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Theology Today
2016, Vol. 73(3) 198-214

Reader-response-criticism (c) The Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0040573616659342

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Ulrich H. J. Kortner
Institut für Systematische Theologie und Religionswissenschaft,
University of Vienna, Austria

Abstract
This article discusses the issue of deconstructing and reconstructing the scriptural
principle of the Reformation. As will be shown, such a reconstruction in the light of
reader-response-criticism requires engagement with the concerns of the classical doc-
trine of inspiration. It also allows a fresh look at the fact and the hermeneutical problem
that there exists a variety of concepts of a Christian canon of the Bible.

Keywords
scriptural principle, canon, reader-response-criticism, literary hermeneutics, doctrine of
inspiration

The problem
The topic given to me is "reader-response-criticism in the light of the scriptural
principle.”1 Therefore, the task intended for me consists in examining to what
extent reader-response-text theories correspond to or contradict the scriptural prin-
ciple of the Reformation tradition. Thus, the scriptural principle, as a supposedly
well-defined criterion, would be the benchmark of the investigation. In a first step
of investigation, correspondence could be objectively established. Then, in a second
step, it would have to be asked which conclusions are to be drawn from the find-
ings. As far as this question is posed theologically, it is of a systematic-theological
nature, since the scriptural principle is a theological norm. More precisely, it is a

1. Paper presented in the Workshop on the Scriptural Principle and Reformation Theology in
Contemporary Perspectives at the Department of Culture and Society. Section for Theology.
Aarhus University. April 5-6. 2016. Translated by Jason Valdez.

Corresponding author:
Ulrich H. J. Kortner, Institute for Systematic Theology and Religious Studies, Faculty of Protestant Theology,
University of Vienna, Schenkenstr. 8-10, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
Email: ulrich.koertner@univie.ac.at
Kortner 199

dogmatic norm, which claims, however, to be the result of a consistent exegesis of

the texts of the Bible. As a dogmatic norm, the scriptural principle claims to be
gleaned from or pregiven in the texts of the Bible themselves. As such, it is not a
dogmatic norm established elsewhere and then applied to the texts of the Bible.
If one follows my formulation of the given topic, then a contribution to the
discussion about the relationship of principle and method in biblical exegesis is at
issue.2 Yet, umbrella terms like "reader-response-criticism” or "new literary criti-
cism” do not, in the first instance, name any single method of textual interpret-
ation. Rather, they refer to a group of different text theories, which favor
synchronic reading over diachronic reading and emphasize the role of the individ-
ual reader and of interpretive communities3 in realizing a text’s meaning in the act
of reading.4 Primarily at issue are theories of interpretation that observe and
describe, on a meta level, what happens in the act of reading and interpreting,
without in every case deriving a practical methodology therefrom. The given
topic could, in any case, be understood as a theologically normative question,
whether reader-response-text theories are theologically tenable if the normative
status of the reformational scriptural principle is presupposed.
Of course, the question can be posed in the reverse direction: If reader-response-
text theories are hermeneutically plausible, can the reformational scriptural prin-
ciple still be maintained at all, or must it be abandoned in favor of other theories of
biblical hermeneutics? In any case, the reformational scriptural principle has been
subject to criticism since the days of the reformation, on the one hand side from
Roman Catholicism, and on the other under the influence of historical-critical
exegesis and its results.
According to the Reformation perspective, sola scriptura claims validity, first
because Scripture is clearly understandable—although Luther distinguished
between the external (claritas externa) and the internal (claritas interna) clarity of
Scripture—and second—again according to Luther—because Scripture interprets
itself and thus needs no external interpretive agency. However, if, as reader-
response-text theories claim, the meaning of a text is not at all fixed, but emerges,
with the help of the reader, ever anew in the act of reading, then the thesis of a self-
interpreting Scripture, and thus of the scriptural principle, seems to become alto-
gether untenable. Apart from this, in its scope, "the Scripture,” that is, the
Christian Bible, is not even a fixed magnitude, since there are different versions

2. Cf. Jörg Lauster. Prinzip und Methode. Die Transformation des protestantischen Schriftprinzips
durch die historische Kritik von Schleiermacher bis zur Gegenwart. HUTh 46 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck. 2004).
3. Cf. Stanley Fish. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities
(Cambridge. MA: Harvard. 1980).
4. For an introduction cf. James A. Loader. “Stromab—Gedanken zur Hermeneutik biblischer Texte
im Kontext der neueren angelsächsischen Diskussion." Hermeneutik und Ästhetik. Die Theologie
des Wortes im multimedialen Zeitalter. ed. Ulrich H. J. Kortner (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener,
2001). 34-56.
200 Theology Today 73(3)

of a biblical canon (a point I will go into below).5 Hence, one thesis is that not only
the meaning of Scripture and its texts, but the Scripture as such is first created by its
reader(s)—more precisely, by the different churches and confessions as interpretive
communities. In this case, however, sola scriptura completely loses its meaning.
In my article, I will first discuss the scriptural principle’s r/econstruction as
advocated (not only but also) by reader-response-text theories. Subsequently, I
will pursue the contrary question, whether it is not precisely reader-response-text
theories that make a plausible reconstruction of the Reformation scriptural prin-
ciple possible. As will be shown, such a reconstruction also requires engagement
with the concerns of the classical doctrine of inspiration.

