Thursday, October 02, 2014

“Scripture interprets Scripture” through the centuries

In his work “Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Volume II (“An Historical Defense of the Reformation Principle of Sola Scriptura” Battle Ground, WA: Christian Resources ©2001), William Webster notes that there were a number of “General Principles of Patristic Interpretation” (pg 193). He notes:

While there was disagreement among the Church fathers over the practical application of the interpretation of Scripture, it is important to note that there was general agreement on a number of fundamental exegetical principles which we will examine in some detail.

He lists these principles as follows:

1. The Continuity Between the Old and New Testaments

2. The Rule of Faith

3. The Perspicuity of Scripture

4. The Principle of Context: The Scope of Scripture

5. Scripture Interprets Scripture

6. Scripture Declares Its Own Meaning

7. The Need for Diligent Study, a Holy Life and Prayer

This discussion takes up a number of pages, thick with citations from various fourth- and fifth-century writers. For example, on #1 he cites Augustine saying “The whole contents of these [Hebrew] Scriptures are either directly or indirectly about Christ”. On #3 he cites Chrysostom: “Notice how Sacred Scripture narrates everything in human fashion even out of considerateness to us. I mean, it would not have been possible for us in any other way to understand anything of what was said had not such considerateness been thought fitting” and “All things are clear and open that are in the divine Scriptures; the necessary things are all plain”. On this point he also cites Hilary, Augustine, Isidore of Pelusium, Athanasius, Lactantius, and Theodoret. On #5 he cites Irenaeus (“all Scripture, which has been given to us by God, shall be found by us perfectly consistent … and those statements the meaning of which is clear, shall serve to explain the parables …”) and Augustine, (“Our thoughts … in reflecting on and discussing the holy Scriptures must be guided by the indisputable authority of the same scriptures … Who, after all, would dare to expound the divine mysteries otherwise than has been practiced and prescribed by the mind and mouth of an apostle?”). Webster provides many pages of quotes commending these concepts, and many more pages of footnotes.

I say all this for the purpose of picking up on Richard Muller’s view of the emerging Doctrine of Scripture. Muller notes that there was no “doctrine of Scripture” in the patristic or medieval periods. However, the views of individual writers on Scriptures during these periods was not hard to discern.

These things count among the “continuities” from “antecedents” that Muller writes about.

… the movement of Protestant theology from the Reformation into the era of orthodoxy cannot be described either as a radical alteration of perspective and a distortion of theology or as a purely continuous development of doctrine. Both of these models are simplistic and erroneous.

Instead, the development of Protestant orthodoxy must be described against the background of both later medieval and Reformation theology and in terms of a spectrum of continuities and discontinuities with these antecedents.

In addition, the development of post-Reformation dogmatics has to be set into the context of the bitter polemics of the age, of the rise of a new and renewed Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, and of the recovery, by Protestants as well as by Catholics, of the theology of the great medieval doctors, particularly those of the via antiqua.

The need for this more complex description is nowhere more pressing than in the discussion of the Reformed orthodox doctrine of Scripture.

Scripture, variously understood, as the canon was developed and defined, has been the foundation of Christian doctrine throughout all ages of the church.

From the writings of the earliest fathers to the vast systematic efforts of dogmaticians like Barth and Brunner in the present century, the identifying characteristic of Christian teaching has been a direct reliance on Scripture for the basic issues and materials of theological formulation.

Nonetheless, the explicit examination of Scripture as the proper basis for theology—an exercise quite distinct from the use of Scripture in theology and from the basic work of the exposition of Scripture—is an issue only scantily addressed before the rise of fully developed theological systems.

It is quite true that the fathers of the church frequently acknowledged Scripture as the primary foundation of their thinking and that they identified orthodox Christian teaching as resting on the canonical books of the Old Testament (with occasional queries, as in the case of Jerome, concerning the differences between the Hebrew and the Septuagint lists) together with the apostolic witness.

The fathers also devoted, particularly in the fourth and fifth centuries, the close of the patristic period, considerable space to discussions of the principles of interpretation: Jerome’s prefaces to the various books of the Bible and Augustine’s De doctrina christiana are preeminent examples of this kind of meditation.

Nonetheless, the fathers do not provide us with a formal doctrine of Scripture—only with a consistent appeal to the inspiration and authority of Scripture throughout their writings and an occasional discussion of their principles of interpretation.

Of course, elements of a “doctrine of Scripture” could be elicited or complied from the writings of the fathers, but it would be something other than a patristic doctrine, granting that the impulse to such formulation and the organizing principles used in the task would not be patristic.

Very much as noted concerning theological prolegomena, the doctrine of Scripture represents a theological reflection on the presuppositions of an extant body of doctrine.

The church fathers devoted virtually all of their theological energies to the exposition of the central issues in that body of doctrine—Trinity, Christology, soteriology. Whereas a high view of Scripture is implied in all of their efforts, the development of an explicit doctrine of Scripture was, like the problem of theological prolegomena, left to later ages, specifically to the high scholastic era of the Middle Ages and to the Reformation and post-Reformation eras.

Beginning in the late twelfth century, coincident with the development of concepts that would shortly coalesce into theological prolegomena, theologians began to inquire into the way in which Scripture is the presupposition of the body of Christian doctrine.

In the later Middle Ages, the debate over the relation of Scripture to tradition brought about further development of the doctrinal language concerning Scripture.

The Reformation, with its pronouncement of sola Scriptura as the foundational principle of theology, brought this development to a climax and, in addition, assured the separate elaboration of formal prolegomena and of a doctrine of Scripture in the orthodox Protestant systems of the post-Reformation era.

Claims from Roman Catholics regarding the supposed authority of “Tradition” prior to the Reformation are not based upon anything more than their own thoughts about the subject.

Whereas the analysis of Protestant orthodox theological prolegomena is complicated by the absence of definition and discussion of preliminary topics from the writings of the Reformers, analysis of the Protestant orthodox doctrine of Scripture encounters a very different problem: there was a great body of material written during the Reformation in which Scripture was discussed.

The presence of these writings intensifies the problem of continuity and discontinuity, particularly when the rather kerygmatic, discursive, and even “existential” style of the Reformers is compared with the dogmatic, scholastic, and objective style of their orthodox successors.

The basic issue remains the same, however: the continuity and discontinuity of doctrine and method in the development of Christian thought from the later Middle Ages through the Reformation and into the seventeenth century.

The question, by way of contrast, is no longer whether or not the theology of the Reformers can be drawn out into a theological topic not found in the writings of the Reformers, but whether or not a particular topic of discussion found in the writings of the Reformers is substantively altered when it is exposited not only in a new form but also in the context of doctrinal issues not fully addressed or even recognized by the Reformers.

Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise And Development Of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 2: The Cognitive Foundation Of Theology (2nd ed., pp. 24–26). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

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