuss about something. It carries a sense of the urgency and immediacy he attaches to the spoken communication of the gospel.

The fact that the gospel is given a fixed, written form is inappropriate to its meaning and function, and only the result of necessity according to Luther. Speaking of the role of the apostles in orally preaching the message to convert people, he says: ‘That it was necessary to write books is in itself a great breach and decline from the Spirit; it was caused by necessity and is not the proper nature of the New Testament.’⁴⁶ For Luther, the material, textual record is necessary to make the living word of the gospel available for proclamation in each age, but it is not the true form of the gospel itself.

By making this distinction between oral proclamation and written text, Luther is thus recalling the earliest tradition of the scriptural texts themselves, which were oral performances delivered to communities. He identifies the gospel itself with the purpose of preaching, and links this with the preaching of Jesus and of apostles. He says: ‘the gospel should really not be something written, but a spoken word which brought forth the Scriptures, as Christ and the apostles have done’.⁴⁷ Notice the distinction Luther makes here: the gospel of Christ is the occasion for the written tradition of the Christian scriptures. Thus scripture's authority for Luther is grounded in the spoken word of the gospel of Christ that is proclaimed by the apostles; it is this spoken word which brings the written word into being.⁴⁸ Likewise, Luther associates learning the scriptures with oral proclamation; knowledge of scripture comes not just by reading the written words but also by speaking, singing and hearing them to discern what the Holy Spirit means by them, as did King David.⁴⁹ That is, one's study of the biblical texts must be accompanied by an ‘outward’ experience of hearing the words of the prophets and apostles as they are proclaimed from the pulpit or lectern.⁵⁰

Luther prioritizes the communication of the living word of the gospel over its written form because it recreates the oral transmission of the good news to the hearer in the present. Because the gospel is living, this means that the word of God needs to be read and heard anew in each new present. This situational imperative is based on Luther's conviction that the sacred character of scripture does not lie in past interpretations of its passages, but in its meaning for present-day readers. In his commentary on Galatians early in his career he says:

For if the divine Scriptures are treated in such a way as to be understood only with regard to the past, and not to be applied also to our own manner of life, of what benefit will they be? Then they are cold, dead, and not even divine.⁵¹

That is, scripture's teachings will only be understandable if they are made meaningful to those to whom they are addressed. In defending his duty as a teacher of scripture to identify error, even when it appears in ecclesiastical rulers of high standing, Luther maintains that ‘in order to understand it is most important to make an application to our present life of the doctrine that is taught’.⁵² For this reason, church teachings need to be tested through continual reinterpretation of the gospel in this moment. For Luther, this testing is a matter of being led by the Holy Spirit. While the church is historically authoritative in its interpretation of scripture, it is dependent upon the guidance of the Spirit in each age, which speaks the living gospel to Christians in their situation. At the same time, the work of retesting also calls for human action. If existing interpretations or teachings no longer fit the daily reality of the present community, they need to be reformed and, sometimes, abandoned.

Indeed, Luther regularly puts his conviction about the ever constant address of the living gospel into practice, as his own interpretations of scripture are geared to address the present situation of his community. As Hendrix has noted, Luther and his colleagues practised a collaborative and innovative Wittenberg-style theology that was designed to make sense of the changing human circumstances that characterized his environment.⁵³ Luther honed his hermeneutic in response to diverse situations and offered guidance in the face of numerous ethical and political challenges: the radicalization of reform in Wittenberg during his absence in 1521–22, the marital matters raised with the instituting of married priests, and the extent to which Christians should obey temporal authorities who have abused their powers, for example. Luther did theology on the move and his thought is developing rather than fully complete at any point in time.

