Theology Today - Vol 21, No. 1 - April 1964 - ARTICLE - The New Hermeneutics and the Early Luther

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The New Hermeneutics and the Early Luther*
By Gerhard Ebeling

"The fundamental problem for him [Luther] is not a verbal description of God but the exposure of man's existence before God; that is to say, the proclamation of God's judgment over man. With this we are not brought into the horizon of metaphors. The linguistic use of metaphors has now quite another task with reference to the subject matter of theology, namely to bring man into the real situation, where the subject-matter itself occurs, as is the case with Jesus' speech in parables."

WHAT is the relationship of exegesis, as the concrete process of interpretation, to hermeneutics, as the explicit or implicit grasping of the ultimate conditions for understanding? When it comes to fundamental problems of interpretation, is exegesis dependent upon prior hermeneutical decisions, to such a degree that a clarification does not lie at all in the sphere of exegetical understanding? What then is the nature of such hermeneutical decisions? Are they arrived at apart from relations with the intellectual tradition, and hence independent of textual interpretation? Or must the so-called hermeneutical circle bring about a relationship between hermeneutics and exegesis?

Church history bears witness to the fact that the concrete study of Scripture in the light of the problems and experiences of the real life of the times has been able to bring about a new total understanding and hence also a new hermeneutics, and conversely, this new hermeneutics has resulted in a new understanding of individual texts. Decisive hermeneutical reorganizations occurred at the

* Translated from the German by Mrs. James Carse.

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time of the Reformation and with the rise of the historico-critical method. The latter change in history was prepared by humanism and delayed by the confessional century. It occurred in the transition to the enlightenment and, beyond that, as a result of the historical thinking of modern times. We can by no means short-circuit the hermeneutics of the Reformation and pass it off as a mere precursor of modern historico-critical hermeneutics. The fact that the cause of modern hermeneutics was advanced by the criticism of tradition in the Reformation, for instance, is no evidence for the actual scope of the hermeneutics of the Reformation. The question of the place of the Reformation in the history of hermeneutics is itself a matter which requires a discriminating historical interpretation. To this corresponds the necessity for a devotion to historical details.

In Luther studies, the concern for details is imperative. I speak from the experience of my participation in the new edition of Luther's first lecture in the framework of the total critical edition of his works (called Weimarer Ausgabe). This lecture on the Psalms from the years 1513 to 1515, that is, several years before the alleged "beginning" of the Reformation, exists in the very detailed notes which Luther wrote in longhand. According to the customary medieval exegetical technique, it is divided in glossa (annotations) which are short explanations written between the lines and at the side of the text of the Bible which was printed with wide margins. It is furthermore divided into so-called Scholia (comments) which is a long, exegetical excursus on a separate page. (The latter part is missing since the end of the war; however, we have photographic copies.) The size of the whole script comprises about 1,400 folio pages. The interpretative possibilities which these texts provide for the genesis of Luther's theology have not nearly been exhausted. The new edition, whose first issues have just come out, is furnished with an unusually full apparatus, which gives cross-references necessary for correct understanding. The exciting thing in such a project is that the exegetical procedure from verse to verse and word to word allows a painstaking comparison with the exegetical tradition of the old and the medieval church (in addition to the systematic-scholastic tradition).

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Now, on the one hand, Luther worked surprisingly much with traditional sources. In his adherence to tradition, he was, on the other hand, just as surprisingly daring and independent in his manner of using this material and taking his own new directions. For that reason, this material becomes for the thorough exegete a highly impressive mosaic, in which countless individual observations shape an image of the way in which Luther developed from a scholastic theologian to the theologian of the Reformation.