The deconstruction of the Reformation scriptural

principle and its doctrine of inspiration
According to classical Reformation doctrine, Scripture alone is the source and stand-
ard of Christian faith, Christian doctrine, and Christian life. In this regard, reference
is made to Luther’s formula, “sola scriptura,” which of course does not stand alone,
but belongs within a fourfold of .vo/?«-formulas, which mutually explicate each other:
Sola scriptura—solus Christus—sola gratia—sola fide. Scripture alone is the source
and standard of faith, because and inasmuch as it bears witnesses to Christ, who
alone is the source of salvation, namely of the gospel which acquits the sinner. The
justification of the sinner takes place for the sake of Christ, by grace alone—namely,
by faith in the gospel alone, just as it is attested by Scripture.
Of course, with Luther, there is not an abstract scriptural principle that would,
as the formal principle of Reformation theology, be distinguished from the doctrine
of justification as the material principle in the manner of later Neo-Protestantism.6
Rather, according to Luther, the "principium” of all theology is the clarity of
Scripture,7 8although he distinguishes again between external and internal ciar-
ity—between claritas externa and claritas interna* The external word can do noth-
ing without the working or inner witness of the Holy Spirit—also, following
Calvin, called testimonium spiritus sancti internum. Only thus can the external
word become the medium of the Spirit, whose work consists in the assurance of
faith. Yet, the testimonium spiritus sancti internum does not refer to anything other
than the external word, that is, to the external, philological and grammatical clarity
of the wording of the biblical text.

5. Cf. Ulrich H. L Kortner. Arbeit am Kanon. Studien zur Bibelhermeneutik (Leipzig: Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt. 2015).
6. Cf. Carl Ullmann, “Vierzig Sätze, die theologische Lehrfreiheit innerhalb der evangelisch-protes-
tantischen Kirche betreffend." Th StKr 16 (1843): 1-35. here 14f.
7. WA 7.97.26; 7.317; vgl. Bernhard Rothen. Die Klarheit der Schrift. 2 parts (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1990).
8. Cf. Martin Luther. De servo arbitrio (WA 18. 606ff). On claritas scripturae in Luther see Rothen.
Die Klarheit der Schrift, vol. 1; Friedrich Beißer. Claritas scripturae bei Martin Luther. FKDG 18
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1966).
Kortner 201

According to the Lutheran Formula of Concord from 1577, "Holy Scripture

alone is the sole judge, rule and standard after which, as the sole touchstone, all
doctrines are recognized and judged, whether they be good or evil, right or
wrong.”9 The Reformed confessional documents have similar formulations.
Apart from the fact that the Formula of Concord, compared to Luther, reduces
the scriptural principle to its criteriological function, it has (in Lutheranism as well
as in Reformed Churches) an anti-Catholic—or to put it better—an anti-Roman
thrust. Neither the tradition of the church nor the magisterium, but Scripture alone
is the definitive norm for theology and proclamation.
Protestant orthodoxy attempted to secure this understanding of Scripture by
means of the doctrine of verbal inspiration. According to that doctrine, God is the
actual author of Scripture, while the human writers are merely the hand (inarms),
the quill pen (tabelliones) of the Holy Spirit.10 Even though the subjectivity and
productivity of the human author is not completely neutralized, they are neverthe-
less regarded, in terms of the medieval distinction between first and second causes,
merely as second causes of Holy Scripture.
Protestant orthodoxy relies on statements of Scripture for its doctrine of the inspir-
ation of the biblical authors and the authorship of the Holy Spirit. The Locus classions
of the doctrine of inspiration is 2 Tim 3:16: "All scripture [πάσα γραφή] is inspired
[θεόπνευστος] by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness” (NRSV). The idea of theopneiistos is also found in 2 Pet
1:19-21. The unknown author explains in v. 20 that "no prophecy of scripture [πάσα
προφητεία γραφές] ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination” (NET).
For, "no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the
Holy Spirit [ύπο πνεύματος άγιου φερόμενοι] spoke from God” (v. 21, NET).
Of course, the biblically based doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture is
not an invention of the Reformation, but is a notion that dates back to the early
church. Nevertheless, it received a new, controversial, theological meaning in the
Reformation. In the early church and the theology of the Middle Ages, the doctrine
of inspiration grounded the doctrine of the multiple senses of Scripture, the inter-
pretation of which was monitored by the magisterium, which can then, via the idea
of sensus plenior, posit dogmatic doctrines which are not found in the Bible. Yet,
Luther eventually rejected the doctrine of multiple senses of Scripture, accepting
only the sensus literalis, although according to his approach, the Bible as a whole
(i.e. also the Old Testament) is to be read as witness to Christ.11
Notwithstanding rapprochements in ecumenical dialogue concerning the rela-
tionship of Scripture and tradition, between Protestant and Roman Catholic inter-
pretation of Scripture, there remains at this point a theoretical opposition.

9. BSLK 769. 22-27.

10. E.g. Johann Andreas Quenstedt, Theologie! didactica-polemica, 3rd ed. (Wittenberg. 1696). vol. 1:
55.68.
11. WA 16. 68. Ilf.; 69. 28-30.
202 Theology Today 73(3)