How then does Luther's emphasis on the living word of God – the proclamation of the gospel addressed to you and me – relate to his principle of the primacy of scripture's authority for determining Christian doctrine? Scripture is indeed the only sign of divine authority and the trustworthy measure of Christian truth – but only because it contains the living promise of Christ's gospel. In a sermon he preached to princes in Leipzig late in his career, for example, he says that the true church is not made up of the pope and his bishops (as the ‘papists’ claim), but it is where God's Word is preached. For this reason, he says, ‘all Christians should stand strong and firm upon the Word alone’. Luther is not here referring to the written text of scripture or calling for Christians to rely upon the Bible alone. By ‘the Word’, he refers to the presence of Christ among Christians rather than the presence of religious authorities.⁵⁴ His point is that the true church exists wherever the gospel of Christ is preached and heard, not wherever religious authorities are present. In this sense David W. Lotz can argue that ‘By urging Scripture alone Luther was in fact urging Christ alone’.⁵⁵ Thus when speaking of scripture alone as the necessary basis of doctrinal matters, Luther refers to God's Word as that which makes scripture authoritative.

Luther insisted on scripture alone in the context of his attack on the church's claim to supreme teaching authority. Thus he advocated sola scriptura in regards to a doctrinal rather than a hermeneutical matter. On the other hand, in his own approach to scripture when preaching and providing instruction in his writings, Luther is concerned with bringing God's word to life for present believers. In this respect his emphasis is on the gospel of Christ that is held within scripture and encountered through hearing the spoken word. Luther's instructive hermeneutical approach can act as a safeguard in those places where he ignores his own model and turns to proof-texting in his polemical writings.

Later developments of the sola scriptura principle in Protestant theology

Luther's valorization of scripture has supported both creative and narrow developments in notions of the authority of scripture over the past 500 years. The narrow definition of sola scriptura is properly the product of later efforts to systematize Lutheran doctrine after Luther's death in 1546. Lane notes that while the slogan was coined to encapsulate the teachings of the reformers, ‘sola Scriptura as a formula or a slogan post-dates the Reformation’.⁵⁶ As Roy Harrisville and Walter Sundberg explain, during the 17th century Lutheran and Calvinist scholastics solidified the reformers’ notion of sola scriptura through their doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture, an argument for biblical infallibility that would secure it from external attack. This doctrine asserted that with common sense and the guidance of the Spirit, ordinary believers could read the Bible and clearly understand all things necessary to be known for their salvation.⁵⁷ Luther's insistence on the clarity of scripture to instruct believers certainly seems to support such a narrow view of scripture and poses problems for a critical, historically cognizant hermeneutics. His ‘pre-critical’ confidence in scripture's agency is difficult to uphold when we have greater knowledge than those in the 16th century of the human element in the Bible. For any person or community may authorize a particular theological or ethical position on the basis of an interpretation of scripture and disengage from their hermeneutical decisions by claiming that it is ‘the clear teaching of scripture’. If Luther's view of scripture's clarity is pushed, it can be used to support the doctrines of perspicuity and of inerrancy – scripture's freedom from error. However, Luther's views were carried further during these doctrinal developments in the age of Lutheran orthodoxy. Indeed, he spoke only of scripture's truthfulness, while ‘inerrancy’ is a later term that is largely the product of late 16th- and 17th-century Protestant scholasticism.⁵⁸

The distinction between primacy and singularity that I have suggested is characteristic of Luther's view of scriptural authority has not been maintained in interpretive communities that hold to a biblicist definition of scripture alone. This definition of sola scriptura is regarded as foundational; however, it is the product of a more recent Protestant orthodoxy, which confuses Luther's assertion of scripture's primacy for doctrinal formulations as an interpretive principle. The solidification of Luther's statements into hegemonic formulations has taken place in very different stages over the centuries. Not only in the development of an orthodox Lutheran tradition in the 17th century, but in the neo-confessionalism of the 19th century and the fundamentalizing tendencies of the late 19th and early 20^th centuries (and which continue today), the nuance in Luther's view of scriptural authority has been obscured. Luther can only be used to support a narrow view of scripture's authority when his statements about scriptural primacy are reinterpreted as statements about scriptural singularity and applied to hermeneutical rather than doctrinal matters. Luther's hermeneutic was wider and more creative than only holding up scripture's clarity and singularity.