In contrast to the widely-held spectacular image of Luther at the beginning of the Reformation, theology has tried for quite some time to study Luther's development up to the time of the posting of the theses in 1517 by studying his early lectures. One has come to understand and to recognize this event in its narrower context. That is to say, one has realized that the primary impulse for reformation which originated in the quiet years of Luther's beginnings was a reform of academic studies and of the university under the sign of a new hermeneutics. This is the correct element in Karl Bauer's book on Die Wittenberger Universitätstheologie und die Anfänge der deutschen Reformation (1928) which has, however, several shortcomings with regard to details. During the years 1516-1518 the symptoms of a new hermeneutics came to be outwardly tangible as renunciation of the fourfold sense of Scripture, of the excessive use of allegories, of the scholastic method of glossing (commentary), and of the predominance of Aristotelian philosophy. However, the growth of a new hermeneutics can already be noticed prior to the years 1516-1518 in the midst of the involvement in the traditional hermeneutics.

Before going into further details of the hermeneutical problems during this traditional phase, some general traits will help us to look for the decisive aspects. If, by way of experimentation, we read Luther's early lectures on the Psalms as the document of an unknown late scholastic theologian, we shall find that in spite of all the relatedness to its intellectual milieu, and in spite of the confusing inner multiplicity, it has an unmistakably unique character. Though it cultivated the exegetical method, scholasticism believed, nevertheless, that the peak of theological study is found in the systematic method. In contrast to this, Luther's theological thinking developed from the outset in the exegetical manner. And it developed in such a way that the possibility of its being

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surpassed along the line of systematic scholasticism was very remote indeed. In keeping with this is his conscious attention to the specifically biblical use of language in distinction from the theological terminology which was philosophically tinted. Furthermore he attempted to establish a language, free from the scholastic structure of language, which would be closer to the subject and more suitable for it. The passion of these efforts manifests itself already at this point in the striking concentration on the word as the way of God's self-disclosure and on faith as the mode of man's response. To a certain extent, this is a traditional element of monasticism in contradistinction to the sacramental, hierarchical structure of the church. However, the monk, Luther, puts a completely new stamp upon it. It is precisely this peculiarly new aspect which, for the time being, may be called the "existential" element in Luther's theology, in accordance with the Finnish Luther scholar, Lennart Pinomaa. In other words, we find in Luther's theology the expectation that what is needed for salvation can be arrived at from the correct understanding of the word of Holy Scripture. This expectation is so intense that it is unparalleled in the surrounding historical milieu.

We shall now concentrate our attention on three focal points of medieval hermeneutics, which, in their depth, are in fact focal points of the hermeneutical problem in general. Moreover, we shall try to define the turning point which begins with Luther, at each of these focal points. In their immediate, outer aspect these three points can be characterized as the method of the fourfold sense of Scripture, the distinction between the letter and the spirit, and the understanding of language. Specific modes of a problematical difference are hidden behind each of these and they constitute the challenging motives for the hermeneutical problem. I shall characterize these three modes in advance as the historical difference of past and future, the metaphysical difference of temporal and eternal, and lastly-and here I must unfortunately use unfamiliar formulations-as the communicative difference of coming into possession (Vereinnahmen) and of being promised (Zusage). This last difference may be expressed as the difference between taking in and talking to.

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The following elucidations will try to show the meaning of these differences and their relation to the above focal points.

The significance of the fourfold sense of Scripture for medieval hermeneutics and exegesis must not be overestimated. We deal here with a handy scheme of various ways of interpreting the text, handed down from late patristics (sixth century). The literal sense of Scripture denotes what the text states or reports directly. Hence it is also called sensus historicus. The sensus allegoricus explains the text with regard to the doctrinal content of church dogma, especially with reference to Christ. The sensus tropologicus or moralis provides the application for the individual believer; and the sensus anagogicus draws from the text the allusions concerning metaphysical and eschatological secrets. The hermeneutical terminology used here is in part arbitrary. For almost all three interpretations which go beyond the literal explanations are in a general sense "allegorical." The practical application of these three aspects of spiritual interpretation varied considerably. Most of the time, the fourfold sense of the Scriptures was used only partially, dependent upon the content of the text and the idea of the exegete. It was more like rules of the game for possible interpretations which could be freely manipulated, rather than a rigid exegetical law. We can easily notice that the basic structure is in fact a twofold sense of the Scriptures, that is, the distinction between the sensus literalis and the sensus spiritualis or mysticus, and that the number four was derived from a restrictive systematization of the numerous possibilities which existed for the sensus spiritualis into three interpretive dimensions. Although the fundamental conception of a twofold sense of Scripture is hermeneutically much more important, the fourfold sense of Scripture is hermeneutically of interest, especially with regard to its theoretical justification.