According to the Catholic tradition, the Holy Scripture is "written into the heart of
the Church rather than upon parchment.”12 Scripture is thus "to be read in the
living tradition of the universal Church.”13 This means nothing other than that
which concerns the manner of interpretation "is ultimately” subject "to the judg-
ment of the Church.”14 Thus, scholarly exegesis has still to submit to the magis-
terium of the church. Revealingly, the Roman Catholic Church continues to hold
fast to the doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture in its pre-Reformation for-
mulation and to the exegetical method of allegorical interpretation. Vatican II
expressly declares that it is and remains the task of exegetes, in accordance with
the rules of the multiple senses of Scripture, "to work towards a deeper under-
standing and explanation of Holy Scripture.”15 The historical-critical quest for the
literal sense is merely the "scientific ground-work” for the "judgment of the
Church,”16 that is, the ultimate interpretation of Scripture by the magisterium.17
The real problem of Protestant orthodoxy’s doctrine of inspiration is not the
idea of a supernatural origin of the biblical texts as such, but the idea of the Bible as
a completed book, upon which the slogan, sola scriptura, and the Protestant ortho-
dox determination of the Bible as norma normans are based as well as the confes-
sional documents as norma nórmala, substantiated by the Bible. The development
of the idea that the Bible does not consist only of individual books, but is to be read
in general as one continuous book, finds its preliminary completion in the scrip-
tural principle of the Reformation. The concept of the canon thereby acquires a
new meaning. "Canon” no longer indicates, as in the beginnings of church history,
a regula fidei; nor does it merely indicate a list of writings, the liturgical use of
which is permitted and which is considered to be orthodox. Rather, it indicates a
two-part book, joining together individual writings, the comprehensiveness, com-
position, and structure of which all have theological significance.
This concept was only made possible by the invention of the codex. It allowed,
by grouping together several writings, for the transition to the structure of a single,
large, bound book.18 The consolidation of the numerous writings to a single book
took place when the canonical texts of Christianity made their way to the West,
where Latin and not Greek was the lingua franca. The Greek plural noun βιβλία as
"books” was modified to the consonant Latin, singular proper noun Biblia. "A
grammatical misinterpretation coincided with an epochal, cultural

12. Katechismus der Katholischen Kirche, nr. 113.

13. Ibid.
14. II. Vaticanum. Dei Verbum 12.3.
15. Dei Verbum 12.3.
16. Dei Verbum 12.3.
17. Cf. also Katechismus der Katholischen Kirche (München/Wien et al.: Oldenbourg/Benno et al.,
1993). nr. 115-19.
18. Cf. Jack Miles. Gott. Eine Biographie (München: Hanser, 1996). 27ff.; James A. Loader. “Die
Problematik des Begriffes hebraica veritas." HTS 64 (2008): 227-51. here 246.
Kortner 203

reinterpretation... The Latin Biblia became a capitalized proper noun, a new,

single word for a new, singular object.”19
And yet, what is ”the” Bible, ”the” Scripture upon which the reformational sola
scriptura insists? It is a canon with an anti-Catholic thrust which, with reference to
the history of the canon, must be designated a hybrid. To be sure, the Reformers
invoked the supposed original text of the Old and New Testaments in terms of the
humanist slogan ”ad fontes!” In the course of this, the Biblia Hebraica was given
priority over the Septuagint, upon which the Vulgate Old Testament rests. They
emphasized the pre-givenness, externality, and incontrovertible authority of the
word of God. Yet, in truth, they did not use an already existing canon, but created
a ”hybrid canon, a canon which had hitherto never existed, and since then only
exists in national translations.”20 Several Reformed confessional documents con-
tain a complete canon-list of this hybrid, where the structure of the New Testament
follows the canon of the early church, from which the Luther Bible famously
deviated, when for theological reasons, it places the Letter to the Hebrews and
the Letter of James, without numbering, between the Letters of John and Jude.21
The canonicity and authority of the Old Testament Apocrypha, contained only
in the Septuagint, is contested, not only by invoking the argument (which origi-
nated with Jerome) of the hebraica veritas, but occasionally also by asserting its
lack of divine inspiration.22
While Jerome’s (whose thesis of the hebraica veritas was invoked by the
Reformers) appropriation of the Hebrew canon originated, in fact, from an anti-
Jewish polemic (a fact mostly overlooked today in Christian-Jewish dialogues and
in the discussion about the ”canonical approach”), its adoption by the Reformers
originated from anti-Catholic motives.23 ”The Luther Bible, and parallel transía-
tions in vernaculars like the famous English and Dutch ’Vulgate’ Bibles did pre-
cisely that which was achieved by the Catholic Vulgate: they created a new canon
as ground of appeal for defense against other religious communities.”24
The hybrid character of the Protestant canon becomes especially visible in the
Old Testament. Even though the Hebrew text is taken as its basis, the structure
does not follow that of the Tanakh, but that of the Septuagint tradition. Here it
must be called to mind that the decision of Judaism to recognize only the Tanakh,
and not the Septuagint also, contains a polemic against Christianity and its use of

19. Jack Miles. Jesus. Der Selbstmord des Gottessohns (München: Hanser, 2001). 309.
20. J. A. Loader. “Die Problematik." 247.
21. BSRK 155.10ff. (Züricher Bekenntnis 1545); 222.5-24 (Confessio Gallicana 1559); 233f.
(Confessio Bélgica 1561); 500f. (Waldenser-Bekenntnis 1655); 507.10-30 (39 Anglikanische
Artikel 1562); 526,18ff. (Irische Religionsartikel 1615); 543f. (Westminster-Confession 1647);
872.1-13 (Bekenntnis der Calvinistischen Methodisten 1823).
22. Cf. also BSRK 526.22-24 (Irische Religionsartikel 1615); 544.11-18 (Westminster-Confession
1647).
23. The 39 Anglican Articles of 1526 make explicit reference to Jerome in their denial of the doctrinal
authority of the Old Testament Apocrypha (BSRK 507.19f.).
24. J. A. Loader. “Die Problematik." 247.
204 Theology Today 73(3)