I suggested in the introduction that Luther's insight concerning the character of the living gospel is a significant aspect of his hermeneutic that can benefit contemporary theological interpretive practice. How is this so? By laying emphasis on the living word of the gospel, Luther does not see spoken word and written text in opposition to or as separate from each other; rather, they are two different yet interdependent forms of the one address of God. This is, then, not quite the same as the ‘distance’ that post-Enlightenment philosophical hermeneutics posits between spoken event and text.⁵⁹ Like his contemporaries, Luther saw the scriptures as a unity, and he emphasized that it is the gospel of Christ that binds the scriptures together.⁶⁰ I take it as significant that Luther, like other theologians, recognizes a difference between God's spoken and written address, simply because this is so often lacking in a contemporary biblicist hermeneutic. I am suggesting, then, that it will prove helpful to bring Luther's written-oral distinction into relief in our own hermeneutical situation in light of the biblicist failure to do so, and in light of the assumption that the collapsing of divine revelation with the biblical text is foundational.

Luther's identification of the gospel as living and present-orientated – and his distinction between scripture as both ongoing, living revelation and historical text – is quite significant for a critical contemporary hermeneutic. It suggests that when interpreting scripture, authority lies first in the living, spoken word addressed to the community before the written, recorded word, even as the spoken word relies on the biblical text for the testimony that gives it authority.⁶¹ When we argue that sola scriptura for Luther equals the biblical text alone, we understand his words through the shroud of more recent fundamentalist theologies that reduce the sacredness of God's revelation to the materiality of the text. This interpretation of sola scriptura overlooks Luther's desire to emphasize the need to address the living gospel to present believers. The way in which he understands the relationship between textual record and living word, in my view, offers a model for restoring the distance between revelation and text that often seems lacking in narrow interpretations of sola scriptura. This is because he sees that the living gospel is contained in the text of the scriptures, but cannot be reduced to the written record.

Rethinking an ‘impossible’ principle

While some call upon sola scriptura for the purposes of boundary-marking the biblical text, for other Lutherans, sola scriptura rather enables the critique of just such a fundamentalist hermeneutic. When it is properly understood, it facilitates a critical interpretive approach. Rather than authorizing the persistence of a pre-critical hermeneutic, Gregersen and Henriksen argue that the use of sola scriptura today calls for responsibility toward what scholars know about the Bible's origins, contexts and limitations.⁶² Similarly, for Krister Stendahl, sola scriptura does not mean arrogantly gripping to the scriptures for security; it means seeing them as offering a creative freedom which enables believers to constantly renew their understanding of God's Word, Christ, faith, themselves and their neighbour.⁶³ He sees the scriptures as a tool for ongoing reformation only if the church acknowledges their historical contingency, and addresses the uses of scripture to shackle women and others.⁶⁴

Paul Hinlicky describes the conflict of interpretations over sola scriptura as the difference between conservatives’ notion of scripture as nominative (the Bible as a fixed deposit), and the correct, critical notion of scripture as ablative (the gospel of Christ as the source or agent of scripture). He notes that the Latin phrase sola scriptura is in the ablative and means ‘by way of’ scripture. When it is understood in the ablative sense, sola scriptura sees scripture as the agent or instrument of the nominative, the thing that is named through scripture, which for Hinlicky and other Lutherans is the gospel of Christ.⁶⁵ In other words, ‘by way of’ means that the narratives of scripture are the sign, and the God of the gospel is the thing signified.⁶⁶ Though drawing on different language, this distinction mirrors the one Luther makes between written text and the living, oral proclamation of God, which I outlined above. When conservatives define sola scriptura in the nominative sense, they treat the Bible as an epistemological foundation. As a result, they sacralize the Bible rather than what it holds. However, when Christians speak about sola scriptura in the intended ablative sense, says Hinlicky, it means that Christ is the true foundation for the faith rather than the Bible.⁶⁷

