Scripture In Luther's Psalms

When reading Luther’s lectures on the Psalms, it is apparent that in many ways Luther connects himself to tradition through the way in which he reads and interprets scripture. Luther does this mainly through his Christological reading of the Psalms, which he maintains throughout, as well as his appropriation of the four-fold sense of the text. When one surveys the Patristic Church Fathers up to the Middle ages one readily observes an exegetical process that extrapolated multiple layers of meaning within a given biblical text. Although the nuances of these layers were developed over time and often disputed, a general acceptance of the four-fold sense of Scripture was common among biblical studies by the time of the Middle Ages and Reformation. This was particularly widespread in the medieval West and scholasticism where the four fold sense i.e. literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical understandings of Scripture took particular importance in relation toward personal appropriation. As early as 1153 this method can be seen within Barnard of Clairvaux, a recognized doctor of the Church and member of the Cistercian Order. In his sermons on …show more content…
As Simoetti observes the meaning in a text, “was rooted in the firm conviction that the old Law was consistently directed towards the great Christ-event, and that, as a result, it would give up its true significance only to those who interpreted it in Christological terms.” We see this treatment taken in Irenaeus, a Church father from the late second century, who insisted on the unity between the Old and New Testaments, particularly in light of efforts by Gnostics and Maricions to create divisions between the Old and New