the Septuagint. There is no, nor has there ever been, a Christian canon consisting of
the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament.
Lutheranism, however, unlike Reformed churches, never fixated the scope of
the canon. "For the Lutheran tradition, 'the Scriptures’ somehow are the Luther
Bible, or the editions of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New
Testament—without this 'somehow’ being more closely defined (which later
Lutheran dogmatic theologians indeed attempt).”25 Strictly speaking, the
Scriptures to which the reformational churches appeal are not the starting point,
but the product of the Reformation, namely, a canon of mixed Hebrew scope and
Greek structure, and yet presented in a third language—whether German, English,
or some other living language.26
The Council of Trent reacted to this development by establishing a canon-list
for the Old and New Testament with validity for the Catholic Church.
Interpretations which depart from the Vulgate are overruled by canon law.27 By
contrast, in the Westminster Confession of 1647, the legality and necessity of ver-
nacular translations are theologically justified by referencing 2 Cor 14:6.28 For
those who do not know Hebrew or Greek, the "original text” has no other meaning
than glossolalia, which, according to Paul, only serves the edification of the church
when it is interpreted in understandable words. However, actually at issue in the
Reformed and Lutheran Bibles is not the translation of an established original text,
but the Protestant version of a Christian canon which only exists at all in the form
of translations. Thus, the translation is the original—similar to the case of the
Greek Septuagint.
This circumstance gives rise to a series of important hermeneutical and theo-
logical questions, which I already formulated at the beginning of this paper. These
questions become more complicated by the problem of the different Bible transía-
tions. Aside from the fact that the Protestant hybrid canon only exists in transía-
tions, there is a multitude of German, English, and other foreign language
translations, among which a further distinction must be made: between private
translations, reading editions, scholarly translations, and translations licensed by
the church (i.e. permitted for use in worship services ). Before the act of reading, there
is the choice of the translation in which one wishes to read the Bible. It is at least valid
in this respect, that not only the meaning of an individual text, but the Bible as a
macrocontext, comes into existence ever and anew in the act of reception.
Has the reformational scriptural principle—the crisis of which has been detect-
able since the beginnings of the historical-critical method—thereby resolved itself
25. Dieter Lührmann, Auslegung des Neuen Testaments (Zürich: TVZ. 1984). 12.
26. The first complete German translation of the Bible was not that of Martin Luther, but the Zurich
Bible of 1531 (“Froschauer-Bibel,” the individual parts of which appeared between 1524 and
1529). However, its translation of the New Testament was based on Luther's, whose first complete
Bible appeared in 1534. Cf. Albrecht Beutel. “Bibelübersetzungen II.1." RGG4 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck. 1998) 1:1498-1505. here 1500.
27. DH 1504ff.
28. BSRK 546.17-30.
Kortner 205

once and for all?29 Does it terminate with its r/estruction?30 Or is there the possi-
bility of a reader-response-reconstruction, which is not only literarily but also
theologically convincing? Is it possible to extrapolate anew the doctrine of the
inspiration of Holy Scripture according to the Reformation understanding, without
succumbing to the self-deception of Protestant orthodoxy?

Canon and church

Like the function of the Bible as Holy Scripture, the idea of the canon can also be
made comprehensible via the worship service. Not only the complex canonization
process of the individual books of the Bible, but also the idea of the canon as a
complete work, is the result of faith-based reception and application. Each ver-
sion of the biblical canon is a literary montage. Inasmuch as the Old and New
Testament Scriptures were selected from a comprehensive body of religious lit-
erature and—in different versions—composed within a canon, a new macrotext
came into being, in which the individual reader, and the interpretive community
to which he or she belongs, can and should continually discover new connotations
[Sinnbeziige], As rule or guideline, the canon is not only a guide for faith, but the
injunction to permanent reading, an invitation to a journey of discovery.
However, "the Scripture” is not the result of individual acts of reading.
Rather, it is the fruit of the communal tradition of reading of early Christian
and early church communities. At the same time, it is an instruction to continued,
communal, synchronic reading of the texts compiled in "the Scripture.” And yet,
the range of variation in the sequence of canonized books shows that not only
exegesis of single passages or books, but also a reading of the entire Bible leaves
room to move for the individual reader as well as the respective interpretive
community. Bearing in mind the quality of the Bible as Holy Scripture, to be
recited and interpreted in the worship service, the respective liturgical year also
plays an important role as a rule for a continual, synchronic reading. This aspect
threatens to go unheeded in a reading of the Bible, which views it purely as
belletristic literature.
The unity of Scripture can neither be formally determined, in terms of a canon-
list (of which there are several today), nor by the magisterial dogmatization of an
inventory of meaning(s). Rather, time and again, it comes into being anew via
continued reading.31 At the same time, a distinction must be made between the
external and internal unity of the canon.

29. On the crisis of the scriptural principle cf. Ulrich H. J. Kortner, Theologie des Wortes Gottes.
Positionen—Probleme—Perspektiven (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2001). 302ff.
30. Thus Hector Avalos. The End of Biblical Studies (Amherst. NY: Prometheus. 2007). 37ff., 65ff.
31. The canon is thus not only to be honored as a document of historical theology, in order to exposit
the individual texts on this basis of their canonical context, as Jens Schröter thinks. Von Jesus :um
Neuen Testament. Studien zur urchristlichen Theologiegeschichte und zur Entstehung des neutesta-
mentlichen Kanons. WUNT 204 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 2007). 373.
206 Theology Today 73(3)