Like Hinlicky, Henriksen is also seeking to rehabilitate the notion of sola scriptura. However, rather than restoring a grammatical distinction, he draws a distinction between the dogmatic intentions of the principle and its misuse as a hermeneutic principle. He explains that the principle of scripture alone was intended to safeguard the central insight of the scriptures – that justification is enacted by faith in the promise of the gospel alone – and to ensure that no extra conditions or burdens were placed on believers for salvation.⁶⁸ For this reason, Henriksen says that as a hermeneutic principle sola scriptura is ‘impossible’.⁶⁹ It establishes belief in the doctrine of justification as the framework within which one reads scripture. However, it is not intended to imply the reliance upon scripture alone in interpretive matters, as I have suggested was Luther's intention and practice. The reformers did not intend that affirming scripture as the sole authority for a person's salvation would cancel out other forms of knowledge and experience. Thus, sola scriptura does not mean that scripture is an exhaustive source that ‘contains all necessary information for living in the world’, says Henriksen.⁷⁰ In this way, he suggests that a biblicist or fundamentalist use of scripture ‘misses the point of the Reformation approach to Scripture’ and in fact counteracts the intentions of the principle by seeking to place further requirements upon people for righteousness and salvation.⁷¹

These are only some of the ways that Lutheran and other theologians are currently rethinking a principle that is ‘impossible’ to maintain in the narrow hermeneutical sense in which it has come to be interpreted. Henriksen's claim that ‘sola never is sola, but contextual and traditioned’, with which I began this article, offers a sound reminder to all who work with scripture to maintain a critical awareness of the ways in which the Bible's authority has been reimagined historically and in the present.⁷² It also captures the spirit of Luther's own approach. Indeed, by sola scriptura, Luther did not call for Christians and theologians to rely on the Bible to the exclusion of the tradition and the insights of critical human thought. As Najeeb G. Awad argues, Luther's view of sola scriptura in fact represents ‘a correction to any alleged dichotomy between Scripture and tradition’.⁷³ Rather, Luther insisted that because scripture is the Christian's only divine authority, its teachings must take precedence over the human teachings found in the church tradition and human reason. These can prove helpful in our efforts to understand God's word, as long as they do not contradict it. Further, it is the spoken and living word of God that reaches beyond the record of scripture that Luther emphasizes when he advocates the primacy of scripture in the life of the church. These Lutheran restorations of the more dynamic intentions of sola scriptura signal the shift from scriptural singularity to primacy that I have located in Luther. They also pay greater attention to the space that Luther gave to church traditions and human reason in his attempts to bring scripture to life for contemporary communities.

There are then times when we need to read Luther in relation to himself – to read the principles he articulated in his most defensive contexts alongside those articulated in his most instructive contexts – and there are times when we need to read him against later developments in the Lutheran and Protestant traditions. This is after all only to mirror his own method of reassessing certain doctrinal developments in the late medieval church. Luther's understanding of the nature and authority of scripture were more nuanced than the form in which they have been solidified in Lutheran orthodoxy. However, this is equally to be taken as a statement about the nature of creating and maintaining any theological tradition: to disseminate a person's teachings to a large number of people, it is necessary to compress their teachings, to record them in a way that is easily understandable. But this necessary process, this creation of a written tradition, also involves loss – a loss in the shades and nuances of the person's thought.

Footnotes

1

Jan-Olav Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura – A Hermeneutical Impossibility and a Doctrinal Necessity: Twenty-One Theses’, Dialog 55(3) (2016), 190–193, at p. 192.

2

For example, the recent issue of Lutheran journal Dialog, cited in note 1 above, is dedicated to re-evaluating contemporary understandings of sola scriptura.

3

Walter Altman, Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, trans. Thia Cooper (2nd ed.; Minneapolis, MI: Fortress Press, 2015), 98.

4

Niels Henrik Gregersen and Jan-Olav Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura: The Inclusive Principle’, Dialog 55(3) (2016), 184–187, at p. 184.

5

Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 192.

