¹ Among others, see Pelikan, J., Luther the Expositor (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959)Google Scholar; Kooiman, W. J., Luther and the Bible (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1961)Google Scholar; Ebeling, G., ‘The New Hermencutics and the Early Luther’, T Today 21 (1964) 34–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Althaus, P., The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966) 72–102Google Scholar; Hof, O., ‘Luther's Exegetical Principle of the Analogy of Faith’, CTM 38 (1967) 242–257Google Scholar; Bornkamm, H., Luther and the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969)Google Scholar; Wood, A. S., Captive to the Word. Martin Luther: Doctor of Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1969)Google Scholar; Goldingay, J., ‘Luther and the Bible’, SJT 35 (1982) 33–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

All references to the American Edition of Luther's Works (ed. Pelikan, J.; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955ff.)Google Scholar are henceforth abbreviated as LW, followed by a volume and page number. WA denotes references to D. Martin Luthers Werke, kritischc Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883ff.). WA-T refers to the Tischreden in the Weimar edition.

² On a much larger scale a similar enterprise utilizing different primary sources has been undertaken by Bornkamm, Karin, Luthers Auslegungen des Galaterbriefs von 1519 und 1531: Ein Vergleich (Berlin: de Gruyler, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Luther presented at least two other interpretations of Psalm 51 (WA 311: 510–14, 538–43). As both issued from roughly the same period as the third exegesis to be considered here (ca. 1530), these shall not be considered in the present essay.

³ Valuable secondary studies of the biblical interpretation of the Middle Ages include Spicq, C., Esquisse d'une histoire de l'exégése latine au Moyen Age (Paris: Vrin, 1944)Google Scholar; de Lubac, H., Exégese Médiéval: Les Quatres Sens de l'Ecriture (4 vols.; Aubien, 1959ff.)Google Scholar; Lampe, G. W. H., et al. , ‘The Exposition and Exegesis of Scripture’, The Cambridge History of the Bible (vol. 2; Cambridge: CUP, 1969) 155–279CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smalley, B., The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (2nd ed.; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1978).Google Scholar

⁴ Here I have in mind the Quadriga, or fourfold meaning of Scripture: the literal, allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical (eschatological). The dual literal meaning of the biblical text (i.e., the sensus literalis historicus and the sensus literalis propheticus) may have been first proposed by the French Humanist, Faber Stapulensis (d. 1536).

⁵ Helpful summaries are provided in Ackroyd, P. R. and Evans, C. F., eds., The Cambridge History of the Bible (vol. 1; Cambridge: CUP, 1970) 199–563CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Grant, R. M. with Tracy, D., A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible (2nd ed., rev.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 3–82.Google Scholar

⁶ Intended for a popular audience (‘coarse Saxons’), Luther's treatment of The Seven Penitential Psalms first appeared in 1517; in 1525 it reappeared in a somewhat revised form. It is upon this later edition that the following observations are based.

⁷ This suggests a qualification of J. S. Prcus's contention that ‘there is a noticeable shift in the basic material for exegesis — in the “literal sense” — from Christ and the Church as the subject matter and speaker to the actual Old Testament, pre-advent situation … [of] the prophetic speaker [and] the “faithful synagogue”’ (From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther [Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard, 1969] 173). Although in some cases Luther seems well aware of the historical integrity of David and other OT personages, in the present instance the historical distinctions collapse: here Luther speaks not so much of a ‘pre-advent situation’ as of the psalmist's proleptic experience of Christian reality.

⁸ The signal motif of ‘God's hiddenncss’ was recycled by Luther in a variety of different contexts: thus he could speak of the entire gospel's being hidden in the OT (Althaus, Theology, 87) and accepted ‘God's hiddenness’ as a hermeneutical key (see Ebeling, G., Evangelische Evangelienauslegung: Eine Untersuchung zu Lulhers Hermeneutik [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962])Google Scholar. The motif's absence from Luther's 1513 commentary on Psalm 51 is surprising, as it is ‘one of the most persistent themes in the Dictata’ (Steinmetz, D. C., Luther and Staupitz: An Essay in the Intellectual Origins of the Protestant Reformation [Durham, NC: Duke University, 1980] 56).Google Scholar

⁹ In the literal historical sense ‘David … makes no reference to Christ.… He is speaking with the God of his fathers, with the God whose promises he knows and whose mercy and grace he has felt’ (LW 12:312–13). Yet in the literal prophetic sense ‘[David] asks to be sprinkled with the Word of faith in the coming Christ, who will sprinkle His church with His blood’ (LW 12:363). This is a good example of how blithely Luther can shift the sensūs from the literalis historicus to the literalis propheticus.

