Protestants, Scriptural Interpretation, and the Sensus Literalis

A Complication Courtesy of the Bern Synod of 1532

There’s a story we typically tell about Protestantism and Biblical interpretation: Protestantism marked the triumph of Scripture’s literal sense over the allegorical or figural readings so prized by patristic and medieval exegetes. Building upon the increased attention to the literal sense in late medieval theology, Protestants argued that Christian theology had to be grounded on Scripture’s plain meaning. Figural interpretation was out, rejected as fanciful speculation; the meaning was fixed in the literal sense. Often this is recounted as a story of declension or loss, even by Protestants — consider the famous David Steinmetz essay, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis.”

Now, in a broad sense, this story is more correct than not. It is true that Protestants (and especially magisterial Protestants) tended to elevate the literal sense and to derogate what they viewed as excessive allegorizing. It is also true that the key prooftext for allegorical interpretation, 2 Cor. 3:6 (the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life) was reinterpreted by Luther and those following him. For Luther, Paul in 2 Cor 3 is talking specifically about the letter of the Mosaic Law; the distinction between the killing letter and life-giving spirit is not between literal and allegorical readings (as in most patristic and medieval readings of the verse) but between law and gospel.

But it is worth noting that determining the genuine ‘literal sense’ was not necessarily straightforward, as the disputes between Lutherans and the Reformed over the proper reading of the psalms (Christological or no) and of the Words of Institution show. And moreover, even if allegory was subjected to criticism, forms of allegorical or figural interpretation remained an important part of Protestant exegesis and preaching, complicating a simple story of allegory’s abandonment.

I recently came across an interesting example of such exegesis that I thought were worth sharing, from the Acts of the 1532 Synod of Bern. A bit of background, first: in early 1532, the church in Bern was in crisis. It had embraced the Reformation in 1528 via disputation, but recently things had gone awry. The Second Kappel War had recently ended in disaster for the Reformed Swiss cantons, with Zwingli himself falling in battle. In Bern, the minister Kaspar Megander — a Zuricher and close friend of Zwingli’s — was preaching fiery jeremiads against the Bernese authorities for their late and somewhat lackluster support of Zwingli and Zurich in the last war. He was suspended by the magistrates for his trouble and criticisms of war-hungry foreign preachers (like the Zuricher Megander) circulated in the city. The decision was made to call a synod to address the state of the Bernese church. Twenty-two articles were drawn up by the Strassburg reformer Wolfgang Capito and then adopted by the ministers of the city; alongside the early 1528 disputation articles these articles would define the beliefs and practices of the Reformed church in Bern.

Now, most analysis of the 1528 Bern Synod focuses on the question of the relationship of the church to the magistrate. This is for good reason, as Megander’s preaching against the Bernese authorities was, after all, the inciting incident for the synod. The synod ended up restricting (although not entirely doing away with) the right of preachers to criticize the magistrates. As Bruce Gordon puts it in The Swiss Reformation, “the realities of the post-Kappel world required a diminution of Zwingli’s concept of the ministry as a prophetic office”; the sort of “unfettered expression of political views or criticism of secular rulers” from the pulpit which Megander (and Zwingli) believed necessary for Christian preachers would no longer be allowed.

But the acts of the synod did not only deal with questions of political preaching; they also treated broadly matters of theology, pastoral care, and Scriptural interpretation. And I found some of the discussion of Scriptural interpretation to be quite surprising and interesting.

Chapter 8 makes the rather standard Protestant argument that the death and resurrection of Christ is at the heart of Christian life and teaching. The sum of the Gospel is the preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins, which is preached on the basis of Christ’s death and rising! But then Capito notes a possible objection to this: if indeed it is with Christ’s death and resurrection that Christian preaching, teaching, and life begin, then why did the Gospel-writers spend so much time describing Jesus’ birth and life? What is the point of all the narratives of Jesus’ acts and miracles?

For Capito, the answer is Jesus arranged his acts and miracles, and the evangelists recorded them, to be images of “the inward progress of grace and the spiritual operations of Christ in the heart” for those possessing the Holy Spirit.

The text is worth quoting at length:

For Christ makes blind and deaf sinners to see, and to hear the living voice of the Father. Of the lame He makes champions, who run unimpaired in the path of God. He takes away the leprosy of sin by His saving grace, and the dead He makes alive again through the Spirit of the resurrection. Faith hears of outward miracles of Christ, but marvels much more over the inward and spiritual operations which He carries out daily through the Holy Spirit and which surpass all understanding. The birth of Christ, which took place through the Holy Spirit, points to our becoming the children of God, if beyond the birth which is from flesh and blood we are also made new and heavenly people by the same Holy Spirit. He is bestowed on us by Christ. The reason why the Gospel writers portray the birth and life of Christ is because it altogether serves our redemption, so that they display and propound mortification of the flesh and resurrection by the Spirit in Christ.

The point is not, of course, to deny the literal reality of any of the miracles of Christ described in the Gospels! But it is to say that the surface level of the narratives of Christ’s life that Scripture provides are not just about outward miracles, but help point and direct us to God’s analogous inward and invisible work within the soul. And so Christ’s physical healings (the literal sense of the healing narratives) point us to the spiritual healing that he also accomplishes. And it is this spiritual work of salvation, attained through Christ’s death and resurrection, which is the real goal of the incarnation and Jesus’ ministry.

This is not just the argument that in the Old Testament one finds various types and figures for Christ or the Christian life — an argument found in the New Testament itself, most notably in the epistles to the Galatians and to the Hebrews. To be sure, Capito makes that argument too, arguing that the Spirit helps us see that in “all the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets,” “all the external actions of God have a track corresponding to the internal progress of grace fulfilled by the Spirit of Christ.” But here, even certain narratives of the Gospels are to be interpreted spiritually, as historical events pointing to a deeper spiritual meaning.

And indeed this is not an uncommon way for sixteenth century Protestants to exegete Jesus’ life. Consider, for example, a sermon from Luther’s Church Postil. In the sermon provided for the Gospel reading for the First Sunday in Advent, Luther, after first going through an exegesis according to the literal or historical sense of the appointed Gospel, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, writes “This has been said about the history of this Gospel. Let us now treat of its hidden or spiritual meaning. Here we are to remember that Christ’s earthly walk and conversation signify his spiritual walk; his bodily walk therefore signifies the Gospel and the faith.” And thus the story of the triumphal entry becomes not just about Christ’s entry into Jerusalem but about the spread of the Gospel and faith by preaching, with various details given allegorical significance. Thus, for example, the donkey and its colt upon which Jesus ride into Jerusalem in Matthew’s account represent the exterior and interior human being; Christ telling the apostles to loose the donkey and its colt and bring it to him means that Christ wants us to preach the Gospel to free human beings from fettered consciences and bring them to Christ alone, not human laws or doctrines.

The point is not, I reiterate, that Protestantism did not involve serious critique of and often rupture with heavily spiritualizing, figural methods of Scriptural interpretation, especially as used by defenders of the Roman Catholic Church. But this rather obscure Swiss synodal gathering in 1532 helps us see that the story is not one of simple rejection of allegory tout court. For the Bern Synod in a confessional document makes allegorical readings of Christ’s life normative for Bernese Scriptural exegesis and preaching! Protestants — Lutheran, Reformed, and radical — continued to use tools of figural reading in exegesis and preaching in the service of their commitment that all of Scripture sets forth the salvation Christ accomplished by his death and resurrection.