6

See examples of these three approaches, in order: W. Robert Godfrey, ‘What Do We Mean by Sola Scriptura?’, in Don Kistler (ed.), Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995), 1–26; Gerald R. McDermott, ‘Is Sola Scriptura Really Sola? Edwards, Newman, Bultmann, and Wright on the Bible as Religious Authority’, in Robert L. Millet (ed.), By What Authority? The Vital Question of Religious Authority in Christianity (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2010), 66–95; and Robert A. Sungenis (ed.), Not by Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing Company, 1997).

7

Anthony N. S. Lane, ‘Sola Scriptura? Making Sense of a Post-Reformation Slogan’, in Philip E. Satterthwaite and David F. Wright (eds), A Pathway Into the Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1994), 297–327, at p. 298.

8

Christian Smith provides a more thorough definition in The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011), 4–5.

9

This view is found in Marc Kolden, ‘Homosexuality and the Church's Witness in the ELCA's Current Struggle’, Dialog 44(2) (2005), 137–145, at 144; Robert W. Weise, ‘Christian Responses to the Culture's Normalization of Homosexuality’, Concordia Journal 31(3) (2005), 231–247, at 246; Joel D. Biermann, ‘The Local Congregation Approaches the Issues: Lutheran Responses, “sin, sex, and civil silence,”’ Concordia Journal 31(3) (2005), 248–259, at p. 251; and Carl E. Braaten, ‘“Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” and “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies,” A Critique by Carl E. Braaten’, Lutheran Forum, 3 March 2009, para 26.

10

Several scholars have noted this distinction between nuda scriptura or scriptura solitaria and sola scriptura. See Timothy George, ‘An Evangelical Reflection on Scripture and Tradition’, Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 9(2) (2000), 184–207, at p. 206. James Callahan identifies the 19th-century distortion of sola scriptura as the result of primitivist and biblicist evangelical movements. ‘The Bible says: Evangelical and Postliberal Biblicism’, Theology Today 53(4) (1997), 449–463, at 455.

11

Lane, ‘Sola Scriptura? Making Sense of a Post-Reformation Slogan’, 304.

12

On these efforts, see: Timothy George and Thomas G. Guarino (eds), Evangelicals and Catholics Together at Twenty: Vital Statements on Contested Topics (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2015), 41–42, 48–49.

13

For example, Braaten elsewhere recognizes that God's revelation cannot be reduced to a single book, doctrine or tradition, or to the experience of a particular group. See Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jensen (eds), Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1984), 76–78.

14

Smith, Bible Made Impossible, 5.

15

Indeed, Craig D. Allert has noted that sola scriptura is usually understood to mean a total reliance upon the Bible and a total rejection of tradition. ‘What Are We Trying to Conserve?: Evangelicalism and Sola Scriptura’, Evangelical Quarterly 76(4) (2004), 327–348, at p. 343.

16

‘Verhandlungen mit D. Martin Luther auf dem Reichstage zu Worms, 1521’, in Paul Pietsch (ed.), D. Martin Luthers Werke, kritische Gesammtausgabe, Bd. 7 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1897), 838, 4. Hereafter references to Luther's writings are given in an abbreviated form including the initials of the collection, volume number, page number and line numbers (if from WA). LW: Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (eds), Luther's Works, 55 vols (St. Louis, MO: Concordia; Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1955–1986). WA: Joachim K. F. Knaake et al. (ed.), Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe, 120 vols (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau/Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–2009). All translations of Luther from the original languages are my own.

17

Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 192. Emphasis in original.

18

Scott H. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 88. Luther sided with Hus and Wycliffe's statements about the nature of the universal church, and against the Council of Constance's condemnation of them.

19

‘Vorrede zum 1. Bande der Wittenberger Ausgabe der deutschen Schriften, 1539’, WA 50: 657, 25–27.

20

See for example his statement in ‘Answer to the Hyper-Christian, Hyper-Spiritual and Hyper-Learned Book by Goat Emser in Leipzig – Including Some Thoughts on His Companion the Fool Murner, 1521’, LW 39: 186–187.

