The Internal Clarity of Scriptture

I

I want to talk this evening about a very important notion in the Lutheran Reformation, the idea of the internal clarity of scripture. It is important to discuss this because we live in a time of great hermeneutical confusion, that is, we live in a time where a plethora of divergent methods and approaches to scripture all claim to ascertain the real meaning of the Biblical text. As a result, scripture seems to sustain a different meaning as a function of the exegetical and interpretive method employed in its reading.

What I shall do tonight is briefly review some of these contemporary hermeneutical strategies, compare them with the traditional approaches inherited by Luther and the Reformers in the sixteenth century, and show how the internal clarity of scripture provided the Reformation with the resources to deal with the confusion of hermeneutical trajectories that infected much of the tradition. I will then suggest that just as notion of the internal clarity of scripture operated in the sixteenth century to quell hermeneutical license, so it must be used today by Lutherans, if Lutheranism is to have any response to the contemporary hermeneutical quagmire.

II

In the United States, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is trying mightily to get clear on what it calls, “the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.” People are particularly interested in whether or not those engaged in homoerotic behavior in the context of a “committed relationship” - - whatever that might precisely mean - - ought to be allowed to serve as “rostered leaders,” that is, as pastors or associates in ministry, etc. Connected with this is the issue of whether or not two people of the same sex should be allowed to receive some type of liturgical “blessing,” a blessing analogous to that given to heterosexual couples who are wedding.

It is not my intention tonight to discuss the homosexuality issue except to make these two general comments:

· It is true that there has been great consensus within Christianity the past twenty centuries about the intrinsic sinfulness of homosexual behavior. In particular, within the Catholic theological tradition that has assumed the existence of natural law, homosexual acts were routinely considered to be deviant from that which ought to obtain, were thought to be not in conformity with God’s primary intentionality for human beings, and were therefore regarded to be sinful.

· It is also true that the theological tradition thought it could find biblical justification for their views on homosexuality. Since the 16^th century onward, most Protestant Christians have regarded homosexuality as sinful on the basis of the authority of scripture. Scripture was thought to be clear on the matter of whether or not God’s intention for His creation precluded homosexual behavior.

It is obvious, however, that many mainline Protestants no longer believe that there are clear biblical injunctions against homosexual behavior. Accordingly, if scripture is properly interpreted, then passages putatively debarring homosexual acts are found to do no such thing. By reaching back to recover the original meaning of these passages, interpreters believe they can somehow access the original semantic horizon of the text, a horizon that can be separated from the tradition of its interpretation. In doing so they say that there is nothing in the bible that would entail that homosexual activity is intrinsically wrong.

(I should like to note in passing how the sola scriptura principle gets perverted in this effort. At the time of the Reformation, sola scriptura was used as the primary authority that grounds theological orthodoxy. However, in our day a slavish Protestant adherence to sola scriptura, coupled with hermeneutical license, catapults the interpreter across nineteen centuries of Christian witness and attempts to connect the interpreter’s question to a text whose meaning is no longer clear and whose authority is suspect. I always wonder why it would be important for Christian piety to discern what the bible originally meant if the book is not essentially authoritative, that is, if it is in no way an effect of divine self-communication to us. What fundamental difference should the biblical text make if it is no longer caused by the divine? If it is just a book among books that is accidentally the founding document of the Christian tradition, then why does it matter today what it says in the seven problematic passages putatively prohibiting homosexual behavior?)

III

When looking at the contemporary hermeneutical landscape, we note the following general interpretative strategies.

Traditionalist approaches: This group of time-honored approaches claims that the text does indeed make particular truth-claims about God and God’s relation to human beings. While there may be internecine conflicts within this class of approaches pertaining to which parts of scripture are metaphorical and/or allegorical, they assume that clear and literal truth claims are made throughout scripture. These strategies are objectivist in spirit, claiming textual objectivity for all readers at all times. Although some of these approaches hold to a verbal plenary theory of biblical inspiration and authority, one need not claim the Holy Spirit as a divine amanuensis to hold that scripture has an objective meaning, and that one can apprehend this meaning by reading it. Traditionalist approaches assume a present objectivity, a present semantic discreteness.

Contextualist approaches: Contextualist proposals seek to ascertain the meaning of the text upon the horizon of its origination, that is, synchronically by comparing it to other documents within the region at the time, and diachronically by comparing it to other texts within the general history of similar documents. Contextualist approaches use various historical-critical methodologies to attempt to find out what the texts meant within the context of their emergence. We might think of these as objectivist as well, but here the objectivity is tied to the original meaning of the text in the context of its origination, and not a present objectivity.

Reader Response: Reader response approaches downplay the importance of what the text may once have meant, in favor of what the text now means for the reader in her reading. Bracketing questions of origination and authorial intent, this approach can be linked to an “enthusiastic approach” generally: the text means what it means to me now as the Holy Spirit guides me in the present. Whereas the traditionalist and the contextual approaches presuppose textual objectivity, the reader response proposal is a subjectivist approach. (I want to qualify this to an “enthusiasm” that, as Luther says, “swallows the Holy Spirit feathers and all.”) This interpretive strategy presupposes that there is no discernible meaning in the text apart from the act of interpretation, that the meaning of the text is constructed in its act of interpretation.

