Scripture Explains Itself
Franz Pieper, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3:362
Only in this way the principle is maintained: Scripturae ex Scripturae explicanda est. Luther: In this manner Scripture is its own light. It is a fine thing when Scripture explains itself. Therefore do not believe the Pope’s lies; freely regard as dark whatever is not approved by clear passages of Scripture. Thus we have first had to remove the error that the Scriptures are obscure and must be illuminated by the doctrines of men; this had taken a deep hold. It is certainly a capital error and a blasphemy; in fact, it amounts to taking the Holy Ghost to school and teaching Him how to speak.” (St. L. XI: 2335f.)
Diametrically opposed to this view is the false conception of “faith” or the “analogy of faith” held by all those who do not permit the “certae et clarae Scripturae,” the “clear, lucid passages of Scripture,” to constitute the rule, or analogy, of faith, but substitute for it a “faith,” which, with complete disregard of the clear and lucid passages, they have constructed out of their own notions. This “faith” is to be the light with which to elucidate the clear passages of Scripture, which need no elucidation whatever! The Sacramentarians were exegetes of this type. In order to evade Scripture and retain their own thoughts concerning the Lord’s Supper, they proposed that Luther should disregard all passages dealing with the Lord’s Supper from john 6. The modern theologians belong in the same class of exegetes. In order not to be instructed and reproved by Scripture, but to be able, undisturbed by Scripture, to make the “pious self-consciousness” the source and norm of theology, they take recourse under the leadership of Schleiermacher and of Hofmann to the “whole of Scripture.” And the old method of taking the Christian doctrines from the passages which treat of these doctrines they seek to discredit with the cry that this outmoded method converts Scripture into a “collection of proof-texts.”