21

‘Evangelium am Tage der heiligen drei Könige, Matth. 2:1–12, 1522’, WA 10, I, 1: 728, 11–13; 18–21.

22

For they have been drowned out by the much inferior writings of the church fathers, councils and teachers – even though some of these have been profitable. WA 50: 657, 3–17.

23

As Allert maintains, Luther did not reject tradition, but subjected it to scripture as the final arbiter of what is and is not truth. ‘What Are We Trying to Conserve?’, 337.

24

Eric W. Gritsch, Martin – God's Court Jester. Luther in Retrospect (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 103.

25

Gritsch similarly foregrounds the primacy of scripture for Luther in Martin – God's Court Jester, 92–98.

26

Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther the Expositor: Introduction to the Reformer's Exegetical Writings, Luther's Works: Companion Volume (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1959), 88.

27

Hilton C. Oswald, ‘Introduction to Volume 10’, LW 10: xi. Luther favours Augustine because of his use of scripture, being, as he says, ‘the first and almost only one who, free from the books of all the fathers and saints, willed to be subjected to the holy Scriptures alone’. WA 50: 658, 21–23.

28

Maurice E. Schild, ‘Marriage matters in Erasmus and Luther’, Reformed Theological Review 39(3) (1980), 65–72, at p. 67.

29

‘Evangelium am Tage der heiligen drei Könige’, WA 10, I, 1: 728, 20.

30

Jan-Olav Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 193.

31

In his words: ‘testimoniis scripturarum aut ratione evidente’. ‘Verhandlungen’, WA 7: 838, 4.

32

‘Answer to the Hyper-Christian, Hyper-Spiritual and Hyper-Learned Book by Goat Emser’, LW 39: 179.

33

LW 39: 175–177.

34

LW 39: 176.

35

As well as his dispute with Emser, the problem of multiple interpretations also arose in his dispute with Johann Eck during the Leipzig Debate in 1519, as Scott H. Hendrix notes. Here they both based their opposing arguments concerning the scope of the Church's authority to ‘feed its sheep’ on different readings of John 21:15–17. Luther, Abingdon Pillars of Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 31.

36

‘Preface to the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, 1546 (1530)’, LW 35: 381.

37

Hendrix, Luther, 31.

38

Says Luther, citing Rom 3:25; 4:25 and 10:9. ‘Vorrede auf die Epistel S. Pauli an die Römer’, WA DB 7: 6, 17–19.

39

‘Preface to the New Testament, 1546’, LW 35: 362. In his 1522 Preface to James, Luther states that he is willing to do away with the epistle because he does not preach the passion, resurrection and office of Christ (‘Vorrede auff die Epistel S. Jacobi und Jude’, WA DB 7: 385, 19–25). His statement that ‘I do not want to have him in my Bible’ was removed from Deutsch Bibel editions after 1530, but his more moderate claim that ‘I cannot include him among the chief books’ remained. WA DB 7: 386, 17–18. As David W. Lotz summarizes Luther's position: ‘Scripture exists for the sake of Christ’. ‘Sola Scriptura: Luther on Biblical Authority’, Interpretation 35(3) (1981), 258–273, at p. 265.

40

WA 12: 275, 10–11.

41

‘How Christians Should Regard Moses, 1525’, LW 35: 169; 173. As Robert Kolb points out in Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 51–52.

42

‘Ein klein Unterricht, was man in den Evangeliis suchen und gewartten soll, 1521’, WA 10, I, 1: 17, 11–12. Luther uses getrieben, which literally means ‘driven’, for the word I have rendered here as ‘impelled’. His Christmas Postil, as with his other postils, was a collection of model sermons intended to guide ministers in preaching on the gospel. Gerhard Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, trans. R. A. Wilson, Fontana Library of Theology & Philosophy (London: Collins, 1972), 132.

43

As Paul Althaus explains the ‘spokenness’ of the gospel for Luther. The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), 72.

