Scripture Alone, Not Exegesis Alone: How the Reformers Used the Church Fathers

Protestants—particularly perhaps North American Protestants—sometimes struggle with the notion that “tradition” has a positive role in biblical interpretation. For modern exegetes to take their cues from the Church Fathers and Mothers, for example, might strike some as a betrayal of sola scriptura or “Scripture alone,” a bedrock principle of the sixteenth-century Reformation and Protestant identity ever since. If we begin from the assumption that biblical authority and exegetical tradition are at odds, then the recent conversations about “Reformed catholicity” can only strike us as misguided at best, or even as a contradiction in terms.¹

My aim in this article is to explore how the catholic tradition’s “exegetical lore” (to borrow a phrase from the late David Steinmetz) can in fact deepen our understanding of the Bible without threatening its unique authority in the church’s life and ministry.² I offer two historical case studies from the Reformation period that feature well-known Protestant theologians drawing upon patristic sources to untie difficult interpretive “knots” in the biblical text.

1. John Calvin (1509–1564) dialoguing intently with a single Church Father over a famous crux in 1 Corinthians 15:18–19.
2. A controversial passage in a Pauline Epistle (Rom 8:19–22), around which Martin Bucer (1491–1551) assembles a roundtable of early Christian voices.

Either approach can serve as a model for theologians and homilists today.

John Calvin: patristic writers as dialogue partners

The Church Fathers and Mothers can serve as dialogue partners in the work of biblical exegesis. I use the term “dialogue” advisedly. While early Protestant interpreters often presented a catalog of patristic views before offering up their own solution to a tricky passage (see the example of Bucer, below), they would also sometimes choose a single figure from the early church and build their interpretation around points of agreement and disagreement.

A helpful model for this “conversational” approach can be found in John Calvin’s Commentary on 1 Corinthians (1546).³ Calvin cites or alludes to many early Christian writers in this expansive work. However, one voice clearly rises above the rest: John Chrysostom (c. 347–407).⁴

His engagement with the famous “golden-mouthed” (Greek chrysostomos) preacher bore fruitful results when it came to 1 Corinthians 15:18–19. These verses appear in the Apostle Paul’s reply to those who claimed that “there is no resurrection of the dead” at the end of time (1 Cor 15:12). In that case, Paul retorted, Christians were “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). Without the resurrection, the faithful dead were simply dead and had no hope.

Paul’s argument raises a number of vexing questions. Interpreters down the centuries have noted the potential problem it poses for traditional Christian notions of the afterlife. It looked as if Paul had overlooked a third possibility besides resurrection and annihilation. Even if their bodies were not raised, what if Christians experienced a spiritual afterlife as souls in heaven? Such a disembodied salvation might even have resonated with the Hellenistic Corinthians, as modern commentators have noted.⁵

Calvin’s contemporary Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) wanted the Apostle Paul at least to acknowledge that possibility, and he was irked when he did not. While affirming his own orthodox belief in the bodily resurrection, Vermigli went so far as to fault Paul for shoddy reasoning in this passage. After all, “even if the resurrection of the dead were false, could not our souls still be more blessed than those of the impious?”⁶ For Vermigli, the answer was obviously yes, meaning that Paul’s words, if taken too literally, ran the risk of undercutting belief in an immortal soul.

Calvin, for his part, agreed that the apostolic logic appeared flawed—at first glance. “If we concede the soul’s essence to be immortal, this argument, prima facie, appears to be weak,” he conceded.⁷ Yet Calvin was convinced that the seeming hole in Paul’s reasoning was in fact a doorway to a deeper truth. This was the point where his dialogue with Chrysostom proved crucial. It is also where he can serve as an exemplar for interpreters using patristic sources today.

