The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin by Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg

Author:Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

BIBLICAL HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION

Luther’s new understanding of the Pauline doctrine of salvation was not based on any textual correction made by the humanists. Nevertheless, his and Melanchthon’s attacks on the scholastic understanding of justification would readily be associated with the humanists’ criticism of theological authority, just as some humanists at first welcomed Luther’s anti-scholastic stance. Overall, biblical humanists seem to have been no more disposed to convert to Protestantism than to remain Catholic, however much the humanistic emphasis on the purified text of scripture—from the Hebrew and Greek originals to faithful translations—mutated into the reformers’ attack on unwritten verities and their demands for untrammeled access to the Word of God. Humanistic influence on Protestant exegesis and theology varied: Bucer’s (Strasbourg) and Zwingli’s (Switzerland) emphasis on the ethical (tropological) sense of scripture shows greater Erasmian influence than is evident in Luther’s primary concern with the nature of Christ’s sacrifice and what is imputed to believers through faith (McGrath 2012, 106). Zwingli’s humanistic training informed his analysis of rhetorical figures of speech, especially alloiosis (“alteration”), synecdoche, and, as in the following example, catachresis, a figure of abuse. At Matthew 26.26, as Aramaic lacks the copulative verb (“to be”), Zwingli could renegotiate the relationship between “This” and “my body” as “signifies” rather than “is”—equivalence rather than identity—to argue for the commemoration of the historical event of Christ’s sacrifice in the sacrament and thus against transubstantiation (Rex 2000, 63; McGrath 2012, 181–82).

For religious reformers, philology served theological needs, and the Fathers were judged according to their conformity to evangelical doctrine. Melanchthon’s application of rhetorical analysis to biblical texts, although originating in humanistic training, sought to define “the principal topics of Christian teaching” chiefly from scripture to displace the scholastics’ “theological hallucinations.” Erasmus had developed the idea of commonplacing the key phrases and sentences from scripture under a set of headings (loci theologici), little nests for the fruits of reading, as he termed them. Melanchthon radically transformed Erasmus’s idea of “theological topics” in his lecturing on Romans in 1519 and 1521, which resulted in the first evangelical systematic theology, Loci communes theologici (Theological Commonplaces, 1521). Rather than dispersing biblical texts under topical headings, Melanchthon interpreted Romans as Paul’s writing in a new literary form, which Melanchthon dubbed the genus didacticum (“didactic genre”). This radically reorientated how the work should be read: for Melanchthon, Paul’s scopus (“goal”) of justification without merit or works determines the book’s structure and language for the persuasive teaching of this doctrine. Melanchthon therefore extolled Paul’s letter, essentially on theological grounds, as rhetorically and dialectically excellent, whereas Erasmus preferred to paraphrase Paul’s off-putting style to make it more attractive and accessible to “pure Romans and adult Christians” (CWE 4:195–99). The Reformation thus confessionalized the energies and talents previously expended in humanist-scholastic skirmishes, drawing them into the imperatives of Catholic and Protestant doctrine and church discipline. Melchor Cano’s highly influential De locis theologicis (On Theological Topics, 1563) in turn defended Catholic scholasticism and eschewed eloquence (Rummel 1995, 82), but also required engagement

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