Biblical interpretation down through the ages - the Reformation period - part 2

Two names in particular stand out from the Reformation period — Luther and Calvin. Both men strongly insisted on the literal method of interpretation.  Following is a sketchy time line of the early Reformation years:
 
•1507 Luther is ordained as a priest at Erfurt
•Henry VIII becomes King of England in 1509
•1509 John Calvin is born
•1510 Luther, sent to Rome on monastic business, sees the corruption of the church
•1513 Leo X becomes Pope
•1515 While teaching on Romans, Luther realizes faith and justification are the work of God
•1517 Luther nails his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenburg (this is the first public act of the Reformation)
•1519 Charles V becomes Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
•1521 Luther is excommunicated
•1536 Calvin publishes the first edition of his Institutio Christianae Religionis or Institutes of the Christian Religion

Luther not only wanted to give ordinary people the Word of God, he also wanted to teach them how to interpret it. Toward this end he laid down the following rules of interpretation:

i. First among them was the supreme and final authority of Scripture itself, apart from all ecclesiastical authority or interference...
ii. Secondly, he asserted not only the supreme authority but the sufficiency of Scripture...
iii. Like all the other reformers he set aside the dreary fiction of the fourfold sense... "The literal sense of Scripture alone," said Luther, "is the whole essence of faith and of Christian theology." "I have observed this, that all heresies and errors have originated, not from the simple words of Scripture, as is so universally asserted, but from neglecting the simple words of Scripture, and from the affectation of purely subjective...tropes and inferences." "In the schools of theologians it is a well-known rule that Scripture is to be understood in four ways, literal, allegoric, moral, anagogic. But if we wish to handle Scripture aright, our one effort will be to obtain unum, simplicem, germanum, et certum sensum literalem." Each passage has one clear, definite, and true sense of its own. All others are but doubtful and uncertain opinions."
iv. It need hardly be said, therefore, that Luther, like most of the Reformers, rejected the validity of allegory. He totally denied its claim to be regarded as a spiritual interpretation.
v. Luther also maintained the perspicuity of Scripture... He sometimes came near to the modern remark that, "the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book."
vi. Luther maintained with all his force, and almost for the first time in history, the absolute indefeasible right of private judgment, which, with the doctrine of the spiritual priesthood of all Christians, lies at the base of all Protestantism.

Calvin stated his own position very clearly in his commentary to Galatians:

Let us know then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning, and let us embrace and abide by it resolutely.

And in his Romans commentary Calvin said:

It is the first business of an interpreter to let his author say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say.

In fact, Gilbert writes this about Calvin:

...For the first time in a thousand years he gave a conspicuous example of non-allegorical exposition.  One must go back to the best work of the school of Antioch to find so complete a rejection of the method of Philo as is furnished by Calvin.  Allegorical interpretations which had been put forth in the early centuries, like the interpretation of Noah's ark and the seamless garment of Christ, are cast aside as rubbish.  This fact alone gives an abiding and distinguished honor to Calvin's exegetical work.

Farrar sums up this entire period by saying:

...the Reformers gave a mighty impulse to the science of Scriptural interpretation. They made the Bible accessible to all; they tore away and scattered to the winds the dense cobwebs of arbitrary tradition which had been spun for so many centuries over every book, and every text of it; they put the Apocrypha on an altogether lower level than the sacred books; they carefully studied the original languages; they developed the plain, literal sense; they used it for the strengthening and refreshing of the spiritual life. 


(to be continued)