Nevertheless, the reformational tradition claims that the canon is not a product
of the church and the church is not the subject of the formation of the canon. Only
under these premises does the reformational scriptural principle—the "sola scrip-
tura,” according to which Holy Scripture alone is the source of faith and every
interpretative privilege of the church has to be rejected—make sense. Yet, to what
extent is this claim plausible under the conditions of modern historical awareness
and historical-critical research?
Ernst Käsemann championed the thesis that the canon does not establish the
unity of the church, but the diversity of confessions.32 Of course, it can be objected
that this thesis posits lopsided alternatives. Wilfried Härle modifies it to the effect
that the canon "as such, in the diversity of confessions or ecclesial orientations,
preserves the unity of the Church [singular!].”33 Nevertheless, Käsemann rightly
saw that plurality in Christianity is not first of all a consequence of schisms, but
was already characteristic of earliest Christianity. The New Testament canon rep-
resents this plurality, which needs to be put in proper relation to the believed unity
of the church. This plurality is already apparent in that not only one, but four
Gospels, quite different in their respective accounts and theological idiosyncrasies,
found their way into the New Testament canon. Thus, the New Testament does not
present a harmony of the Gospels such as Titian’s Diatessaron.34
What is more, not only is the idea of the canon realized differently with regard to
the Old Testament in Judaism and Christian churches—as we have already seen—,
it is also realized in different ways within Christianity itself. In this respect,
Käsemann’s dictum can be modified to the effect that the different forms of a
whole-Bible canon do not represent the unity of the church, but the diversity of
confessions.
The different forms of the Jewish Bible, or Old Testament, and the Christian
Bible with its double-canon, can be understood in terms of modern concepts of
intertextuality.35 As Gerhard Ebeling explained, the biblical canon and the refor-
mational scriptural principle are "in crucial respects, not... principle^] of textual
demarcation, but... of hermeneutics.”36 If these thoughts are taken seriously, then
the result—not only in the dialogue between Christianity and Judaism, but also
among the Christian churches—is "respect for the mutual delimitation, and thence

32. Cf. Ernst Käsemann. “Begründet der neutestamentliche Kanon die Einheit der Kirche?, in idem.
Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, vol. 1. 6th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
1970). 214-23.
33. Wilfried Härle. Dogmatik (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. 1995). 134.
34. Cf. J. Schröter. Von Jesus :um Neuen Testament. 295.
35. Cf. Thomas Hieke and Tobias Niklas. "Die Worte der Prophetie dieses Buches." Offenbarung
22,6-21 als Schlussstein der christlichen Bibel Alten und Neuen Testaments gelesen. BThS 62
(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2003); Stefan Alkier and Richard B. Hays. Kanon und
Intertextualität. Kl. Schriften des FB Ev. Theol. der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main. Bd. 1
(Frankfurt a.M.: Lembeck. 2010).
36. Gerhard Ebeling. Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens. vol. 1. 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
1982). 34.
Kortner 207

enriching supplementation, which different textual traditions and organizations

bring in their train.”37 If each canon is understood as a particular realization of
the idea of Holy Scripture, which is dependent upon other forms and their real-
izations, then a hybrid such as the Protestant canon is also legitimate.
Scriptural interpretation not only happens in an inevitably plural fashion, but is
also never presuppositionless, having, after all, its place in the church or respect-
ively the individual confessions as interpretive communities. In this respect, the
postulate of an ”ecclesial hermeneutics,” which today is discussed as a ”hermen-
eutics of consent,” makes sense.38 Of course, agreement with the biblical text can,
at best, only be the result of the process of understanding, and in no way the
premise of understanding. As a result, according to the Protestant understanding,
there can be no ecclesial or magisterial prerogative of interpretation meant to
govern or domesticate the fundamentally interminable process of interpretation.
Furthermore, the church exists historically only in the plurality of confessions, with
the result that even the idea of an ecclesial hermeneutic is not able to neutralize the
problem of plurality.
According to the tradition of the Reformation, the church—or more precisely, the
congregation, the community of worship—is of course not the subject but the object of
interpretation. The church is a creation of the word "creatura Euangelii" (Luther),39
that is, a creature of the gospel or a creation of the Word of God.40 As Luther writes,
the church is ”nata ex verbo."41 At issue in the birth of the church out of the Word of
God is not a one-time occurrence in the past, but a continuous event. Similar to the
manner in which the Christian, according to Luther, crawls out of the waters of
baptism daily, the church, as the fellowship of believers, is continually born afresh
from the Word.42 It is just in this sense that it is creatura verbi and not its creator.

The scriptural principle and literary hermeneutics

The hermeneutical and dogmatic problems the reformational scriptural principle
creates are, of course, not yet conclusively solved by the proposed reconstruction of
the idea of the canon. Rather, they acquire additional explosive force via the basic
insight—from literary hermeneutics, reader-response-criticism, and post-structural
text theories—into the autonomy the text acquires over against its author in the

37. L A. Loader. “Die Problematik." 249.

38. Peter Stuhlmacher. Vom Verstehen des Neuen Testaments. Eine Hermeneutik. NTD Erg. 6
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1979). esp. 205ff.
39. WA 2.430.6-8.
40. The expression “creatura verbi" as a designation of the church cannot be verified in Luther. Yet
there are citations which at least come close to this designation, e.g. WA 6.560.36-561.1; WA.B
5.591.49-57. Cf. Michael Trowitzsch, “Die nachkonstantinische Kirche, die Kirche der
Postmoderne—und Martin Luthers antizipierende Kritik." BThZ 13 (1996): 3-35. here 4. fn. 6.
4L WA 42.334.12.
42. Martin Luther. Kleiner Katechismus (BSLK 516.30—38).
208 Theology Today 73(3)

