The Reformers sought to establish a pneumatological method of interpretation that could guide their subsequent theologizing. Before the Reformation began, however, interpretive authority was essentially equated with Roman Catholic authority. The Roman Church claimed that she possessed two key ingredients necessary for interpretive authority: (1) the proper source of truth—the Bible, and (2) the proper hermeneutical tools for interpreting the source of truth—Tradition. God, who was considered final authority, had expressed his authority in revelation and continues to express his authority in and through the Church. This led to the doctrine of the Church’s “infallibility.” Several factors led to the eventual mistrust of Roman Catholic hermeneutics from the perspective of the “Protestants.” The Protestant rallying cry, “sola scriptura,” did not mean that scriptural authority excludes all other means of knowing God’s will (i.e., Tradition, reason), but that Scripture provides the norm for the other means as the “final court of appeal.” Luther, for example, held to the primacy and all-sufficiency of the sensus literalis of Scripture, thus countering the four-fold hermeneutical approach of medieval theology (which included analogical [logical], allegorical [mystical], and anagogical [moral] approaches). The cultural changes that resulted from the Reformation did not come about by any attempt toward social revolution—the “revolutionary” aspect of the Reformation era was its new emphasis on the Word of God. This emphasis coincided with the rise in literacy, the invention of the printing press, and the rediscovery of Greek and Roman classics within the culture of Renaissance humanism. All of these changes resulted in an interest in returning to “sources.”
The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a modern movement that drew inspiration from the general culture and learning of the time. It is no accident, therefore, that the earliest heroes of the Reformation were, when all is said and done, not visionaries or social revolutionaries or even religious mystics, but scholars and Bible translators.97
The Reformation also coincided with the breakdown of ecclesiastic unity, cultural unity and denominational unity. Without an emperor or Pope as their ecclesial authority, the Protestant’s authority became individualized or denominationalized. The Bible, as interpreted by the individual believer or the denomination, could once again become the foundation of societal authority.
Martin Luther and John Calvin
The debate over the nature of the Spirit’s role in biblical interpretation is exemplified at the Diet of Worms, where Martin Luther cried, “It is written!” and the Church replied with excommunication. While many theologians recognize Luther’s role in the development of the Western world’s understanding of the nature of authority, few however, have understood Luther’s perspective regarding the authority of the Spirit. For Luther, the Spirit has his own existence in God’s eternal glory, apart from the Word and apart from the physical world, and thus cannot be controlled by us. The Spirit is the “sphere” of revelation where Christ is present and the Word is alive. Luther remarks,
For Christian holiness, or the holiness common to Christendom, is found where the Holy Spirit gives people faith in Christ and thus sanctifies them, Acts 15[:9], that is, he renews heart, soul, body, work, and conduct, inscribing the commandments of God not on tables of stone, but in hearts of flesh, II Corinthians 3[:3].98
Luther also proclaims, “In the whole of Scripture there is none but Christ, either in plain words or in involved words.”99 Instead of adopting the Augustinian view of the Spirit as the gift of grace mediated primarily through the Church, Luther connected the Spirit once again with the authority of Christ and the authority of the Word of God—and thus gave us grounding for our pattern of authority. As a result, Luther’s pneumatology is best understood as the Spirit of Christ working through the channel of the Word of God. This became a major theme of Reformation theology, representing a shift away from the earlier concern for precise definitions of the Spirit’s nature and toward the doctrine of the work of the Spirit in terms of the subjective appropriation of the gospel by the believer.
In Luther’s theology, the Spirit’s work continues in the Christo-centric theme of Western medieval theology, but takes on a new role—that of securing or mediating the incorporation of the believer into Christ through the Word of God. This Word reaches the heart and leads the believer to genuine faith through the inward work of the Spirit. As the instrument of the Spirit, the Word is connected to the Spirit through the resurrection of Christ. How does this occur? By placing the power of the resurrection into the context of the gospel, the Spirit causes the risen Christ to live His risen life in our midst through the message of the Word. Luther thereby holds that the work of the Holy Spirit is always a logical outworking of the Filioque clause, in that the Spirit serves as a mediator of the experience of Christ, and thus “reveals every relation to Christ which is not experience, which does not rest on the mediating, real and redeeming presence of Christ.”100 All other talk about the presence of Christ outside this sphere is either spiritualistic mysticism or moralistic imitation of Christ. Indeed, the only Spirit Luther knows is the Spirit of Christ. Luther tells us that the main work of the Spirit is not to authorize or justify the actions of the magisterium, but rather to create faith within those who believe—and specifically, faith in the historical Christ.
Although John Calvin is frequently acknowledged as “the theologian of the Holy Spirit” among the sixteenth century reformers, the doctrine of the Spirit’s authority may be the most overlooked aspect of Calvin’s pneumatology as well. According to John Hesselink, “an important aspect of his doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been neglected, namely, how the Holy Spirit leads, guides, governs, and rules in the life of the believers.”101 Calvin at times allows the Spirit a certain freedom over the Word and the inspiration of the Word (even more so than Luther) without ever speaking of the Spirit as disconnected from Christ. This is alluded to in his statement, “Our mind must be illuminated, and our heart established by some exterior power, in order for the Word of God to obtain full credit with us.”102 At other times, however, Calvin subordinates the Spirit to the Word of God (both the Word of God in the Person of Christ and the written Word) and in such thinking we can discern an executorial authority of the Spirit.103 This latter aspect is evident in Calvin’s criterion (German, kriterion 104), which was utilized by the reformers to designate a functional authority, and in his discremin, which is a set of related criterion. Johnson explains how such a criterion was applied to the office of the Spirit as He speaks through the Word:
The word discremin, which is used frequently, is intended to designate a configuration of criteria that are in some way organically related to one another as reciprocal coefficients. Calvin’s doctrine of the Word and Spirit may be cited as a classic example of the theological discremin. It requires the testimonium Spiritus Sancti, or that the Holy Spirit “attests” the written Word of Scripture, in order for it to be authoritative and useful for theological purposes. It also reassures that the Word of Scripture be utilized to “test” the Holy Spirit, or to “test the spirits to see whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). Within this doctrine both the Scripture and the testimony of the Holy Spirit are criteria, but they are inseparably related as reciprocal coefficients.105
Calvin illustrates the nature of this discremin when arguing