Fusion of Horizons Approaches: Based in post-Gadamerian hermeneutical theory, this way of approaching the text claims that while the text’s meaning is not merely my interpretation of the text (as in reader response), it is nonetheless impossible to ever have an objective reading of the text (as in either the contextual or traditional approach). On this view, the meaning of the text emerges in the back and forth movement between the horizon of the text and the horizon of the interpreter. Because of the “effects of historical consciousness” - - because the horizon of the text has formed historically the interpreter’s own horizon by which she interprets the text (Gadamer) - -, the text’s horizon can be interpreted by the interpreter. The fusion of horizons approach mediates the immediacy of the reader response position by contrasting it with a mediate objectivist interpretation (e.g., the traditionalist and contextualist approaches), such that both are synthesized or “taken up” (Aufgehebung) in a mediated immediacy.

Except for strands within the traditionalist approach, the problem with all of these is that no matter how objective they might pretend to be, they end up looking pretty subjective. Once the text is treated as a document beside other documents, a fissure invariably opens between the text and its interpretation. Unlike some other classic texts, the text of Scripture has sustained widely-divergent interpretations, particularly after it is unhinged from its community of interpretation - - the Catholic Church. In the Reformation, the cry of sola scriptura suggested to many that one could leap frog beyond the tradition and go to scripture for all truth. While this worked when there remained a shared set of interpretive values, after this common ethos faded, the text became helpless in the face of radically different interpretations.

Terry Fretheim, a Professor of OT at Luther Seminary sums up the problem with our present plethora of interpretive methods. He makes the following points in a 2006 Word and World article (26:4):

— “The Bible is the Word of God” in that it has a formative and constitutive role through the Holy Spirit, and that it is foundational for shaping and maintaining Christian self-identity. “

— People using the same historical-critical methods on the text come to different conclusions.

— Authority has often been given to particular interpretations of the text. (This correlates to the traditional hermeneutic on Scripture, I suppose.)

— “Hence, we must make a clean distinction between the text and our own interpretation of the text, for whatever we say about a Bible passage is never the same as what the Bible itself says.”

— Against the traditional Lutheran view of the internal clarity of Scripture, Fretheim asserts,“ The Bible itself often makes interpretation difficult and contributes to the problem of its own authority. It has been said that the Bible is its own worst enemy.”

— “There is . . . no sure move from the “objective” exegesis of the text to its meaning; contemporary issues are in the room at every stage of the process. The effects of our experience upon our study of the Bible mean that readers do not have direct, unmediated access to meanings the author may have intended or to “naked” meanings of the text itself. Recognizing that, we can make no clean distinction between “what the text meant” and “what the text means, . . .”

I have used Fretheim because he speaks this so very clearly. He knows the methods of the academy and knows how to apply them to the text. In doing so, Fretheim notices something that others see as well: the interpretive methods applied to the text not surprisingly determine what meaning the text has. Fretheim’s views are not idiosyncratic, but are fairly standard among reflective ELCA scripture professors.

IV

As is well-known the theological tradition at the eve of the Reformation had in place the “four-fold method of biblical interpretation.” It was thought that all of scripture could be read in four distinctive ways, that is, there were four different senses to scriptural expressions: the literal, allegorical, troplogical, and anagogical. These four senses are summed up in this Latin expression: “Littera gesta docet; quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas; quo tendas anagogia.,” (“The letter teaches what happened; the allegorical what you should believe, the moral what you must do; the anagogical where you are going.”) For instance, in a literal sense Jerusalem is the city of David in Judea; allegorically, it is the church; tropologically it is the just and righteous soul; anagogically it is the heavenly city to which the righteous are heading.

Starting with the school of Alexandria, the tradition assumed that literality of the words of Scripture must be transcended in order to encounter the spiritual truths standing behind the words. For instance, Augustine claims that in the parable of the loaves and fishes, the five loaves refer to the five books of Moses; the two fishes refer to the Priest and King pointing to Christ. Further, he claims that the multiplication into many loaves represents the multiplication of the five books of Moses into many volumes; the fragments left over refer to the deep truths that the many could not receive and were thus left for the twelve disciples.

Over and against such fanciful hermeneutics, Luther says that there is but one sense of Scripture, and it can strike us both as law and as gospel. The law is demand, showing us what we have not done or been in the sight of God; the gospel is promise, showing us what God has done and what He is for us.

In offering his “new hermeneutics,” Luther clearly realizes that according to the fourfold method, Scripture can mean almost anything that the interpreter wants it to mean, and that thus, the interpreter becomes lord over God’s Word rather than the Word becoming lord over the interpreter. Therefore, Luther claimed that no external exegetical method can be applied to Scripture in discerning the meaning of the text. In order to make Scripture lord over its interpreter, one must submit to its “clear sense.” This sense establishes what Scripture is about. Here Luther presupposes an internalist interpretive method.

