Continuing on with Althaus in regards to the canon and interpretation, from ‘The Theology of Martin Luther’, by Paul Althaus:
Code:
“The principal that Scripture interprets itself includes the rule that the Scripture is to be interpreted according to the simple literal sense. One may depart from this principal only when the text itself compels a metaphorical interpretation. In all so-called ‘spiritual’ interpretation, however, each one can read his own spirit into the words.” Althaus, “Theology”, pg. 77
According to Luther, Scripture should always be interpreted in It’s literal sense and that when you have to resort to a ‘spiritual interpretation’, one can end up reading one’s ‘own spirit into the words’. Again, Althaus, does not seem to have considered the (even slight) possibility that Luther might be guilt of exactly this. After all, Scripture make it very clear that Salvation is NOT by faith alone (James), and so since Luther really wanted Scripture to say SBFA, and it does NOT - then he had to resort to a ‘spiritual interpretation’. What could Luther say about James? He couldn’t say that it should be ‘interpreted according to the simple literal sense”, because that would shoot a gaping hole in his Salvational beliefs. His answer was to demote James from the list of the ‘main books’ of the NT.
I would suggest that Luther ‘read his own spirit into the words’ by ‘finding’ what he really needed to find in Scripture, but wasn’t there – Salvation By Faith Alone. Again, this does not seem to have occurred to Althaus, but I would bet that something similar has ‘occurred’ to all of those Orthodox or Roman Catholic theologians who were formerly Lutheran Theologians.
“Scripture loses its clear meaning in the process. In all its parts Scripture has one and the same simple sense. The self-interpretation of the Holy Scripture presupposes that the Scripture is clear in itself. The Roman assertion that the Scripture must be interpreted by the teaching office of the church is based on the presupposition that the Scripture is an obscure book. Luther had to disagree with this.” Althaus, “Theology”, pg. 77
Luther may have disagreed with the idea that the Scriptures need to be interpreted by ‘a teaching office’ but he agreed very much in the space of just a few years, in that he deemed himself to be THE ‘teaching office’. If Luther had really believed that Scripture was ‘clear in itself’, he would not have found it necessary to write his Prefaces in 1522 or to later act as if he were the most reliable teacher of God’s Absolute Truth in the world.
“Rather than seeking to found a Church or a kingdom of God on earth, he simply claimed the right to pronounce on doctrine, like a one-man version of the Sorbonne, the theological faculty of the University of Paris, which for centuries had seen itself as having a particular privilege in this regard. But he felt also compelled to do so by an authority higher than the Wittenberg university charter; he saw himself as God’s prophet in the last days on earth, spreading God’s good news.” Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The Reformation”, pg. 132
While it is true that the Sorbonne did have a rather high opinion of themselves in the Middle Ages, one can hardly imagine the Sorbonne taking responsibility upon their collective shoulders to create a canon within a canon, effectively demoting 4 books of the NT.
“He based his assertion that the Scripture is clear and unequivocal on the Scripture itself. In view of his doctrine of Scripture, that is the only possible way. Just as Scripture validates itself, so it alone can bear witness to its clarity…….The voice of experience does not consistently speak in favor of the clarity of Scripture.” Althaus, “Theology”, pg. 77-8
Here we have Althaus making a rather ‘un-Lutheran’ admission – that the voice of experience does not speak well for the ‘clarity of Scripture’. That seems obvious enough to most people. Althaus though states that ‘Scripture validates itself’. But does it ‘validate itself’ before or after 4 books of the NT are ‘demoted’ to a category from which doctrine is not to be determined? In other words, how can Scripture ‘validate itself’ if you don’t really have a set understanding of what (Christian) Scripture really is? Plus of course, where to you start? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? How can Scripture validate itself or the canon criticize the canon, when you don’t have a place to begin. The answer – the beginning for Luther was obviously Salvation by Faith Alone. Once you establish that as a reference point, as we have been reading from various scholars, THEN you can begin to state separating the ‘main books’ from the ‘others’.
“For many men the Scripture is not clear at all; they either do not understand it at all or they understand it wrongly. The reason for this, Luther explains, is that the godless are held captive by Satan and that God allows even godly men to err for a while so that he may in this way show them that he alone to enlighten them.” Althaus, “Theology”, pg. 77-8
OK, so just exactly who (specifically and exactly) are these men for whom Scripture is not clear? Whether they do not understand it at all or they simply understand it wrongly, it ought to be pretty easy to ‘pick them out of a lineup’ - right? If it is the “Godless” men who don’t understand the Scriptures, then shouldn’t we be able to look at the actual actions and teachings of various men and determine whether they really understood Scripture?
