Martin Luther on Reading the Bible as Christian Scripture: The Messiah in Luther\u27s Biblical Hermeneutic and Theology

Above all else that the sixteenth-century German Reformer was known for, Martin Luther was a Doctor of the Holy Scriptures. One of the most characteristic features of Luther\u27s approach to Scripture was his resolved christological interpretation of the Bible. Many of the Reformer\u27s interpreters have looked back upon Luther\u27s Christ-centered exposition of the Scriptures with sentimentality but have often labeled it as Christianization particularly in regards to Luther\u27s approach of the Old Testament, dismissing his relevance for today\u27s faithful readers of God\u27s Word. This study revisits this assessment of Luther\u27s christological interpretation of Scripture by way of critical analysis of the Reformer\u27s prefaces to the Bible that he wrote for his translation of the Scriptures into the German vernacular. This work contends that Luther foremost believes Jesus Christ to be the sensus literalis of Scripture on the basis of the Bible\u27s messianic promise, not enforcing a dogmatic principle onto the scriptural text and its biblical authors that would be otherwise foreign to them. This study asserts that Luther\u27s exegesis of the Bible\u27s letter (i.e. his engagement with the biblical text) is primarily responsible for his conviction that Christ is Holy Scripture\u27s literal sense.https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/faculty_books/1196/thumbnail.jp