Calvin argued that the Scripture intentionally omitted any mention of the immortal soul to establish an important principle for both Christian anthropology and eschatology. Human beings were not just souls. They indeed had souls, but from a biblical perspective, the human being was incomplete, not fully realized in God’s image, except as a union of soul and body. A disembodied afterlife for souls in heaven would therefore leave us maimed and imperfect creatures. Instead, our eschatological redemption had to take the form of resurrection, just as the apostle had said.

Calvin had found this very conclusion in Chrysostom’s homilies on 1 Corinthians. The Reformer deliberately echoed the preacher’s language in his Commentary. “All [the Christian’s] happiness and consolation hang on the resurrection alone,” Calvin insisted, which simply expanded Chrysostom’s remark that “all things hang on the resurrection.”⁸ Calvin’s dialogue with this voice from the Christian past had arguably given him greater insight into the biblical text than Vermigli, who (in this instance, at least) had limited himself to a rhetorical and linguistic analysis.

Calvin’s commitment to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura did not necessitate reading Scripture solo.

That is not to say that Calvin always agreed with Chrysostom. He had earlier declared a particular opinion of the preacher (on 1 Cor 1:11) downright “absurd.”⁹ However, these moments of dissension do not invalidate the model I am proposing but are essential to it. Calvin did not esteem Chrysostom (or any of the Church Fathers and Mothers) as infallible authorities. They were instead partners in a common enterprise. They were the trustworthy faces across the table from you with a Bible open between. Calvin’s commitment to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura did not necessitate reading Scripture solo.

Faithful interpreters could and should weigh views from the church’s past. Exegetes who wish to emulate Calvin’s “conversational” use of Chrysostom today might frame a sermon or essay around a dialogue with a specific patristic writer. Focusing on that one source, they could list out points of agreement and disagreement on the biblical passage at hand. The finished exposition could then be framed explicitly around this exchange, or else it could hold its conclusions and insights in the background (ideally acknowledging the patristic source in the notes). Either approach would be consonant to the way early Protestants utilized the Church Fathers and Mothers in their exegesis.

Martin Bucer: patristic writers in roundtable

A second example from the sixteenth century shows how a patristic dialogue could be expanded into something like a roundtable discussion.

The Strasbourg Reformer Martin Bucer influenced many streams of Protestant thought, including mentoring a young Calvin and contributing to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.¹⁰ Bucer was a pioneering Hebraist and produced lengthy commentaries on the Psalms and the Prophets.¹¹ He also modeled for his many pupils how the Protestant commitment to “Scripture alone” could still maintain a robust connection to the Church Fathers and Mothers, as well as the catholic tradition more broadly. His massive Metaphrasis on Romans (1536) painstakingly works through each verse of the epistle, often pausing to register relevant patristic and medieval opinions along the way.¹² Nowhere were the benefits of his roundtable approach more evident than in the ever-controversial Romans 8:19–22.

Scholars continue to debate the identity of the “creation” (Greek κτίσις, Latin creatura) that Paul describes as “groaning together in the pains of childbirth” (Rom 8:22) and “longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Rom 8:19). In the ancient church, Augustine of Hippo (c. 354–430) had argued that “creation” referred only to human beings, emphatically denying any reference to nonhuman creatures such as “trees, vegetation, stones or other creatures of this sort.”¹³ This anthropocentric line had been largely adopted by Western interpreters through the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas had cited Augustine to argue that earthly creatures (humans excepted) would vanish completely in the eschaton.¹⁴ This view was also fiercely defended by Roman Catholic thinkers in the sixteenth century as the “teaching of the church.”¹⁵ By this time, the notion that “creation” in Romans 8 meant “humanity” was so ingrained that it had become simply common sense: part of the exegetical lore passed down by generations of Western commentators.