course of textualization. Paul Ricœur explained: "What the text means, no longer
coincides with what the author wanted to say. From now on, literal meaning, that
is, meaning which has become text, and merely thought or psychological meaning,
have different fates.”43
Thanks to the process of autonomy, the reader or hearer, and the respective act
of reading or hearing, gain fundamental significance not only for the understanding
of understanding, but for the existence of the sense and reference of a text. The
sense of a text is not inherent within it, in terms of an ontology of substance, but is
in each instance created anew in the act of reading.44
The dogmatic problems which reader-response-theories create for a reforma-
tional doctrine of Scripture are illustrated by some remarks of Umberto Eco,
which underline the necessity of the reader’s active involvement in the realization
of the meaning of a text. For him, the text is "an inert machine... which demands
some hard work from the reader to fill out the white patches, which have remained
vacant—the spaces of the unsaid and the already-said.”45 The text demands the
"collaboration of the reader as the essential condition of its actualization,” since it
"is a product, the interpretation of which is a necessary component of the actual
mechanism of its production.”46 Thus, the negative consequence: "A text is incom-
píete insofar as it is capable of actualization.”47
If this assessment is applicable to the texts of the biblical canon, the question of
the soundness of the reformational scriptural arises all the more urgently.
Simultaneously under scrutiny is the thesis of the external, preached word of the
gospel, by which the faith that alone justifies is effected—when and where it pleases
God. If, following Eco, one understands the sermon to be an "open work of art,”
then the recipients themselves appear to be the originators of the word by which
they come to faith.48
Protestant Orthodoxy wanted to secure the scriptural principle via the assertion
that Scripture alone is complete and is alone operative in faith’s coming into being.
The purported perfectio, sufficientia, and efficacia of Scripture appear to be refuted
(as previously by historical-critical exegesis) also by reader-response-text theories,
which ascribe an essential role to the collaboration of the reader or hearer in the

43. Paul Ricœur. “Philosophische und theologische Hermeneutik," in idem and Eberhard Jüngel,
Metapher. Zur Hermeneutik religiöser Sprache (München: Chr. Kaiser. 1974). 24^15, here 28.
44. See also Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (München: W. Fink. 3rd
ed. 1990); idem. Der implizite Leser. Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett
(München: W. Fink. 1972); Ulrich H. J. Kortner, Hermeneutische Theologie. Zugänge zur
Interpretation des christlichen Glaubens und seiner Lebenspraxis (Neukirchen—Vluyn:
Neukirchener. 2008). 12 Iff.
45. Umberto Eco. Lector in fabula. Die Mitarbeit der Interpretation in erzählenden Texten (München:
Hanser. 1987). 29.
46. Ibid.. 65.
47. Ibid.. 61.
48. Cf. Gerhard Marcel Martin. “Predigt als ‘offenes Kunstwerk'? Zum Dialog zwischen Homiletik
und Rezeptionsästhetik." EvTh 44 (1984): 46-58.
Kortner 209

realization of the meaning of a text, and thus of the text itself. Put in dogmatic
terms, the problem of synergism arises, which has far-reaching consequences, not
only for the doctrine of Scripture, but also for the doctrines of justification and
grace. If the reader constitutively belongs in the biblical text, then he or she is the
first to produce the text anew via its actualization in the act of applicative reading.
If this is the case, then the ground of faith outside the religious subject, the extra
nos of salvation, upon which the Reformation so emphatically insisted, apparently
turns out to be an illusion.
However, as a glance at the christology of Martin Kahler as well as that of Paul
Tillich (influenced by Kahler) shows, this conclusion is not compulsory. Kähler’s
christological conception is groundbreaking precisely in that it develops a reader-
response-model. According to Kahler, the historicity of Jesus consists in his history
of effects [Wirkungsgeschichte]. "Yet, what is the resounding effect which this Jesus
left behind? According to the Bible and Church history, it is nothing other than the
faith of his disciples.”49
Kähler’s student, Tillich, carried his history of effects approach forward in his
own christology. He emphasized that, as the Christ, Jesus is "a historical fact as
well as the object of believing acceptance.”50 The Christ extra nos does not exist pro
nobis except as Christ in nobis. "The receiving side of the Christian event is just as
important as the factual side. And the event only proceeds from their unity, upon
which Christianity is founded. In the symbolism of the church, Christ is the head of
the church and it is his body. In this sense, the factual and the receiving sides
necessarily belong together.”51 Following Kahler, Tillich explained that not only
the faith of Christians, but also the New Testament, the written document of this
faith, is "an integral component of the event to which it bears witness. It represents
the receiving side of that event and bears witness to its factual side.”52
By taking up insights of reader-response-criticism, Tillich’s thought can be car-
ried further to the effect that not only the faith of the first disciples, but also that of
today’s reader is an integral component of the event to which the New Testament
texts bear witness, and is as such a component of Scripture itself. However, a
distinction has to be made between acceptance in Tillich’s sense, and reception
or application in the sense of a general hermeneutics. For Tillich, acceptance
means a qualified mode of reception, namely, faith as a certain mode of under-
standing. Yet, faith is an understanding of biblical texts through which the reader
not only gets into the text in order to complete it, but through which the reader, for
his or her part, is transformed by learning to understand him- or herself anew.
Faith, as the occurrence [ Widerfahrnis] of transforming understanding, cannot see

49. Martin Kahler, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus [1892]
(München: Chr. Kaiser. 4th ed.. 1969). 38f.
50. Paul Tillich. Systematische Theologie (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk. 5th ed.. 1977). 2:108.
51. Ibid.. 2:109.
52. Ibid.. 2:128.
210 Theology Today 73(3)

