# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S139
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastors’ Library. 139

In knowledge he was perhaps surpassed by no other theologian) first in Wittenberg, then in Leipzig, and finally died as superintendent in Lübeck in 1698.*) The Thesaurus comprises somewhat more than 500 octavo pages. The Prolegomena deal with the clarity of Scripture and the necessity of hermeneutical scholarship. Chapter 1 shows what hermeneutics is and what method is to be followed in it, while reviewing the approaches to presentation already employed. Chapter 2 deals with the text to be interpreted; Chapter 3 with the meaning of Scripture; Chapter 4 with the required qualities of an interpreter; Chapters 5–14 with the hermeneutical means: a. the internal means, i.e., 1) lexis, taxis, phrasis, 2) alleluchia (synapheia and schesis) and analogia (scripturae and fidei); b. the external means (the auxiliary disciplines and the exegetes). Finally, the last chapter deals with the best method of interpretation. We regard it as a particular merit of this hermeneutics that the entire system of interpretation developed in it is formulated concisely and precisely in 200 canons, whose meaning, correctness, and applicability are always demonstrated just as concisely and convincingly. To characterize the work, we present some of those canons here. Canon 1: “The sense of the letter, or the grammatical sense, is not always and in every passage the literal sense.” (Cf. Genesis 49:14; Luke 13:32; Isaiah 11:6–8; Matthew 5:29, 30.) Canon 2: “The sense of the letter is not to be abandoned, especially with regard to the essentials, where an article of faith has its proper seat.” Canon 3: “The sense of the letter is to be abandoned where an indisputable, clearer parallelism requires a figurative interpretation.” (Cf. Luke 11:20 with Matthew 12:28.) Canon 4: “The sense of the letter is to be abandoned where the analogy of faith requires a figurative interpretation.” (Cf. 2 Samuel 24:1 with Psalm 5:5.) Canon 5: “The sense of the letter is to be abandoned where the nature of the matter makes a figurative explanation necessary.” (Cf. 1 Corinthians 8:13.) Canon 6: “Every passage of Holy Scripture admits a literal sense,” i.e., “the sense primarily intended by the Holy Spirit through the words is always the literal sense, whether the words are to be understood in their proper or in a figurative sense.” Canon 7: “Every passage has only one literal sense.” (The words “Take and eat” do not mean, with regard to the bread, to eat orally, and at the same time, with regard to the body of Christ, to believe!) Canon 9: “The literal sense alone has probative force.” Canon 10: “The mystical sense of Holy Scripture is either the one (primarily and properly intended by the Holy Spirit

*) Jöcher relates of Pfeiffer that once, as a five-year-old boy, he suffered such a severe fall from the top story of the house that he was thought dead and preparations were already being made for his burial; but while the boy’s elder sister was occupied in putting his burial garment on him, she inadvertently pricked his finger with a needle; at this the supposed dead boy suddenly moved and drew back his finger, and then, to the inexpressible joy of his family, regained full consciousness.