Lesson 9 - Reformation

Question 1

What was Luther’s approach to interpreting Scripture? Evaluation…

Answer 1

• • the historical sense (literal, grammatical) is the true sense
• • Luther emphasizes one sense of Scripture (the literal, historical, grammatical sense)
• • Moved away from allegory to plain meaning of Scripture

Evaluation:
– Luther moved to more of an emphasis on the historical sense, but in practice he bypasses emphasis on the literal, historical meaning to go directly to Christ

Question 2

What was Calvin’s approach to interpreting Scripture?

Answer 2

Tried to steer a path between 2 ways of interpreting Scripture

• • Jewish interpretation – do justice to historical context
• • Christian interpretation – seeing Christ
• • Both are important - Significant to understand how OT speaks to its context, but we shouldn’t divorce the OT from its fulfillment in Christ.

Evaluation:

• • Calvin gives the historical context its proper place in interpretation without denying the divine author
• • Very Balanced
• • More theocentric in interpretation
• • One problem: Tends to spiritualize the OT prophesies that have a physical/material aspect to them
• • can Emphasizes the spiritual over the physical

Question 3

Why would some Lutherans accuse Calvin of Judaizing interpretation?

Answer 3

He cared about the historical context

• • Jewish interpretation
• • wanted to do justice to the historical context of the OT
• • deficient because Jewish interpretation didn’t see Christ

Question 4

Why would Calvin have problems with Luther’s interpretation of the OT?

Answer 4

Luther didn’t spend anytime on the historical context and always went straight to Christ.

Question 5

Explain how Calvin and Luther understand “the man” in Psalm 1 and how they both could be correct.

Answer 5

• • “The man” in Psalm 1 is speaking about every person who meditates on God’s law (generic use)
• • “The man” in Psalm 1 is David the king
• • Luther needs to pay more attention to the meaning in the historical context
• • Calvin needs to think more about how the Psalm relates to Christ

If I had to choose: it wold be Calvin because of its emphasis on the historical context of the OT, but both have something to teach us.

Question 6

What are the basic presuppositions behind interpretation during the Enlightenment period? What impact do those presuppositions have on interpretation?

Answer 6

1. ) The role of human reason vs. the authority of Scripture (man is the measure of all things)
2. ) An emphasis on the meaning of the text in its historical situation (did not like theology; wanted to stress the historical/scientific meaning)
3. ) Desire to be free from dogmatic presuppositions
4. ) Natural/Supernatural
   - - No divine author = no unity to Scripture
   - - Not one theology/one message, but many different theologies/meanings

Question 7

What is the problem of setting up the historical-critical or the historical-grammatical method of interpretation as the standard method of interpretation?

Answer 7

• • We are putting our standards on the Bible, instead of trying to understand what they are doing and model after it.
• • We narrow the NT method to make it fit on our own.

Question 8

Be able to discuss the different approaches as to whether the exegesis of the NT period is normative for Christians today.

Answer 8

1. ) Kaiser: NT writers follow the historical-grammatical method and so we can follow them.
2. ) Longenecker: We cannot follow the hermeneutical methodology of the NT because it does not do Historical-Grammatical exegesis.
3. ) Peter Enns: We cannot follow the exegetical methods of the NT but we can follow their exegetical goal
4. ) Beale: We can follow the hermeneutics of the apostles both in methodology and goal
5. ) Dodd: Because there are so few identical quotations of the same OT verse in the NT and different verses are cited from the same segment of the OT, single verses are signposts to the overall OT context