Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Sheet 554
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Sheet 554

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

A Prospectus for the Proposed Comprehensive Study on
SCRIPTURE AND HERMENEUTICS

INTRODUCTION

Since all genuine theology is, in the pregnant phrase
of our fathers, a “practical capacity” (habitus practicus),
the study of Biblical hermeneutics too is an enterprise
of believing men that must be shaped and informed by
the practical end for which the Bible itself has been
given — the proclamation of God’s good news and the
edification of the gathered people of God.

The proposed comprehensive study does not aim at
merely satisfying intellectual or philosophical curiosity,
however legitimate and valid may be the intellectual
and philosophical questions that must be dealt with.
But the study outlined below, if undertaken at all,
should be consciously and honestly oriented to the
church’s primary task of proclamation. Biblical inter-
pretation is not a matter of solo performances by a
number of virtuosi, nor does it take place in isolation,
cut off and divorced from the faithful hearing and
faithful proclamation of the Scriptural word that has
long since been going on in the church and still goes on
today. Rather the believing, confessing church of past
and present alike provides the proper locus for authentic
Biblical interpretation.

Within this framework and from this posture the
Commission on Theology and Church Relations is pro-
posing to conduct a comprehensive hermeneutical study
according to the plan outlined below. This prospectus
is designed to indicate the purpose and scope of the
proposed study. It should be understood that the men
chosen to carry out the study are to be guided rather
than bound by it if the church is to get the full benefit
of their labors.

lL. The Hermeneutics of the Lutheran
Confessions

This part of the inquiry is primary and basic to all
the rest. If our Confessions are in fact what we believe
and declare them to be —a true and correct exposition
of the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures then the her-
meneutical principles according to which these Con-
fessions expound that doctrine deserve our most careful
analysis and demonstration.

We propose to carry out this analysis particularly
at the hand of a lengthy and crucial chapter in the
Confessions: Article IV of the Apology, “Justification.”

It is our intention that the men assigned to research
in the other areas of the study should have the advan-
tage of prior acquaintance with the results of this
foundational work.

Il. Basic Hermeneutical Questions

TRANSITION

We are agreed that the hermeneutics of the Con-
fessions, if valid at all, are still valid today. But the
issues in Biblical interpretation are not the same today,

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or at least the form in which they meet the interpreter
is different from that of the 16th century. Therefore
a review, historical and analytical, of the shifting modes
of posing the hermeneutical issues is in place at this
point in order to put into perspective the confrontation
of current questions and our confessional hermeneutic.
Such a review. pointed to our specific concerns, would
constitute a study in itself.

Among the questions that seem to loom especially
large in our time, each deserving individual treatment
and study. are these:

1. Revelation — its place in the whole structure of
theology: Does it stand above, below, or on a par with
the Biblical concept ‘word’ of God (locutio Dei)? Is it
an accident of history or a significant fact that the Lu-
theran Confessions (e. g., no entry, Offenbarung, in in-
dex of Jubilaumsausgabe) deal so fully with the Word
of God and so scantily with revelation? Is the notion of
revelation as divine self-disclosure entirely Biblical?
Can the Law-Gospel distinction be adequately main-
tained under this overarching concept? How does one’s
doctrine of man affect the concept of revelation (general
and special)? Relation of revelation to inspiration; rev-
elation and Scripture.

2. Inspiration and Inerrancy: continue the study
along the lines laid down in the commission’s “Rey ‘sion
of the Study Document” as presented to the convention.

3. Canonicity — inspiration and authorship — the cri-

teria of authority — "the canon within the canon” — the
Vorverstdandnis.
4. Language — forms (literary genres) — meaning

and understanding (epistemology) —role of reason.

5, History and historicism — historical (-critical]
method — historical understanding — Biblical history
writing as proclamation.

Ill. Special Questions of Old Testament
Hermeneutics

That for His saving purpose God selected one family
out of all the families of the ancient world and of this
one family created a particular nation, people, and
culture lays upon the Biblical interpreter the obligation
to know this people both in its uniqueness and also in
its relatedness to other nations, peoples, and cultures.

This calls for an appreciative and sympathetic study
of the Hebrew genius in language, literary forms,
thought world, and the like. More specifically, such
a study must test and appraise from within the Biblical
material itself the various methodological tools that
have been fashioned for dealing with the sacred text.

Beyond this, however, the Scripture itself invites
the interpreter to give attention to the “many and vari-
ous ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the proph-
ets” as preliminary to the eschatological word He now
has spoken in Christ (Heb. 1:1). This means that a key