Bucer went a different way, guided by patristic figures who stood outside the Western consensus. He knew well that “Blessed Augustine … understands this to mean ‘we ourselves,’ [i.e. humans], whom he supposes the Apostle to have called ‘all creation.’”¹⁶ He also recognized that Aquinas and other scholastic doctors had endorsed this reading.¹⁷ All the same, Bucer declared the “reasoning” (ratio) behind this weighty tradition to be “not firm” (firma non est).¹⁸ He then brought forth a catalog of Church Fathers, including Origen of Alexandria, Ambrosiaster, and Chrysostom, all of whom had argued that “creation” in this passage signified, well, creation: the entire cosmos that God had made. With this support, Bucer concluded that the Apostle Paul was in fact promising the redemption of the whole physical world in Romans 8. He even ventured the opinion that plants, animals, and the earth itself would share in some sense in the final resurrection, though he did not wish Christians to divide over this point.¹⁹

Bucer had defied over a millennium of exegetical common sense. In the process, he helped to birth something of a new Protestant tradition. His pupil Calvin also adopted his “cosmic” interpretation of the text, as would later figures like John Wesley (1703–1791).²⁰ You can arguably hear echoes of Bucer in modern conversations about eschatology and the “new creation” sparked by writers such as N. T. Wright.²¹ And it all began with Bucer laying out patristic views on a particular Scripture and recognizing that many ancient voices contradicted the received wisdom of the mid-1500s.

Every moment in church history suffers from intellectual and cultural blind spots. The present is no exception.

Bucer no less than Calvin refused to raise the Church Fathers and Mothers to the level of infallibility: Scripture alone held that status. However, by assembling a roundtable of patristic perspectives, Bucer was able to see beyond the limits of his own intellectual setting. The pre-Augustinian Fathers showed him possibilities that might never have occurred to him otherwise.

Interpreters today might employ the roundtable approach similarly. Every moment in church history suffers from intellectual and cultural blind spots. The present is no exception. Taking the time to gather a “cloud of witnesses” (cf. Heb 12:1) from the Christian past helps us to glimpse new interpretive horizons and view even familiar landmarks in the Bible from new angles. Even if we end up sticking with the current consensus (whatever that might be), we will have benefited from the conversation. If nothing else, we will have learned that wise and pious eyes can see differently from ours.

Takeaways

Calvin and Bucer were not unique among the Reformers for revering the Church Fathers and Mothers and drawing on their insights for biblical interpretation. The early Protestant reception of “exegetical lore” from the patristic and medieval eras is in fact a vibrant subfield within Reformation studies. I have listed a few works below that will help interested readers delve more deeply.

Today’s students and ministers who wish to follow the Reformers’ lead might begin (where possible) by building their library of premodern commentary literature. The Reformers themselves often labored to edit and publish new editions of patristic works in the sixteenth century. Alongside modern historical-critical commentaries (which also surely have a place), pastors might avail themselves of resources, such as InterVarsity’s Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series (1998–2010), which represent a patristic roundtable in the Bucerian mold. This in turn might lead to a deeper connection with a specific figure from the early church. Translated collections of Augustine, Chrysostom, and many others have been and continue to be published. These two belong in your church library.

Once more, the goal of such ressourcement is not to replace biblical authority but to deepen our appreciation of it. The interpreters of the past (including the Reformers!) were not infallible. Bucer might find Augustine’s reasoning on a particular issue “not firm” and Calvin might occasionally deem Chrysostom “absurd,” yet neither would think to abandon their conversation with the tradition. Sola scriptura was never a call to “go it alone” in the work of biblical exegesis. Rather, we join hands with the Fathers and Mothers who have gone before us in the common task of proclaiming God’s divine Word to his people.

Share your thoughts

Are sola scriptura and exegetical tradition at odds? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Steven Tyra’s recommended resources

• Steinmetz, David C. Luther in Context. Baker Academic, 2002.
• ———. Calvin in Context. Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2010.

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• If the Reformers Believed in Sola Scriptura, Why Quote the Church Fathers?
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• Reformed Bible Study: Its History & How to Do It
• What Is the Protestant Reformation? Everything You Need to Know