We shall postpone for the time being the question concerning the justification of the twofold sense of Scripture and say merely that the application is the motive which is apparently decisive. Whatever the case may be, the text of Holy Scripture must have a presently valid meaning. However, if the text contains historical facts, trite, fortuitous, or even objectionable aspects and contradictions, then the necessity arises to inquire into the bidden, spiritual meaning in order to demonstrate the authority of the text by its edifying nature. Instead of taking the fourfold sense of the Scrip-

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tures as an offspring of a licentious exegetical caprice, as is usually done, the distinction of the three spiritual dimensions of interpretation must be understood as an effort to stop, through regulation by church dogma, the danger of an allegorical fantasy which would digress into the heretical. For only what is in the scope of church dogma can be a legitimate goal of the fourfold sense of Scripture. Thus, the division into allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses designates a structure according to its relevance for church dogma. This arrangement has been understood, for example, as the triunity of faith, love, and hope; and as such it was rather close to the applicative nature of the spiritual sense of Scripture by pointing to what man has to believe, do, and hope. Thomas Aquinas furnishes a theory which leads hermeneutically even deeper. It is combined with the yet to be discussed justification of the twofold sense of Scripture not as a twofold sense of the words but, so to speak, as a twofold system of signs: the words are signs of the things; and the things themselves are signs again of other things. This idea, which goes back to Augustine, namely, the duplication of the significative relation, word-thing, by a significative relation, thing-thing, takes its orientation from the fact that the res of Holy Scripture is the history of salvation which God accomplished and will accomplish. Thus, the words of Scripture are signs which point to the facts of salvation-history. Moreover, these individual facts of salvation history are mutually related with each other in a meaningful relationship which is graduated and therefore significative and correspondent step by step. Thus the triad of the sensus spiritualis takes its justification from the inner significative slant of Heilsgeschichte (salvation history); that is to say, the Old Testament facts point to Christ as the essence of the New Testament, and the facts which describe Christ himself or are interpreted as such in turn point to the believers in correspondence to the relation, head-members, which exists within the church as the body of Christ, and the New Testament data as such must be understood finally as pointing beyond themselves as an anticipatory portrayal of the heavenly glory. In this way, the inner differentiation of the sensus spiritualis follows the unfolding stages of Heilsgeschichte. Its applicable meaning is the being drawn into the course of Heilsgeschichte. We can realize that here the central theological problem of Scriptural interpretation is the over-

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coming of the historical difference. What is past must be realized in its significance for what follows; the text must be opened up toward the future. The three main impulses of the hermeneutical problem are taken into consideration in this manner in the theology of Thomas Aquinas: that is to say, the way in which the tension between the Old and the New Testament is to be understood and the way in which the tension between Christ and the history of the church, and between the eschatological nature of the revelation of Christ and the not-yet-fulfilled eschaton itself are to be understood. The structure of these multiple spiritual senses is in fact not allegory as customarily understood, but it is rather typology. The question remains, of course, whether the development of this many-layered typology of the history of salvation does in fact do justice to the basic hermeneutical difference between past and future.