44

In distinction from those who preach only a history of Christ's life, Luther emphasizes the existential import of Christ's work: ‘Rather, Christ must and should be preached, with the result that faith in him will grow in you and me’. ‘Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, 1520’, WA 7: 29, 13–14.

45

‘(Erste) Epistel S. Petri gepredigt und außgelegt. Erste Bearbeitung, 1523’, WA 12: 259, 8–12.

46

‘Evangelium am Tage der heiligen drei Könige’, WA 10 I. 1: 627, 1–3.

47

‘Ein klein Unterricht’, WA 10, I, 1: 17, 7–9. Again, Luther uses getrieben for the word I have here rendered as ‘brought forth’.

48

Lotz, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 261, 265.

49

‘Vorrede zum 1. Bande der Wittenberger Ausgabe’, WA 50: 659, 22–25, 30–35.

50

WA 50: 659, 32–35; 657, 28–30.

51

Luther, ‘In epistolam Pauli ad Galatas M. Lutheri commentarius, 1519’, WA 2: 601, 19–22.

52

‘Lectures on Romans, 1515–1516’, LW 25: 472.

53

Scott H. Hendrix, ‘The Future of Luther's Theology’, Dialog 47(2) (2008), 125–135, at pp. 127, 126, 133.

54

‘Predigt auf dem Schloss Pleissenburg zu Leipzig, 1539’, WA 47: 775, 3–4. By the (uppercase) ‘Word alone’, he is speaking specifically of Christ in the scriptures, rather than scripture more generally as the (lowercase) word of God; thus ‘Christ alone is enough for me’ as he says here (WA 47: 775, 3).

55

Lotz, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 273.

56

Lane, ‘Sola Scriptura? Making Sense of a Post-Reformation Slogan’, 298.

57

Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 22. They identify this argument in the 17th-century Lutheran scholastic Johann Wilhelm Baier and the Reformed theologian Markus Friedrich Wendelin.

58

Harrisville and Sundberg, Bible in Modern Culture, 213.

59

See Paul Ricoeur, ‘Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text’, in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanstan, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 140–163, at p. 146; and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (2nd rev. ed.; New York: Crossroad, 1989), 390–391.

60

Hendrix, Luther, 30; Joseph Sittler, The Doctrine of the Word of God in the Structure of Lutheran Theology (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1948), 23–24.

61

The written word makes available the proclaimed word, as Ebeling says. Luther, 132.

62

Gregersen and Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 184.

63

Krister Stendahl, ‘What does it Mean to Be a Reforming Church?’, in Charles P. Lutz (ed.), A Reforming Church…Gift and Task: Essays from a Free Conference (Minneapolis, MN: Kirk House Publishing, 1995), 24–34, at pp. 26–27. Arland J. Hultgren holds a similar view: ‘The Bible in a Reforming Church: Some Gifts and Some Tasks,’ in Lutz, A Reforming Church, 35–52, at pp. 42–43.

64

Stendahl, ‘What does it Mean to Be a Reforming Church?’, 28–29.

65

Paul R. Hinlicky, ‘Prima Scriptura: Saving Sola Scriptura from Itself’, Dialog 55(3) (2016), 220–228, at p. 221.

66

Hinlicky, ‘Prima Scriptura’, 226.

67

Hinlicky, ‘Prima Scriptura’, 223.

68

Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 191–192.

69

Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 192. Emphasis in original.

70

Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 192.

71

Emphasis in original. ‘Sola Scriptura’, 192 (quote); 192–193.

72

Henriksen, ‘Sola Scriptura’, 192.

73

Najeeb G. Awad, ‘Should We Dispense with Sola Scriptura? Scripture, Tradition and Postmodern Theology’, Dialog 47(1) (2008), 64–79, at p. 66. He suggests that this is also true of Schleiermacher's view of sola scriptura.

Author biography

Jillian E. Cox is a member of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Monash University. She has published on Luther in several journals, and recently completed her PhD, which draws on Luther’s thought to put forward a situational contemporary theological hermeneutic. Her research interests include investigating the relationships between religious and secular texts, traditions and ideas.