# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_1973_S450
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF

VARYING CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION

A Report of the
Commission on Theology and Church Relations
The Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod
March 1973

Preface

In Christendom today a major controversy centers around questions pertaining to the origin, nature,
nterpretation, and authority of the Sacred Scriptures. The entire substance of the controversy can be
educed without remainder to the way that participants in the debate answer four questions about the
ible, namely:

I. How did the Bible get here?
II. What kind of book is the Bible?
III. What method is most suitable for interpreting the Bible?
IV. What is the proper use of the Bible?

For more than eighteen centuries the Christian Church answered all of these questions in a manner
ufficiently consistent to make it possible to speak of a clearly identifiable traditional position, a
osition that many call the "historical~grammatical" view. The development of modern historical science
as seriously challenged the traditional position.

A radically historical-critical approach to the study of the origin and nature of the Biblical
iterature rejected age-old conceptions about how the Bible got here and what kind of a book it is,
nd consequently changed drastically former methods of interpreting the Bible and former ideas about
he way the Bible should be used.

Gradually but progressively the persuasive appeal of historical reasoning caused even those who
till hold that the Bible is God's Word to adopt in varying degrees the hypotheses of the historical-
ritical view and to attempt to work out a synthesis of the historical-grammatical (traditional) and
he radically historical approach to Biblical studies which might seem to hold the two together in a
orkable and constructive tension. This may be termed the mediating historical-critical position.

This document is herewith offered to the church in response to Resolution 2-52 of the 1971 convention
n the hope that it will clarify some of the issues involved in our current discussions. It attempts
9 explain how the historical-grammatical (traditional), the radically historical-critical, and the

ediating historical-critical positions answer the four questions at the heart of the debate about the
ible.

The material in each column is only intended to provide a general profile of a distinguishable point
f view. It should therefore be understood that the statements in the three columns are not always
jtually exclusive, nor do the views of all contemporary interpreters always fit precisely and consis-
ently into one or the other column. The reader should also note that the materials in the three columns
ave not been arranged in such a way that every paragraph in one column is correlated with a corresponding
aragraph in the other columns. For that reason, it may be helpful to read each column individually
vertically) before comparing it with the other columns (horizontally).

a

List of Abbreviations

°c - Augsburg Confession CTCR Stance - "A Lutheran Stance Toward Contemporary
Biblical Studies", a study document

p - Apology of the Augsburg Confession produced by the CTCR in 1967

c - Small Catechism CTCR Revelation - "Revelation, Inspiration, and
Inerrancy", a study document produced

> - Large Catechism by the CTCR in 1965

4 - Smalcald Articles
2, Ep - Formula of Concord, Epitome
°c, SD - Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration

ote: All citations from the Lutheran Confessions are taken from The Book of Concord, edited by T. G.
Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1949)

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