itself as action, but only as gift, and its appropriation of Scripture as Scripture’s
dedication. While within the framework of a general, literary hermeneutics there is
a necessary distinction between the arbitrary appropriation of texts and rule-gov-
erned interpretation, which follows the rules set forth by the text itself, beyond this
there has to be a theological differentiation between faith and unbelief, between
believing acceptance and the "sin in understanding.”53 However, both modes of
understanding are provoked by the biblical texts.
Concerning the theological problem of the sufficiency of the Scripture, it follows
from these reflections that while the biblical texts are indeed in a certain sense
incomplete, they nevertheless make for themselves the reader they require for
their completion.54 They are a strategy, or put traditionally, a medium salutis,
that provokes faith. Where believing reception occurs in the act of reading, the
text completes itself in terms of its indwelling intentio opens. At issue in the intentio
operis is a regulative idea, used by Umberto Eco in his critique of a radical, (de)con-
structivist text theory.55 This idea implies that the text is not only autonomous
from its author, but also from its reader. The regulative idea of the intentio operis
allows for making a distinction between interpretation—which is always plural—
and over-interpretation.
The biblical texts are sufficient (a term of Protestant orthodoxy) in the sense that
they are adequate as the sole stimulant of believing reception, which does not grasp
itself as an autonomous achievement, but as a gift, namely as the fruit of reading.
The observation of reader-response-criticism that the biblical texts, like other texts,
are also only realized by the reader or hearer, does not necessarily have to contra-
diet the sola scriptura of Reformation theology.
A dogmatic interpretation of the—in terms of a literary hermeneutics—existing
incompleteness of the biblical texts must seek its starting point in pneumatology.
Protestant orthodoxy’s text theory of verbal inspiration, which can be interpreted
as a production-aesthetical approach, did the same. It distinguished between God
as the causa principalis and the inspired human authors as the causae instrumenta-
lis.56 A literary hermeneutics allows for, and virtually compels, a return to the long-
obsolete doctrine of inspiration, in order, of course, to fundamentally reformulate
it.57 It must be reconstructed, in reader-response terms, as the doctrine of the
inspired reader. In critical reception of the terminology of Protestant orthodoxy,

53. Hans Weder. Neutestamentliche Hermeneutik (Zürich: TVZ. 1986). 83ff. Cf. also Michael
Trowitzsch, Verstehen und Freiheit. Umrisse zu einer theologischen Kritik der hermeneutischen
Urteilskraft. ThSt 126 (Zürich: TVZ. 1981). 35.37.
54. Cf. John 20:31-31. where it is said that Jesus did many other signs which are not written in this
book but what is written in it may be sufficient to come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the
Son of God and to have life through believing this.
55. Cf. Umberto Eco. Zwischen Autor und Text. Interpretation und Uberinterpretation, with Richard
Rorty, Jonathan Culler. Christine Brooke-Rose and Stefan Collini (München: dtv. 1996).
56. Cf. Johann Gerhard. Loci Theologiei I. 12. 18. 16.
57. Cf. Ulrich H. J. Kortner, Der inspirierte Leser. Zentrale Aspekte biblischer Hermeneutik
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1994).
Kortner 211

the dogmatic problem of the sufficientia of Scripture can be solved in the following
way: While the reader or hearer is certainly not to be thought of as causa princi-
palis, he or she is nevertheless to be thought of as causa instrumentalls. In this sense,
according to a theological understanding, the reader is also a constituent part of the
biblical text.

Inspiration, death, and resurrection of biblical texts

Nevertheless, the emergence of new meanings in the act of reception and interpret-
ation must not be misconstrued as a human work, as some interpretive conceptions
within contemporary theology suggest, but as an event effected by the Spirit.58
In order to understand this, we begin with the figure of thought of the death of
the author.59 Roland Barthes trenchantly characterized the text’s gaining auton-
omy as the death of the author: "La voix perd son origine, l’auteur entre dans sa
propre mort, l’écriture commence.”60 Similarly, Umberto Eco pointed out, "The
author would have to cease to be after he has written. So as not to disturb the
proper motion of the text.”61
If the creation and text of the Bible, the "divine Aeneid ” (Luther), are relatively
autonomous with respect to their author, then the question arises whether it is not
possible to even speak of "the death of the author” with reference to God.62 A
post-critical, synchronic reading of the Bible, as has for example been performed by
Jack Miles, appears at first to rehabilitate God, in a way free of any premises of
faith, as the actual protagonist of the Bible, with the result, however, that God is no
longer thought of as a present reality, but suffers the death of the author.63 For
Miles, the biography of God (which is how he characterizes the Tanakh) is no
longer the history of someone living, but of someone deceased, which ends with his
gradual fading. By the death of God, the modern critique of religion means God’s
absence or nonexistence. Yet, in terms of the theology of the cross, the death of
God is to be thought of as the form of his hiddenness, that is, however, sub contra-
rio to be thought of as the mode of his presence. It is quite appropriate biblically to
speak of the death of the author with reference to God, provided that thereby, in
keeping with the theology of the cross, the final consequence is drawn from the
notion of the incarnation. The Word not only became flesh (John 1:14), but also

58. Concerning the concept of “Deutung" (interpretation) and its fundamental-theological implica-
tions. see Ulrich H. L Kortner, Einführung in die theologische Hermeneutik (Darmstadt: Wiss.
Buchgesellschaft. 2006). 27ff.
59. On the following cf. U. Kortner, Hermeneutische Theologie. 121^12.
60. Roland Barthes. “La mort de l’auteur,” in idem. Oeuvres complètes. Edition établie et présentée
par Éric Marty (Paris: Seuil. 1994). 491-95. here 491.
61. Umberto Eco. Nachschrift :um Namen der Rose (München: dtv. 1984). 14.
62. Luther's last note. On sources and interpretation see Oswald Bayer. “Vom Wunderwerk. Gottes
Wort recht zu verstehen." KuD 37 (1991): 258-79.
63. Cf. L Miles. Gott. passim.
212 Theology Today 73(3)

