On the one hand, according to Adolf Harnack, Luther, when making faith the rule of Bible interpretation, becomes a “mediæval exegete” and borrows from the past even his types and allegories. Yet he cuts himself adrift in the most decided fashion from the mediæval exegesis, “not merely when it is a question of Justification,” but even “in regard to such Scripture passages as contain nothing whatever about the doctrine of Justification and faith, or only alien matter.”[1515]
For instance, he finds righteousness by works condemned and faith exalted in the very first pages of the Bible; for Cain, his brother’s murderer, “clung to works and lost the faith,” that was his misfortune; whereas Abel held aloof “from free-will and the merit of works” and “kept the faith in a pure conscience.” “The same thing happened later with Isaac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, and others.”—Yet, in spite of such condemnation of works, many passages, particularly in the New Testament, seem to tell in favour of works. This, however, is only due to the fact that at the time of the New Testament writers it was desirable to raise up a bulwark against any too great esteem for faith. Thus it was really not meant quite seriously; in the same way even he himself, so he says, had been obliged to oppose this excessive esteem for faith, because, in his day, and owing to his preaching, the people “wanted merely to believe, to the neglect of the power and fruit of faith” (in good actions).[1516]
Owing to his habit of ever reading the Bible through the glass of his doctrine of Justification, his handling of Rom. xi. 32 (in the Vulgate: “Conclusit Deus omnia in incredulitate ut omnium misereatur”) was such that Döllinger found in it no less than “three falsifications of the words of Paul.”[1517]
Luther’s marginal glosses to his translation of the Bible are open to plentiful objections, for their purpose is to recall the reader as often as possible to the basic theories of his doctrine.[1518]
Some Protestants have been exceedingly frank in characterising the strained relations often noticeable between Luther’s exegesis and true scholarship.
Friedrich Paulsen, in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts,” when dealing with the demand made by the “exegesis of the Reformation,” viz. that the reader must cling to the plain text and letter of Scripture, says: “Luther by no means considered himself bound to the letter and the grammatical sense of the text of Scripture. Where the letter was in his favour, he indeed used it against others, the Swiss, for instance, but, where it was not, he nevertheless stands by his guns and knows what Scripture ought to have said. Everybody knows with what scant regard he handled certain books of Scripture, estimating their value according as they agreed more or less with his teaching, and even amending them a little when they failed to reach his standard or to present the pure doctrine of justification by faith ‘alone’ in a light sufficiently strong.... In order to understand Scripture it is necessary [according to Luther] to know beforehand what it teaches; Scripture is indeed the rule of doctrine, but, vice versa, doctrine is also the rule of Scripture which must be interpreted ‘ex analogia fidei.’”[1519]
Referring to Luther’s interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, Adolf Hausrath pithily observes: “Luther read this Epistle to the Romans into everything and found it everywhere.” Though Hausrath makes haste to add that this was because “his personal experiences agreed with those of the Epistle to the Romans,” still, his reference to the psychological basis of the phenomenon is quite in place. “He had been led to draw from Scripture one basic principle which to him was the embodiment of truth, viz. Justification by Faith. That only which ran counter to this ‘faith alone’ was to be set aside.”[1520]
Luther’s Exegesis in the Light of His Early Development.
With the help of the newly published Commentary on Romans, written by Luther in his youth (vol. i., p. 184 ff.), we can trace the beginnings of his curious exegesis more easily than was possible before.
What we want first of all is a key to that more than human confidence which prompts the new teacher to blend in one his own interpretation and the actual text of the Bible and to say, “My word is the truth.” This key is to be found in his early history. It was then, in those youthful days when he began morbidly to brood over the mysteries of the Epistle to the Romans, all unable to grasp the profound thoughts it contained, that the phenomenon in question made its first appearance.