Read the Bible with Martin Luther

You'll catch his joy-and see law and gospel as parallel

Do you want to sing, shout and leap for joy in the gospel of Jesus Christ? That's how Martin Luther told readers of his revised edition of the Bible in 1545 they ought to feel when they sat down to read it: "It is good news, a great shout resounding through all the world," shared by prophets and apostles and all who seek within its pages the consolation, strength and victory offered in it by God.

Luther was, in many ways, his own best example of this joy in the biblical text. His passion to communicate its saving message infused and enlivened the whole of his commentary, his preaching and his theological writing.

The whole of Luther's stormy public career, in fact, can be directly connected to his deep study, analysis, proclamation and translation of the biblical text. Modern Lutherans share this legacy. Our tradition of Bible study and reading-from the humblest kitchen table to the most scholarly library-has been powerfully shaped by Luther's conviction that it is in the text of the Bible that God's saving message to humankind has been most faithfully, effectively and enduringly communicated.

But Luther has more if to teach us than simply to treasure the Bible and to read it. He has also given us a way of reading and listening to Scripture that is distinctive and powerful and, at the same time, helps steer us away from arrogance and presumption and self-righteousness.

Luther's most intensive early exposure to the biblical text came after he was accepted as a novice by the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, Germany. In a strict monastery life, the whole Psalter would be prayed in the course of every week. In penitential seasons Bible reading was a regular part of an Augustinian friar's personal devotion. We know that as a novice, Luther enjoyed the rare luxury (for his time) of having a Bible just for his own use.

Luther's gift for study and analysis so impressed his superiors that he was chosen for graduate study at Wittenberg, intended to lead to a job as a professor of biblical studies. It's in these early years of intensive study and the beginning of his teaching career that the Bible became Luther's central focus-and it's when he began to develop the insights that would later make him controversial.

Radical reassessment

Particularly in his early lectures on the Psalms and Romans, Luther gradually came to understand the scriptural message in a way that differed from the prevailing tradition. This would lead him both to a radical reassessment of the Bible's basic message and to a strong critique of his contemporaries ' way of reading and interpreting it.

In his study and teaching of Paul's letters, Luther came to understand the path to salvation as something very different from what had been commonly taught in the church. It was not something to be earned through piety, use of the sacraments, good behavior and avoidance of sin. It was a gift of God offered freely in Christ and testified to by Paul's teaching that the saved are judged righteous by God through grace manifested in faith. This God-given grace was not the result of an accumulation of good works but was entirely apart from any human deserving or merit.

As a result of this insight, the whole of Scripture seemed to Luther suddenly to communicate a different message than he had previously learned and taught. No longer just a book of laws and judgment, the Bible's whole message became for Luther a word of grace and redemption. His insight was to change forever the way he and his followers-and the millions of Christian heirs of the Reformation today-read the Bible.

Word and words

In his maturity as a theologian, Luther came to see the whole of Scripture through a pair of interpretive lenses: first, the idea of the Word of God as Jesus-the Word made flesh-as distinct from the words of the biblical text; then, in the special relationship between law and gospel, as ways of communicating the divine message of grace.

The first of these led Luther to distinguish sharply between the content of the message and its medium. For Luther the text of Scripture is holy not first because of its origin but because of the message of divine favor it contains. Even the claim of the Hebrew Bible to speak for God would, for example, not make it the "Bible" for Christians if it didn't also in some way witness to Christ. In believing that it did, Luther was part of a long tradition of Christian reinterpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

But it's the New Testament that, for Luther, sets the whole understanding of God's revelation to God's people first in a person, then in a text-as a story of the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and as a proclamation of salvation offered freely to humans redeemed by grace. Luther was fond of saying that the text of the Bible was like the swaddling clothes or the manger in which the baby Jesus was laid-not God itself but the trusty bearer of God for us-enclosing, protecting and cradling the true Word.

Jesus, the incarnate Word, is for Luther always the center, subject and meaning of the Scripture's many words: the inner Word of God preserved and communicated in the outer, visible words of Scripture. This gives Luther a distinctive interpretive angle: What shows us Jesus in the Scriptures, communicates God's favor; what does not, shows us only human weakness and limitation.

Luther's other great contribution to our way of reading the Bible came through his identification of the tension between law and gospel he finds running through it. Again, this isn't just a simple distinction between the Old and New Testaments but a subtle and profound recognition of the way God communicates with God's people in Scripture both through texts that frighten and judge and those that reassure and relieve.

Seeing the Bible's message as both a message of judgment and a message of forgiveness at the same time made it possible for Luther to reconcile apparently impossible differences between the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament writings.

'Gospel' in Ten Commandments

Suddenly, for Luther, the "law" and the "gospel" both appear-simultaneously, side by side or parallel-everywhere in Scripture, both in the writings of the ancient law and in Jesus' teaching of acceptance and peace.

All at once the Ten Commandments become for Luther gospel as much as they are obviously law: law in the sense that they demonstrate to an erring humankind the impossibility of achieving even the most basic of God's commands; gospel in that they show God's love for humankind, a love that sees human achievement not in terms of "earning salvation" but in terms of serving neighbor.

