426 - Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich's Sixtieth Birthday

Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich's Sixtieth Birthday
Edited by Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1991. 367 pp. $24.95.

After a distinguished career at Princeton Theological Seminary that began in 1968, Karlfried Froehlich retired as Benjamin B. Warfield Professor of Church History at the conclusion of the school term in 1992. Professor Froehlich was more than a popular teacher. He was an inspiration to a generation of theological students. Why?

From the time he was a student of Oscar Cullmann in Basel in the 1950s, Froehlich dedicated the bulk of his scholarly work to the question of biblical exposition as a historical phenomenon. This approach is grounded in the simple fact that the history of the exposition of Scripture is a public record of historical documents. This simple fact has consequences. To narrate and analyze the history of the church with central focus on the continuing struggle to interpret the content of the Bible is to enter deeply and critically into the life and spirit of the story of God's people. It is to meet Christians not only under the strain of economic, social, and political forces but also as fellow believers seeking to interpret God's will disclosed in the divine Word. It is to measure Christians of the past as they would want to be measured and as we would want to be measured by future generations -in terms of faithfulness in the understanding and living out of the biblical message. It is to see the Word of God in its most accessible form -the received books of the churches -as an identifiable public phenomenon at work in the world, binding and loosing, "terrifying and quickening the terrified" (Melanchthon). Finally, it is to encounter the history of the church as the history of the continuing work of Christ in a way that seeks to be respectful of secular canons of historical criticism,

427 - Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich's Sixtieth Birthday

while yet retaining proper concentration on the theological subject matter at the core of the discipline of church history.

Those who serve in the ministry today need church history conceived as the exposition of Scripture. We are a generation curved in upon itself. We are individualistic, highly subjective, enraptured with the notion of our "rights." Too often we practice theology and engage in preaching as if God meant nothing antecedent to what God means to us. We take our criteria for theological judgment from the world around us. We expurgate the Bible according to our needs. In sermons and theological essays we reduce Scripture to the limited range of our psychological and social experiences. We forget what previous generations once knew by instinct: the majesty of God is of value in itself, beyond our needs and desires. In the words of the Gloria in Excelsis: "Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam" (We give thanks to God because of God's great glory).

Through classroom lecture, the advising of doctoral students, friendship and conversation, caring and humor, Karlfried Froehlich communicated this precious lesson about the Bible in teaching the history of the church. This is why friends and former students celebrated his sixtieth birthday with this volume of essays.

While the lesson is precious, the scholarship needed to undergird it is prodigious. The initial impetus for this approach goes back to Gerhard Ebeling's famous inaugural lecture at the University of Tubingen in 1947, "Church History as the Exposition of Holy Scripture." As Froehlich points out in his own inaugural lecture as Warfield Professor in 1977, reprinted in the volume, Ebeling believed that this "formula" would help to define the boundaries of church history as a discipline of integrity.

It also found a deep resonance in the neo-orthodox climate of post-war Europe. To put the flesh of concrete historical study on the formula, however, has been a most difficult task. One cannot simply take well-known passages of Scripture and trace their exposition through the epochs. Often, it is relatively obscure passages that carry the weight of the church's self-understanding. For example, Job 1:14 ("The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them") was for Gregory the Great and later theologians (including Aquinas) a means to state the Catholic principle of hierarchy concerning the ordering of the church from priesthood to laity. To investigate the communal exposition of this verse at work is to watch the mind of the church unfold in a particular epoch. But the yield from such analysis with regard to the understanding of the intention of Scripture is negligible. On the other hand, a passage such as Romans 13 is central to interpreting what the New Testament has to say about the relationship of Christian faith to government. But as Froehlich observes, "The exegetical literature contributed little or nothing to the formation of medieval political theory and ethics." Hence, while it is true that the biblical word shapes the church and that the understanding of ecclesial

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exposition of Scripture enhances the insight into the biblical word, to get at these truths is a most complicated process.

As a contribution to this process, Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective is outstanding. It deserves to be purchased and placed on the shelf of one's personal library. In the way of Festschriften, the book covers a wide territory and reflects the specialized interests of the assembled scholars. There are no weak essays. The book is arranged sensibly according to the epochs of church history: three essays on the Greek Fathers, three on the Augustinian tradition of the West, four on late medieval exegesis, five on the Reformation period, one each on modern European and American church history, and two with a decidedly systematic bent. Froehlich's aforementioned inaugural lecture and his reflections on the assembled essays serve as meaty bookends to the volume.

Highlights for this reader were David W. Johnson's excellent account of influence of Pelagius in the exegetical tradition on such a central "Augustinian" matter as predestination; John V. Fleming's timely portrait of Columbus as an exegete (highly recommended for pastors and teachers thinking about the 500th anniversary); Elsie Anne McKee's nuanced analysis of Calvin's exegesis as a dogmatician, which lays to rest the common notion that Calvin used the Bible in the Institutes merely for the biblicistic purpose of "proof-texting"; and the broad survey article by Cornelius Plantinga on the dogmatic use of the Fourth Gospel in the development of trinitarian doctrine. In mentioning these essays, I do not mean to discount the others.

To learn the texture of the historical past one must be willing to engage in inductive exploration. For those so willing, the reading of this volume will bring lasting rewards.

Walter Sundberg
Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary
Saint Paul, Minnesota