writing. Yet, the Word’s becoming-writing can, in keeping with the theology of the
incarnation, be construed to the effect that God himself delivered himself up to the
conflict of interpretations. This becoming-writing, spoken together with Johann
Georg Hamann, is the endpoint of his humiliation and kenosis.
It is part of the kenosis of the Logos that the Son of God freely gives himself into
the hands of his enemies. In the same manner, the word of God, the word of Jesus,
the word of the Christian proclamation as well as of biblical texts, is not an irre-
sistible word of compelling force, but is outwardly weak. Thus, it is possible to
speak of the death of the author, with a view to God, in the sense that God, by the
textualization of his word, exposes himself to the conflict of interpretations, which
cannot be ended by any kind of doctrine of inspiration.
As a form of the incarnation, the biblical texts also carry in their body the death
of Christ.64 Other than verbal speech, texts, as its material externalization, are
mute. They only become articulate in the act of reading. The same is true of the
biblical texts. Interpreted in terms of the theology of the cross, their remaining-
silent participates in Jesus’ falling-silent under interrogation by Pilate.65 The bib-
lical text is defenseless, delivered into the hands of its readers and interpreters.
Thus, for good reason, Franz Overbeck saw the task of exegesis in protecting
the texts "against their expositors’ onslaughts of slovenly subjectivity.”66
The text is a form of death. Although it is meant to serve in the conservation and
passing on of human speech and (according to biblical self-understanding) was
inspired by the Spirit of God, it is nevertheless first the complete emptying of the
human and the divine spirit into matter, a dead trace of meaning that has to be
awakened to new life in the act of reading.67 In terms of the theology of media, the
thesis can be propounded that the biblical texts participate in the incarnate Logos.
Yet, if one follows the hermeneutical theory of Paul Ricœur, then the external-
ization of the Spirit into the materiality of writing does not at all have to be seen in
an entirely negative way. To be sure, the textualization of speech results in alien-
ation. However, as Ricœur shows, the alienation is "not the result of the method of
interpretation and thus not something added after the fact or even something det-
rimental; rather, it constitutes the appearance of the text as writing. At the same
time, it is the condition of interpretation. Alienation is not only that which under-
standing must conquer, but also that which conditions understanding.”68
Nevertheless, alienation, as a result of the autonomy which the text gains over
against its author, is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for understanding.
Where the understanding is engaged, it must rather be construed as resurrection or
raising of the text from the dead, and that means as an act of God or a work of the

64. Cf. 2 Cor 4:10.

65. Cf. Mark 15:2-5.
66. Franz Overbeck. Christentum und Kultur. Gedanken und Anmerkungen zur modernen Theologie. ed.
Carl A. Bernoulli (Basel: Schwabe & Co.. 1919). 76.
67. 2 Tim 3:16: θεόπνευστος.
68. P. Ricœur. “Philosophische und theologische Hermeneutik." 29.
Kortner 213

Spirit of God. This occurs in the act of reading—ubi et quando visum est Deo.69
Thus, scriptology has a media-theological need for pneumatology. Despite all
justified criticism of a hermenéutica sacra, this remains the kernel of truth of the
premodern doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. To be sure, it has to be
reestablished under todays hermeneutical conditions of understanding.
The Spirit manifests itself in the act of reading, so that the understanding of the
text is not the achievement of the reader, but an event which takes place between
text and reader, in which the dead trace of the Spirit is awakened to new life and
simultaneously takes hold of the reader, who arrives at a new understanding of his
or her existence.
The historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) saw "the task of the historian as a
'resurrection,’ as a battle of memory against death.”70 The biblical tradition under-
stands such raising of the tradition as the work of the Holy Spirit. According to
Oswald Bayer’s trenchant formulation, "All of the effects of the Spirit narrated in
the New Testament are, viewed at the decisive point, raisings of the dead, which
occur by virtue of the resurrection of the crucified.”71
However, Bayer’s thesis that, when it happens today, the coming of the Spirit
never takes place "other than through the old letters,” has to be clarified or mod-
ified.72 For not only the reader, but also the biblical texts themselves must be raised
to new life if their readers are to participate in the resurrection life of Jesus. Both
happen at the same time in the act of reading, when understanding in the sense of
faith ensues: The resurrection of the text as well as the new-creation of the reader.
He or she becomes καινή κτίσις (2 Cor 5:17), in that he or she becomes enmeshed
in the biblical texts and their narratives, so as to eventually perpetuate these texts in
story of their own life.73

69. A similar idea, although with reference to literary texts, is found in Maurice Blanchot, Das
Unzerstörbare. Ein unendliches Gespräch über Sprache, Literatur und Existenz (München:
Hanser. 1991). 13ff, in reference to the story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45).
Blanchot speaks of the “miracle" of reading and of the fact that the text's tomb and the stone
lying in front of it “not only preserve the missing dead body [Leichenleere], which must be
resuscitated, but that this stone and this tomb constitute the presence, even if hidden, of that
which must appear" (14). Other than in Ricœur, it is not the text but the reading which ascribes
character (15). It is reading that calls the literary text from death to life.
70. Pierre Burgelin. “Michelet. Jules." RGG3 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 1960) 4: 938-39. here 938.
71. Oswald Bayer. “Neuer Geist in alten Buchstaben? Eine Rede für die Stille." in idem. Neuer Geist in
alten Buchstaben (Neuendettelsau: Freimund. 1995). 9-25. here 10.
72. Bayer. “Neuer Geist." 13.
73. Cf. also Schneider-Flumes's notion of a narrative dogmatic: Gunda Schneider-Flume. Grundkurs
Dogmatik, UTB 2564 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2004). 20ff.
214 Theology Today 73(3)

Author biography
Ulrich H. J. Kortner studied Protestant theology in Bethel, Münster, and Göttingen
(1975—80). In 1982, he received his Dr. theol. from Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel
(Bielefeld/Germany). Habilitation 1987 at Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel. Since
1992, he is Professor for Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Protestant
Theology, University of Vienna. Since 2001, he is Head of the Institute for
Ethics and Law in Medicine, University of Vienna.
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