In the first commandment, for example, "I am the Lord your God" is at the same time a terrifying judgment (I, not you, am God; I am above you and judge of your failings) and thus law; and the ultimate consolation and relief (I, not you, am God; you belong to me completely and I love you) and thus gospel.

This simultaneity of judgment and redemption is for Luther a basic way the Bible communicates God's Word, and this insight makes it possible for him to read even the Scriptures of ancient Judaism as part of the gospel message made flesh in Jesus Christ.

Not every part of the biblical text is capable of being read in this way, of course, but this law/gospel interpretive scheme helped Luther-and helps us-distinguish the Bible's central texts and messages from ones that are more peripheral and less important.

Luther used his insights boldly. He was a fearless judge of Scripture. With an astounding assurance, he elevated some parts of the Bible to great importance, while relegating others to relative insignificance.

Confident in the usefulness of all ancient texts in some way or another, Luther resisted the temptation to remove the later texts of the Jewish tradition we now call the Apocrypha (which had been part of Christian Bibles from earliest times) from his Bible translations. But he separated them from the other Old Testament texts and introduced them as not equal in value with the other books of the old covenant.

Many later Protestants removed the Apocrypha altogether, but Luther continued to see value in it. The official translations of the Bible used by Lutheran churches in Europe often still contain it.

More daring yet, Luther described some New Testament books as clearly more valuable than the others, particularly the Gospel of John, Paul's letters to the Romans, Galatians and Corinthians, and Peter's letters. He was famously dismissive of others, particularly the Epistle of James, because of the weakness of their message about Christ.

Revelation: Don't read it alone

He even suggested that Revelation not be read by individual Christians because of the possibility that they might become distracted by its drama, take it too literally and begin to wonder when the events it describes would come to pass.

Luther was empowered to such freedom in scriptural interpretation not only because of his theological insights about justification, Jesus as the incarnation of the Word, and the distinction between law and gospel but also because of his experience as a translator of the biblical text.

The very act of choosing German words to represent religious ideas he knew only from Latin, Greek and Hebrew texts was daring. Luther's skill and insight led him to create a translation that still has power and grandeur today, and which was instrumental in the formation of the modern German language.

But, as Luther came to know well, translating is always a matter of judgment. And the way he recast the ancient texts into a new language tended to reinforce the theological understanding of the biblical text he had already developed. In some instances, Luther's translation was criticized both by Roman Catholics and by more radical Protestants as being theologically self-serving.

Luther never saw the task of biblical translation as one that could be completely finished. Throughout his lifetime he continued to revise and improve on his translation with the help of his Wittenberg colleagues and friends.

Lutheran'spin'in translation?

Luther also wrote introductions to many of the Bible's books in which he gave their contents a particular Lutheran "spin" and marginal notes explaining particularly "dark" (to use his word) passages or terms.

In his 1545 instructions, Luther makes it clear that the main purpose of such devotional reading is to unlock the personal promise of grace-to discover, in the general revelation of God's favor toward humankind shown in Jesus, the personal aspect, the "for me"-through which the Spirit illumines the reader's heart and makes her a believer.

This illumination in the Spirit, through which the understanding that what Jesus does by living and dying for the world becomes a personal truth, is thus God's work, not our own.

The announcement of this truth and its application to the individual believer is-in Luther's view-the whole purpose of the Bible, the church's proclamation, its preaching and its sacraments. He insists that this personal appropriation of God's promise shown in Christ is the ultimate "good news," what he calls the "great shout" of the gospel.

But reading the Bible, like any human activity, is subject to temptation and weakness. And in Luther's view, the main human temptation in Bible reading is the same as in daily life: self-centeredness leading to selfrighteousness. Reading the Bible to reinforce one's sense of "rightness" by looking for laws to follow and by which to judge others is, in Luther's view, vain and wrong.

Although Christians should know better, Luther insists, it remains a grave temptation even to believers to make laws out of God's promises and to forget that the gospel message is one of forgiveness, acceptance and grace.

Although the giving of law was once an important aspect of the Old Testament, for Luther the purpose of those laws is now to make clear the human need for God's grace represented by Jesus, the Word made flesh. His particular concern is that readers not make laws out of Jesus' message and teachings in the New Testament, since Jesus came not to establish law but to fulfill it and to liberate believers from the law's burden.

In fact, Luther was actually quite prescriptive about what he believed private reading of the Bible was for and clear as to how it should be done.

His instructions to readers grew naturally out of his theological development, his reforming agenda and the negative experience he was having with critics of his thought from the Roman and the radical reforming directions. Both of these (though in very different ways) tended to see the Bible first as a source of laws and ordinances and then only secondarily, if at all, as a liberating and empowering text.

That won't sound unfamiliar even today, when the human impulse to seek comfort in the clarity of law is still strong and the gospel's promise of freedom is often avoided as an invitation to a path unknown. But as Luther taught-and Lutherans still believe-there is no surer and more trustworthy promise than the freedom from sin, death and the devil that God offers in the gospel to which the Scriptures testify.

So, readers of the Bible, sing, leap and shout for joy!

Erwin is a professor of religion and history at California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks.

Copyright Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Oct 2005
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