Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People by Todd R. Hains

Abstract

Reviewed by: Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People by Todd R. Hains Mark Mattes Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People. By Todd R. Hains. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2022. xx + 217 pp. With respect to hermeneutics, Luther is often seen as having freed interpreters from medieval allegorizing because he favored a literal approach to scripture. Likewise, he is thought to have liberated interpreters of scripture from accountability to the wider catholic tradition and instead allowed them an autonomous voice. Hains challenges such misrepresentations by focusing on a neglected aspect of the reformer's thinking: the analogy or rule of faith. For Luther, the analogy of faith offers a way to find a legitimate place for the allegorical interpretation of scripture. According to Hains, the analogy of faith, referred to in Romans 12:6, was seen prior to the Enlightenment as the core apostolic teaching of the church, but, after the Enlightenment, "the vast majority of exegetes" have interpreted it "in the subjective sense," as the faculty of faith "exercised by the individual" (13). Indeed, Enlightenment hermeneutics rejected the analogy of faith seen as apostolic teaching because, from the start, the allegorizing it employs to interpret scripture assumes the traditional creedal affirmations of faith to which it wishes to arrive. Its strategy was to replace the analogy of faith with the historical critical method (17). In contrast, for Luther, when interpreting scripture, nothing is as central for faith as Christ. Luther's hermeneutic cannot be reduced to formulas like "justification by grace alone" since Luther read scripture through a thoroughly trinitarian lens and justification should not be understood apart from union with Christ (6). Luther appealed to the catechism, which includes the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the sacraments, as what constitutes the analogy of faith, since those matters [End Page 216] unfailingly leads us to Christ (19). Here, "catechism" should not be reduced either to Luther's Small or Large Catechisms. The concept has a wider focus. It is the "animating logic" of Luther's theology as a whole (24). The Small and Large Catechisms are commentaries on "catechism" understood in a broader sense (34). Drawn from the scriptures, the analogy of faith functions, as I interpret Hains, as a "canon within the canon," a legitimate move precisely because it leads to Christ. With this analogy of faith, Hains demonstrates that Luther employed a rich allegorical approach to scripture provided that attempts at allegorizing agree with the analogy of faith. Allegory elaborates and explains faith. It is a matter of rhetoric and not dialectic (8) and while it should not be employed as the basis for doctrine, it can expand on the application of doctrine. For Luther, the Bible can be divided into five sections: the law, history, wisdom, prophets, and the New Testament. Hains selects representative passages from each of these biblical sections (Genesis 22, Judges 14, Psalm 72, Isaiah 9:2–7, and Luke 24:13–14) in order to illustrate how Luther employed the analogy of faith. Hermeneutics informed by the analogy of faith entails interpreting passages not merely in relation to each other, a "general analogy," but instead by putting the catechism in conversation with anything in the Bible, a "special analogy" (29). Again, the key is that the catechism ever witnesses to Jesus Christ as the Lord of scripture (29). For example, to properly interpret the sacrifice of Isaac, which comes across as God commanding Abraham to violate the prohibition against murder, Hains notes that grammar, history, and the literary context alone fail to ascertain the meaning of the passage. Instead, an interpreter needs the help of the second article of the creed which details the sacrificial life of Christ (88). Isaac, as Luther saw it, is properly understood as a figure of Christ (89). Hains concludes that the analogy of faith allows interpreters to read the Bible on the basis of the Bible, since the catechism in all its parts is thoroughly biblical and that it promotes faith since it ever witnesses to Christ. Hains builds on an angle in...