Sixteenth century
humanists were already changing biblical exegesis by finding 'a literary
method for handling the narrative construction of the Bible as a whole … where
discrete biblical meanings congealed in a coherent body of knowledge.' Luther
contributed to that search by providing a metanarrative that recognized the
dilemma of the sinner and delivered God's salvation, categorizing the biblical
message as law that condemns sinners and gospel that resurrects children of God.
Over the following
decades Luther's presupposition that God's Word is a living, creating instrument
became intimately connected with defining this metanarrative of God's
interaction with his human creatures. As he abandoned the allegorical method as
his orienting hermeneutic, he slowly became convinced that Scripture's meaning
lay not in 'the system of signification of the text's exoteric or esoteric
meanings but rather in what the text actually
did to him and for him.' He
proposed that the story of God's creation, redemption, and sanctification of
fallen humankind proceeds out of Scripture and into the life of the congregation
through the use of its message. This message functions in oral, written, and
sacramental forms as the law kills and the gospel makes alive. 'Alive' for him
meant living by faith in Christ, in the vertical dimension of life, and loving
the neighbor in its horizontal dimension."
Robert Kolb, Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith, p. 46 (Oxford University Press,
2009).
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