Muller And Thompson - Biblical Interpretation In The Era Of The Reformation

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Muller/Thompson (thesis)

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"Exegetes of the sixteenth century provide a kind of bridge from the medieval formulas to the more modern critical hermeneutics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
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"They make liberal but critical use of the older fourfold model of interpretation; however, they are clearly "pre-critical" in their approach. The various authors do not try to prove this thesis. They merely explicate the work of fourteen significant theologian-scholars of the period."

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Muller/Thompson (about Steinmetz)

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David C. Steinmetz has produced a host of scholarly studies throughout his life on the intellectual history of the Reformation. Early in his career, he focused on Luther and his relationship and his spiritual mentor at the Augustinian monastery, Johann von Staupitz. He then went on to study Luther's exegesis within the context of the history of biblical interpretation. His most recent research has turned to Calvin and the Reformed movement with the goal of placing the Genevan reformer within the context of the history of exegesis. His scholarly publications have contributed to a better understanding of the continuity of Reformation thought with medieval and patristic tradition.

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Muller/Thompson (who)

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Both students of Steinmetz; Heiko Oberman is Steinmetz's mentor.

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Muller/Thompson (agenda)

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To revalidate the usefulness of the precritical method of exegetical method of the Reformation (345).

The Reformation exegetes did not interpret Scripture in isolation but saw themselves as members of a centuries-old cloud of witnesses. They interpreted the Bible within the context of the explications of their predecessors. Contemporary biblical interpretation at times dismisses older biblical scholarship and looks at the text in isolation. By contrast, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin and their contemporaries all saw immense value in patristic and even medieval exegesis. Both Luther and Calvin particularly held Bernard of Clairvaux in high regard. The reformers, however, were free to disagree with their predecessors based on better philological information or a more complete understanding of the historical or geographical background of the text.

**M&T arguing for the ability for precritical and critical exegesis to co-habitate (345) or for the superiority of the former (like Steinmetz)?

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Muller/Thompson (continuity with the medieval period)

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Reformation exegesis built on the four-fold sense of Scripture present in the medieval period. Particularly, the move in last four centuries to literal interpretation set it as the foundation of the other senses continued in the R. (ala Aquinas, 9-10).

Additionally, Hugh of St. Victor (12th C.), Aquinas (13th C.) and Nicholas of Lyra (14th C.) represent a move to a simpler interpretive scheme than the four-fold sense of Scripture. Still, the literal sense in Nicholas's scheme included a prophetic dimension (double-literal).

Faber simplified more to a single literal sense, that of the Holy Spirit. Old Testament studies looked for Christ.

Calvin merges the two approaches; there is respect for Israel in the OT and its Christological significance. While there is focus on philological aspects, there is the underlying assumption that meaning of the text is oriented to the life and belief of the church, which is consistent with the allegorical approach in the middle ages.

Summary: R. had same assumptions about the bible and emphasis on literal was consistent with, albeit expanded, medieval interpretation.

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Muller/Thompson (nuance of the literal)

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Increased philological expertise caused the R. to move beyond the simply lexical study of the medievalists. "Moreover, the turn to the literal took on a different character—the Reformers sought to place the spiritual meaning of Scripture within the literal, not in addition to it."

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Muller/Thompson (medieval or modern)

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Is R. exegesis more like the medieval period or the modern? A: medieval

"Though there are differences represent discontinuity with the medieval tradition, the common assumption held of Reformation exegesis as a result of discontinuity is not true: that the Reformation treatments of the Bible forecast the coming of the modern critical approach to the Bible. Indeed, when put in a truly historical context, it becomes clear that Reformation exegesis emerges from the medieval tradition in much more profound way than it leads to modern critical treatments of the Bible. Both medieval and Reformation exegesis are precriticai (which does not mean uncritical)."

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Muller/Thompson (discontinuity with the medieval period)

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"The transition from the Middle Ages to the Reformation . . . was a transition, . . . from a precritical approach that could acknowledge spiritual senses of the text beyond the literal sense to a precritical approach that strove to locate spiritual meaning entirely in the literal sense" (14).

Philological and rhetorical expertise forged by humanism became the norm, and therefore, the source of greater attention to the letter as the foundation of meaning.

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Muller/Thompson/Steinmetz (universe of research)

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Muller/Thompson and Pak are in one camp and Harrison is another when it comes to the affinity for spiritual exegesis on the R. part. Harrison is sees a decisive separation between letter and spirit with R., whereas Muller/Thompson, et al. see a greater connection. Pak falls in between.

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Muller/Thompson (critical vs. precritical)

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Critical--looks to the most primitive meaning of the text in order to reconstruct it without the bias of its past interpreters. Unity of the canon is broken and the role of the community that received it is discounted. It is no longer the church's bible.

Precritical--exactly opposite, the canon and community are vital to interpretation; the text can have more than one meaning.

Medieval and Reformation exegetes were as attentive to philological issues as modern interpreters. What divides the latter from the former two is not critical methodology, but presuppositions about who "constitutes the community of interpretation and what comprises its ethos" (339). Understanding of a text must include inquiry into its placed within the entire canon.

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Muller/Thompson (critical vs. precritical #2)

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Four differences in critical assumptions:

1) "Unlike the historical-critical exegesis of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the older exegesis (patristic, medieval, or reformation eras) understood the historia--that is the story that the text is properly understood to recount--to be resident in the text and not under or behind it. In other words, the "story" is identified with the literal grammatical sense. . . . The letter teaches what happened."

2) Unlike modern historical-critical exegesis, meaning is not governed by the Sitz im Leben of a text isolated from other books, but instead "by the scope and gaol of the biblical book in the context of the scope and goal of the canonical revelation of God."

3) The primary reference of the literal or grammatical sense of the text is not the historical community that gave rise to the text, but the believing community that once received and continues to receive the text. "The text is of interest above all because it bears a divinely inspired message to an ongoing community of faith and not because it happens also t be a respite of the religious relics of a past age." This didn't stifle historical inquiry, yet the original context of the biblical book didn't have the final word. "The precritical exegete understood the text, by its fiery nature as sacred text, as pointing beyond its original context into the life of the church."

4) Precritical exegetes (patristic, medieval, and reformation) didn't view their task "as the work of isolated scholars on the shoulders of whose opinions the entire exegetical result could be established and carried. Instead, the exegete of the Reformation era--indeed, even the Protestant exegete of the later sixteenth-century, who held as a matter of doctrine that Scripture was ultimately self-authenticating as the highest norm of theology--understood the interpretive task as an interpretive conversation in the context of the historical community of belief." (339-41)

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Muller/Thompson (hates in scholarship)

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-Farrar, History of Interpretation
-Kraus, work on calvin
-Cambridge History of the Bible

These and any work that (1) mistakes precritical exegesis as uncritical exegesis, and (2) claims that Reformation exegesis departs from this so as to be incipient modern exegesis (343).