C
chrisb
Guest
Martin Luther, “Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings” Dillenberger, page 35
Here Luther denies that the epistle is inspired because he considers it contradictory to the Word of God claiming it is in direct opposition to Paul. Also he mentions the epistle’s “defect.” So much for biblical inerrancy. But his dislike of this God inspired epistle becomes much clearer in the next quote. Writing once again of James: “In sum he wished to guard against those who depended on faith without going to works, but he had neither the spirit nor the thought nor the eloquence equal to the task. He does violence to scripture and so contradicts Paul and all of scripture. He tries to accomplish by emphasizing law what the Apostles bring about by attracting men to love. I therefore refuse him a place among the writers of the true canon of my Bible.”
My personal concerns with a wealth of doctrinal claims from the Reformation is that they offer an exegesis to interpret the Bible simply not found outside of Martin Luther. He was the genesis of this exegesis and thus the Father of all modern claims of “Once Saved, Always Saved” and “Justification by Faith alone”, etc. Once you delve into the wealth of material which Luther wrote, I dare so, one walks away with a great deal of questions as to the genuine validity of this methods.
Now I know that we now have a roughly 400 year old tradition which now presents an alternative exegesis to that of the early Church Fathers but I encourage any modern Biblical Scholar to delve into the historic exegesis of the Apostolic Fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, the author of 2 Clement, “Barnabas”, Hermas) as well as the Greek Apologists (Aristides, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus) to determine were the Church drew her teaching, and how she assessed its soundness historically. For these Apostolic Fathers, Christianity seems to have implied a complex of belief and practice (in Clement’s phrase, “the rule of our tradition’, or in Justin’s, “following God and the teaching derived from Him’) which in the final resort went back to Christ himself. There was an exegesis in place to interpret the Old Testament as well as to craft the apostles use of it with their proclamations of the Gospels of Christ. But if He was the spreme teacher, the immediately accessible authorities both for the facts about His Person and for His message were (a) the prophets, who had foreseen every detail of His ministry, and (b) the apostles, who had worked with Him and whom He had commissioned. This two-fold appeal to the united witness of the Old Testament and the apostles was characteristic of the age; it is aptly illustrated by Polycarp’s summons to the Philippians to accept as their standard Christ Himself along with “the apostles who preached the gospel to us and the prophets who announced our Lord’s coming in advance’. First, the doctrinal authority ascribed to it was based on the apparently unquestioning assumption that, correctly interpreted, it was a Christian book, and that the prophets in particular were really testifying to Christ and His Glory. Justin’s insistence that the Jewish Scriptures did not belong to the Jews but to the Christians was universally shared. Secondly, this assumption was only rendered possible because Christians were using, consciously or unconsciously, a particular method of exegesis. This method, again, will come up for additional comment later I’m sure, for the moment it is sufficient to remark that it was not overly contained in, or suggested by, the Old Testament itself. One need look no further than the rejection of the Jews to this “new” method of Scriptural interpretation.
The point being, a method of interpretation was in place at the time of the apostles which formed their own understanding of Scripture and their own writings concerning Scripture. This method is considered a tradition which accompanied Scripture for its correct and orthodox interpretation and under standing. I might remark that without such tradition Gnostic Sects would have been just as valid with their assertions toward Scripture as those of the early Church. Many modern Christians practice a very weak method of interpretation with a few key doctrinal claims which “colors” their own exegesis. As their can only be one correct exegesis for the Christian claims that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, so too must we recognize that tradition informs our understanding of Scripture.
Peace.
Here Luther denies that the epistle is inspired because he considers it contradictory to the Word of God claiming it is in direct opposition to Paul. Also he mentions the epistle’s “defect.” So much for biblical inerrancy. But his dislike of this God inspired epistle becomes much clearer in the next quote. Writing once again of James: “In sum he wished to guard against those who depended on faith without going to works, but he had neither the spirit nor the thought nor the eloquence equal to the task. He does violence to scripture and so contradicts Paul and all of scripture. He tries to accomplish by emphasizing law what the Apostles bring about by attracting men to love. I therefore refuse him a place among the writers of the true canon of my Bible.”
My personal concerns with a wealth of doctrinal claims from the Reformation is that they offer an exegesis to interpret the Bible simply not found outside of Martin Luther. He was the genesis of this exegesis and thus the Father of all modern claims of “Once Saved, Always Saved” and “Justification by Faith alone”, etc. Once you delve into the wealth of material which Luther wrote, I dare so, one walks away with a great deal of questions as to the genuine validity of this methods.
Now I know that we now have a roughly 400 year old tradition which now presents an alternative exegesis to that of the early Church Fathers but I encourage any modern Biblical Scholar to delve into the historic exegesis of the Apostolic Fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, the author of 2 Clement, “Barnabas”, Hermas) as well as the Greek Apologists (Aristides, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus) to determine were the Church drew her teaching, and how she assessed its soundness historically. For these Apostolic Fathers, Christianity seems to have implied a complex of belief and practice (in Clement’s phrase, “the rule of our tradition’, or in Justin’s, “following God and the teaching derived from Him’) which in the final resort went back to Christ himself. There was an exegesis in place to interpret the Old Testament as well as to craft the apostles use of it with their proclamations of the Gospels of Christ. But if He was the spreme teacher, the immediately accessible authorities both for the facts about His Person and for His message were (a) the prophets, who had foreseen every detail of His ministry, and (b) the apostles, who had worked with Him and whom He had commissioned. This two-fold appeal to the united witness of the Old Testament and the apostles was characteristic of the age; it is aptly illustrated by Polycarp’s summons to the Philippians to accept as their standard Christ Himself along with “the apostles who preached the gospel to us and the prophets who announced our Lord’s coming in advance’. First, the doctrinal authority ascribed to it was based on the apparently unquestioning assumption that, correctly interpreted, it was a Christian book, and that the prophets in particular were really testifying to Christ and His Glory. Justin’s insistence that the Jewish Scriptures did not belong to the Jews but to the Christians was universally shared. Secondly, this assumption was only rendered possible because Christians were using, consciously or unconsciously, a particular method of exegesis. This method, again, will come up for additional comment later I’m sure, for the moment it is sufficient to remark that it was not overly contained in, or suggested by, the Old Testament itself. One need look no further than the rejection of the Jews to this “new” method of Scriptural interpretation.
The point being, a method of interpretation was in place at the time of the apostles which formed their own understanding of Scripture and their own writings concerning Scripture. This method is considered a tradition which accompanied Scripture for its correct and orthodox interpretation and under standing. I might remark that without such tradition Gnostic Sects would have been just as valid with their assertions toward Scripture as those of the early Church. Many modern Christians practice a very weak method of interpretation with a few key doctrinal claims which “colors” their own exegesis. As their can only be one correct exegesis for the Christian claims that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, so too must we recognize that tradition informs our understanding of Scripture.
Peace.