In the first lecture on the Psalms, Luther is still completely immersed in the hermeneutical tradition of the Middle Ages, to the extent that he uses the fourfold sense of Scripture as a matter of fact. However, there are several symptoms which indicate that the way in which he uses this fourfold sense of Scripture is the beginning of a new heremeneutics which will completely break out of the framework of tradition. It is first of all striking that Luther uses this fourfold sense of Scripture even more intensively and far more on principle than the tradition and the exegetes of his day. He can, for example, conjugate the meaning of individual theological terms such as "judgment" or "justice" according to the fourfold sense of scriptures-a method which is, to my knowledge, without parallel. Furthermore, for him the relationship between the literal sense and the three forms of spiritual sense shifts. Traditionally this has been understood as a distinction of the merely historical and the presently edifying sense. Contrary to this, Luther endeavors to understand the sensus literalis as theologically relevant also, which means that he does not leave it as mere sensus historicus. His polemic is frequently directed against Nicolaus of Lyra, who, within the framework of medieval possibilities, stood for a historical interpretation of the psalms, i.e. he interpreted at least those psalms which the New Testament does not explain as christological, literaliter and that means historice, in accordance with the situation of the psalmists like David, etc.

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Luther, on the other hand, interpreted the psalms with unprecedented consistency literaliter as referring to Christ, while in tradition often only the sensus allegoricus led to their christological application. Luther started from the notion that Jesus Christ is the "I" of the psalms, that he is the one who prays even in the penitential psalms, where such an interpretation was taboo for tradition precisely for christological reasons. This christological understanding as sensus literalis came to be the foundation of the fourfold sense of scriptures whose second strong point was for Luther the sensus tropologicus. This indicates two decisive starting points of Luther's Reformation theology: namely, to connect the psalms with Christ in the sensus literalis promoted a christology which clearly emphasized the characteristics of the true humanity of Christ up to the God-forsakenness on the cross, thus a theology of the cross. And, to make the sensus literalis the basis for the other interpretative possibilities of the fourfold sense of Scripture made the christological starting-point of the theology of the cross central for ecclesiology (sensus allegoricus), soteriology (sensus tropologicus), and eschatology (sensus anagogicus). As a result, the sensus tropologicus did not aim toward man's deed but toward faith as the actual manner in which man responds to Christ. This means that Christ, tropologically understood, is faith. This does not overcome hermeneutically the difference between past and future through the idea of the gradual course of Heilsgeschichte and through a typological reflection of this image of history. The difference of the historical is rather redefined through the relationship of Christ and faith, which is understood as the faith-creating word-event. The spiritual meaning of Scripture is here not the contemplation of typological correspondence; its aim is rather to answer for the word of the proclamation of Christ in faith. And thus the fourfold sense of scriptures has been rendered obsolete.

III

The twofold sense of Scripture which is at the root of the fourfold sense has its historical origin in an extraordinarily complicated tangle of roots. Decisive influences from antiquity were: methodologically the influences of allegory, and ontologically the platonic and neo-platonic scheme of the stages of two worlds. To this came soon afterwards the terminological distinction of the letter

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and the spirit which is a Pauline phrase (cf. 2 Cor. 3: 6: The letter kills; but the spirit gives life). Paul said this in connection with the contrast of law and grace. The fact that already Origen took 2 Cor. 3: 6 as justification for the allegorical method had important consequences for the history of hermeneutics. For Origen had reinterpreted this Pauline distinction of letter and spirit for the formal-methodological and ontological usage. Although Augustine re-discovered the genuine meaning of 2 Cor. 3: 6, the hermeneutical usage of the distinction "letter and spirit" prevailed. The discovery of the allegorical "secrets," hidden behind the literal meaning, was considered to be the spiritual understanding of the Scriptures. The decisive hermeneutical difference in this is the metaphysical difference of the material, temporal, this-worldly on the one hand, and the spiritual, eternal, other-worldly on the other. The act of interpretation constitutes a soaring up beyond the mere letter to a mystical vision.

