James Overholser

Book Review: The Quest for Church Unity

an analysis and description of that chapter. As Pelikan sees it, Luthers exegesis was made up of four components. First of all was a single-minded devotion to the Word of God, the redemptive deeds in history to which the Scriptures testify and in whose nature they participate. The second component was his critical but positive use of tradition; he understood the fathers as expositors of Scripture, but not as extensions of its content and definitions of its meanings. To neglect them is to ignore past attempts of the church to listen to the Word; to absolutize them is to neglect the Scripture to which they point. Along with his doctrine of the Word and his view of tradition was Luthers view of Scripture as history, as real record of event and not cryptic messages to be decoded by the use of allegory. By history he meant the story of the church as the people of God, and he found that story in every part of the Bible. Finally, the constant theological controversy in which Luther was engaged had a decisive effect on his exposition, for he actually shaped his exegesis in the polemics thrust upon him. Because he rested his case on what Scripture authoritatively teaches, it was life and death to him to know what the Bible means and how the meaning is to be ascertained.