V

Luther and the Reformers assume that Scripture attests to itself, that it interprets itself. Because of this, it is internally clear. All of the parts of Scripture testify to Christ, and Christ is found in all the parts of Scripture. Just as there is a hermeneutical circle with the parts of Scripture testifying to the whole, and the whole of Scripture illuminating the parts, so too is the Holy Spirit at work in a hermeneutical circle: The Word carries the Spirit who Himself interprets the Word. Luther also calls this clarity a sinceritas or simplicitas.

However, this internal clarity is consonant with Scripture’s apparent obscurity. Human beings are in bondage to sin and cannot free themselves. This sinfulness affects one’s standpoint on Scripture; One cannot access Scripture except from the standpoint of one in bondage to sin, one who does not want to let God be God, who does not want anyone to be lord except the self. This perceived scriptural obscurity is fully compatible with Scripture’s internal clarity.

Speaking of these things, Luther writes:

“For what still sublimer thing can remain in the scriptures, now that the seals have been broken, the stone rolled from the door of the sepulcher, and the supreme mystery brought to light, namely, that Christ the Son of God has been made man, that God is three in one, that Christ has suffered for us and is to reign eternally? Are not these things known and sung even in the highways and byways? Take Christ out of the scriptures and what will you find left in them? The subject matter of the scriptures, therefore, is all quite accessible, even though some texts are still obscure owing to our ignorance of their terms.” (Bondage of the Will, LW 33:25-26)

”If you speak of the internal clarity, no man perceives one iota of what is in the scriptures unless he has the Spirit of God. All men have a darkened heart, so that they can recite everything in scripture, and know how to quote it, yet they apprehend and truly understand nothing of it. They neither believe in God, nor that they themselves are creatures of God.” (Bondage of the Will, LW 33:28)

It is my contention that the notion of the internal clarity or perspicuity of scripture must be regarded as a primitive assertion within Lutheran theology generally. While it cannot itself be proved, its assertion is necessary for Lutheran theology to function properly. If one is to leapfrog back across centuries of tradition to find authority in a single text, then it is requisite that the text is clear. The alternative is to find the authority of the tradition in the development of the tradition itself, i.e., in the development of the church - - something Luther staunchly rejected. It is important to grasp the Catholic counterargument to the perspicuity of scripture.

The argument claims that, from the beginning, the Catholic tradition realized that the biblical texts harmonized only imperfectly. The tradition thus intuitively recognized that the development of doctrine is essential to understanding what scripture means. Accordingly, since there is no fundamental fissure between Scripture and tradition, the tradition thus determines the shape of the canon itself. Moreover, because of the fundamental obscurity of Scripture, a teaching magisterium is necessary to interpret it correctly. This magisterial office functions to interpret questions properly in the light of church teaching, a teaching itself founded in scripture and tradition. While having such a magisterium is a profoundly anti-democratic way of proceeding, such a hermeneutical elitism makes good sense if scripture is not internally clear.

VI

By advocating the internal clarity of scripture, however, Luther and the Reformers put an end to the fanciful interpretations of the tradition, a tradition in which those “in the know” could always claim to discern a specialist-like deeper “spiritual truth” behind the shallow vulgar letter of the biblical text.

Lutherans face a similar situation today. The fissure between the text and its interpretation seemingly guarantees that text will always be spun by the interpreter. As in the sixteenth century, so today, the Lutheran response to the notion that there is a yawning abyss between the text and its interpretation must be the assertion of the perspicuity of scripture. Listen again to the voices of our Lutheran theological ancestors, people who understood how anti-elitist and democratic Lutheran hermeneutics is:

“But the articles of faith and the moral precepts are taught in scripture in their proper places, not in obscure and ambiguous words, but in such as are fitted to them, and free from all ambiguity, so that every diligent reader of scripture who reads it devoutly and piously, can understand them” [Quenstedt (1617-88), Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 81].

This clarity is, of course, always related to the Holy Spirit which, while carried on the wings of the Word, is nevertheless necessary for understanding that Word:

“If you speak of the internal clearness, no man understands a single iota of the scriptures by the natural powers of his own mind, unless he have the Spirit of God; all have obscure hearts. The Holy Spirit is required for the understanding of the whole of Scripture and all of its parts” [Gerhard (1582-1637), DTELC, 83-4].

At work in this interpretation is the “hermeneutical circle” where the parts interpret the whole and the whole interprets the parts:

“The more obscure passages, which need explanation, can and should be explained by other passages that are more clear, and thus the scripture itself furnishes an interpretation of the more obscure expression when a comparison of these is made with those that are more clear; so the Scripture is explained by Scripture” (Quenstedt, 86).

But, this hermeneutical circle presupposes the agency of the Holy Spirit:

“For no other source than the sacred scriptures themselves can a certain and infallible interpretation of scripture be known. For scripture itself, or rather the Holy Spirit speaking in scriptures or through it, is the legitimate and independent interpreter of itself” (Quenstedt, DTELC, 86).

As in the sixteenth century, so in our day, the only way to claim that we are not guilty of finally constructing the text which supposedly presences the Word that saves us, is to assert that there is an objectivity to the text over and apart from human being, an objectivity which is an artifact of the divine, an objectivity that controls its own interpretation. This is the barely-remembered doctrine of the internal clarity of scripture.