The Lord Is the Spirit. John A. Studebaker

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The Lord Is the Spirit - John A. Studebaker


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on earth, had not yet worked out precisely how the Spirit fulfills this role in the world, particularly in relation to the interpretation of Scripture. Thus, in the development of a “post-medieval” pneumatology, the issue of scriptural interpretation was naturally the first “executorial” question to arise. It is “prolegomena” in that, before the Church can develop a systematic set of doctrines, she must first determine her interpretive methods.

      The Reformers sought to establish a pneumatological method of interpretation that could guide their subsequent theologizing. Before the Reformation began, however, interpretive authority was essentially equated with Roman Catholic authority. The Roman Church claimed that she possessed two key ingredients necessary for interpretive authority: (1) the proper source of truth—the Bible, and (2) the proper hermeneutical tools for interpreting the source of truth—Tradition. God, who was considered final authority, had expressed his authority in revelation and continues to express his authority in and through the Church. This led to the doctrine of the Church’s “infallibility.” Several factors led to the eventual mistrust of Roman Catholic hermeneutics from the perspective of the “Protestants.” The Protestant rallying cry, “sola scriptura,” did not mean that scriptural authority excludes all other means of knowing God’s will (i.e., Tradition, reason), but that Scripture provides the norm for the other means as the “final court of appeal.” Luther, for example, held to the primacy and all-sufficiency of the sensus literalis of Scripture, thus countering the four-fold hermeneutical approach of medieval theology (which included analogical [logical], allegorical [mystical], and anagogical [moral] approaches). The cultural changes that resulted from the Reformation did not come about by any attempt toward social revolution—the “revolutionary” aspect of the Reformation era was its new emphasis on the Word of God. This emphasis coincided with the rise in literacy, the invention of the printing press, and the rediscovery of Greek and Roman classics within the culture of Renaissance humanism. All of these changes resulted in an interest in returning to “sources.”

      The Reformation also coincided with the breakdown of ecclesiastic unity, cultural unity and denominational unity. Without an emperor or Pope as their ecclesial authority, the Protestant’s authority became individualized or denominationalized. The Bible, as interpreted by the individual believer or the denomination, could once again become the foundation of societal authority.

      Martin Luther and John Calvin

      The debate over the nature of the Spirit’s role in biblical interpretation is exemplified at the Diet of Worms, where Martin Luther cried, “It is written!” and the Church replied with excommunication. While many theologians recognize Luther’s role in the development of the Western world’s understanding of the nature of authority, few however, have understood Luther’s perspective regarding the authority of the Spirit. For Luther, the Spirit has his own existence in God’s eternal glory, apart from the Word and apart from the physical world, and thus cannot be controlled by us. The Spirit is the “sphere” of revelation where Christ is present and the Word is alive. Luther remarks,

      Calvin illustrates the nature of this discremin when arguing


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