¹⁰ The point here is that for Luther the historical boundary between David's time and his own has been sundered (such that the psalmist can deal ‘with the whole church’, LW 12:393), not that the church is to take ‘the faithful synagogue as a model and norm for their faith’ (Preus, From Shadow to Promise, 217). Once again (see n. 7) Preus's characterization of Luther's hermeneutic should be chastened.

¹¹ Nevertheless, following Faber Stapulensis over Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1340), the stress for Luther usually tends to rest upon the sensus literalis propheticus. Indeed, throughout his career Luther vacillated on the question of just how much ‘history’ could be conceded to the literal historical sense: see Pilch, J. J., ‘Luther's Hermeneutical “Shift”’, HTR 63 (1970) 445–448CrossRefGoogle Scholar (cf. also n. 9 above). It was probably his emphasis upon the literal prophetic sense that disinclined Luther to compartmentalize certain reflections on the Psalms as anagogical: as he understood it, the Psalter by its very nature was forward looking, hoping for Christ.

¹² Scholarly opinion remains divided over the significance accorded to allegorical exegesis by Luther. Some believe that Luther continued to view allegories favorably, albeit cautiously (e.g., Gerrish, B. A., ‘Biblical Authority and the Continental Reformation’, SJT 10 [1957] 346CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kooiman, Luther and the Bible, 220). Others think that Luther regarded them as trivialities or dangerous things (e.g., Pelikan, Luther the Expositor, 89; Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, 262). Ebeling is usually included in the latter camp, although he concedes that Luther never really gave up allegory but came in time to accord it a somewhat different significance than that implicit in the early Dictata (Evangelische Evangelienauslegung, 311; cf. 44–89). Part of the problem is that Luther said and did different things at different points in his career; his later estimation of allegory as ‘tomfoolery’ (LW 54:406) can be squared neither with his exercise of it in his commentaries nor with more positive assessments that he made of it elsewhere (e.g., WA 42:347; 101:1:417). Regarding his commentaries on Psalm 51, the most that may be said is that (1) Luther does not reject allegory in his attempt to illuminate the text or to edify his audience; yet (2) pivotal doctrinal points in his exegesis are not made to turn upon allegorical interpretation.

¹³ This supports Steinmetz's assessment (Luther and Staupitz, 142): ‘There is … a consistency about [Luther's] work, a steady development of his major and subordinate themes.… Old Luther tried to argue that there was an abrupt shift, a diastasis between his pre-Reformation writings and his later work. There is, however, no evidence of such a radical shift, though plenty of evidence of growth and development.’

¹⁴ ‘The entire Bible has two principal thoughts. The first: Human nature is in its entirety damned and ruined by sin, nor can it come out of this calamity and death by its own powers and efforts; the second: God alone is just and out of mercy destroys sin and justifies’ (WA-T 51, no. 5751).

¹⁵ The notion of a multiplicity of literal meaning was not interred with Luther in 1546. Modern form criticism, tradition history, and Redaktionsgeschichte ultimately intend nothing other than enabling the reader to discern and to appreciate the various sonorities that resonate in the final text (as sagely observed by Anderson, B. W., ‘The Problem and Promise of Commentary’, Int 36 [1982] 349–350).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Bornkamm's conclusion (Luther and the Old Testament, 262) is unavoidable: ‘This is the essential and necessary crisis over Luther's view of Scripture; it cannot be resolved by repristination. Rather, any research which thinks historically will have to give up, without hesitation or reservation, Luther's scheme of Christological prediction in the Old Testament.’

¹⁷ ‘No clearer book has been written on earth than the Holy Scripture. It compares with other books as the sun with other lights’ (WA 8:236). An interesting appraisal of this issue is Marshall, R. F., ‘Luther's Two-Factor Hermeneutic’, LQ 28 (1976) 54–69.Google Scholar

¹⁸ One must conjure with Tavard's, G. H. criticism (Holy Writ or Holy Church: The Crisis of the Protestant, Reformation [New York: Harper, 1959] 89, 95)Google Scholar: ‘Luther streamlined the Scriptures to such a point that they became practically identical with one doctrine [viz., justification by faith],… But whether it is correct or not, [that doctrine] cannot account for all Scripture. The Word of God is not encompassed by a doctrine, the less so when the doctrine is turned into a watchword.’ Scharlemann's, R. rejoinder — that justification by faith if the central doctrine because of its power to criticize all doctrines (‘The Scriptures and the Church’, LQ 12 [1960] 159–166)Google Scholar — does not really address Tavard's objection.