The dangerous aspects of this hermeneutical conception were tamed by church tradition. Although the terminology suggests that the "spiritual," that is, the allegorical sense of Scripture seemed to be prevalent, the bond with the Holy Scriptures and with the tradition gave the priority to the literal sense. And even though the hermeneutical theory invited the opinion that the real fulfillment of the efforts to understand was in metaphysical speculations, church-discipline restricted the exegesis to the prescribed dogma. It was therefore a self-evident postulate in scholastic theology that only the literal sense has the power for theological proof, and that the spiritual sense was not to make known anything which the literal sense of Holy Scripture did not show elsewhere. However, the dilemma existed nevertheless, that on the one hand the "spiritual" sense was supposed to be the decisive one, and yet, on the other hand, in view of the whole, the "literal" sense had to be the decisive one for the sake of the church. Moreover, with regard to many texts, the literal sense alone was inadequate since it threatened to tie down the exegete to the "historical," "earthly." The medieval hermeneutics constructed two typical solutions for this dilemma: One possibility was to accept a twofold sensus literalis, a sensus historicus and a sensus literalis propheticus. The same Scriptural passage points beyond its historical meaning to a meaning which points to the future and can also be called sensus literalis

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because it is the actually intended sense by God as author of Scripture. The second possibility was the previously mentioned distinction which Thomas represented, between the "sense of the word," which points to the fact of the history of salvation, and the sense of the facts which point beyond themselves to later facts of salvation-history. This second case appeals also to God as author of the Holy Scriptures. For, as Thomas argues, this doubling of the system of the signs, i.e., that not only the words (verba) point to the things (res), but the things point in turn to other things is a peculiarity of Holy Scripture exclusively. God alone is able to assert such significant subject matter because only he can accomplish a history which is continuously directed to salvation as its goal. The original metaphysical tendency of the twofold (literal and spiritual) sense of Scripture is here transplanted into the historical sphere, yet, in such a way that history is at the same time topped by metaphysics. It is subject to special conditions; it is supernatural history and therefore lifts itself as "spiritual" history above the earthly world; just as the church is elevated over the reality of the secular, and the spiritual law over the worldly law. The medieval form of the doctrine of the two kingdoms is to a certain extent the institutionalization of the twofold sense of Scriptures, i.e., the sociological aspect of that particular hermeneutics.

Luther's way of thinking in the first lecture on the Psalms bears the stamp of this distinction of the two worlds, inasmuch as he uses terminology which seems neo-platonist. However, contrary to all outward appearances, the basic difference which prevails in all assertions, the difference between the visible and invisible, the outer and the inner, the earthly and the heavenly, the temporal and the eternal, is in Luther not metaphysically understood as a scheme of gradations or as a dualism, but intends to be a distinction of two opposing modes of man's situation before God, as one who exists simultaneously under the judgment of the world, and under the judgment of God. Luther understands the difference of the judgment to which man is exposed, as one who exists at the same time before the world and before God, as the fundamental difference which defines the substance of the Bible. What finally decides over man's existence as destroying or life-giving is, therefore, an event of judgment, a word-event. Corresponding to this, the distinction of the letter which kills and the spirit which gives life

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is understood as a difference of the word-event. In overcoming the conception of Origen with regard to 2 Cor. 3: 6, the interpretation of Holy Scripture is not concerned with the disclosure of an allegorical hiddenness, but with the revelation of God in the hiddenness under the opposite. Thus the interpretation of Holy Scripture is concerned with the theology of the cross as the substance of Holy Scriptures, the significance of which must be established through exegesis. This new stamp which Luther presses upon the understanding of letter and spirit is the preparation of Luther's later distinction between law and gospel. The traditional structure of the twofold sense of scripture is thus principally destroyed. Luther does continue to use the allegorical method in a limited way as a means of decorative application. But, in the correct understanding, the one, plain, grammatical sense is the truly theological one which includes within itself the duality of law and gospel in its orientation to the substance of Holy Scripture; or, to say it more exactly, the basic task of theological hermeneutics occurs in the distinction between law and gospel. To the degree to which Luther's distinction of law and gospel differs from the scholastic differentiation of the natural and the supernatural, Luther's understanding of the doctrine of the two kingdoms changes, too, in comparison to the Middle Ages. And this change is noticeable even in problems of political ethics. We have here, in a sense, a comprehensive unfolding of applied hermeneutics.

The hermeneutical revolution which occurred in Luther's thinking has been largely buried again even in the Protestant tradition and still hides within itself hermeneutical understanding which has not yet been unearthed. This applies especially to the hermeneutical problem in its utmost concentration as a problem of speech.

The understanding of speech which determines our intellectual tradition from Greek philosophy (one thinks of Plato's Cratylus) and prevails also in theology, almost exclusively, derives its direction from the linguistic function of designation. Hermeneutics, which is defined by this significative understanding of language, considers the relationship between word as sign, and that which is signified. We can therefore call it a hermeneutics of signification. We cannot altogether call in question the legitimacy of this lin-

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guistic understanding. Our task is, rather, to set its limits by reflecting on what, in the last analysis, happens in speech. Speech is without doubt the occurrence of communication. It only remains to be settled whether corresponding to its significative understanding, speech in its essential aspect is merely information, while the access to the thing itself occurs as an immediate gripping of it, as a taking it into possession as a unification with it beyond speech, or whether true communication occurs precisely in the speech event in an unsurpassable depth.

It is characteristic of the predominance of the hermeneutics of signification in theology that the problem is heightened by the question of appropriate statements concerning God. Even for Thomas, the linguistic problem in theology is concentrated in the question concerning the justification and necessity of metaphoric language. (cf. Summa Theologica I, q. 1, a. 9: Whether Holy Scripture should use Metaphors?) With reference to God one can only speak by approximation, since all linguistic possibilities are contingent upon space and time and hence cannot describe God as such. The very structure of a sentence which is by necessity determined by a time-word is contradictory to the nature of God. Theologically, the inadequacy of linguistic communication can be felt especially well. The Catholic-scholastic tradition shows this in two ways: First, the true means of grace is not the word but the sacrament. For the word keeps man at a distance from God and God at a distance from man. The sacrament, however, unifies man with the divine itself. Grace is infused into man in form of a created reality, as habitus of the soul; it becomes a property (virtus) of man. And secondly, the highest so-called theological virtue and the very heart of the reality of grace is, correspondingly, not faith as expression of distance, but love as the expression of the unification which overcomes distance. To this corresponds, moreover, that the word basically considered as weak and dark. It is inadequate and must be explained. Hermeneutics in this understanding is, to a certain extent, the result of this weakness of language and, as a therapeutic measure, it is simultaneously the evidence for that weakness and darkness of language.

We could develop Luther's understanding of language and the word in antithesis to the above without exception. The fundamental problem for him is not a verbal description of God but the exposure

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of man's existence before God; that is to say, the proclamation of God's judgment over man. With this we are not brought into the horizon of metaphors. The linguistic use of metaphors has now quite another task with reference to the subject-matter of theology, namely, to bring man into the real situation, where the subject-matter itself occurs, as is the case with Jesus' speech in parables. For this understanding, the word-event in human language is the most suitable form of God's communication with man. Hence the relationship of God and man is a relationship of word and faith. This does not contest the sacrament, but re-interprets the sacrament as one aspect of the word-event. Neither does it eliminate love but it refers love to its proper place as the fruit of faith. For faith and love are to each other as doer and deed, as person and work. And the decisive question is what constitutes man's being as person, i.e., the question of man's being before God. Here the distance of distinction between man and God is affirmed and considered as something in keeping with true communication. This understanding of language is not defined from the point of view of signification but from the viewpoint of the word-event which must be accounted for and which, in turn, enables such accountability. The hermeneutical result is, therefore, that the very word as such is of hermeneutical importance and is able to illumine, to bring about clarity, and to give life. The hermeneutical task can only consist of the fact that we devote ourselves to the service or the word-event in such a way that the word becomes truly word, and that it occurs as pure word in the fullness of its power. Luther's thesis on the Bible as sui ipsius interpres must be understood along this line. These are insights which grew completely out of the perception of the theological substance. But they include questions, suggestions, and understandings which can become fruitful for all hermeneutical efforts inclusive of the non-theological ones. It is part of the theologian's responsibility to make clear the non-theological relevance of the subject matter of theology.