In this piece, we wish to apply the reasoning from our last article, “Doctrinal Reading,” to two different commentaries on Luke 1:35 in order to highlight the theological foundations of hermeneutics. Before doing so, recall that we discussed the real presence of dogma in Scripture. The faithful expositor of the biblical text seeks to discern doctrine in Scripture through careful study and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Not only must the expositor rely on the Spirit’s illumination of his own mind, he must also recognize the Spirit’s role in Scripture’s inspiration. The Spirit, as the efficient cause of Scripture, reveals the mind of God through the text. As such, the Spirit is the best interpreter of Scripture, which requires that we pay deference to him as the primary author by interpreting Scripture with Scripture. Finally, the expositor utilizes the analogy of faith, which is composed of the rule of faith and the rule of love. These two rules measure the results of exegesis, assist our interpretive efforts, and force us to warrant our interpretation by Scripture alone.
With these pieces in place, we can now compare two commentaries on Luke 1:35, which reads, “The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”
Commentator 1: “According to John’s Gospel, Jesus was God’s Son before creation (John 1:1–3), so that the manner of his birth would have nothing to do with his nature or being. Yet it is dangerous to read into our passage John’s teaching on preexistence, since Luke did not explicitly teach this theological concept in Luke-Acts.” Referring to Christ’s title as “The Son of God,” this author states, “The title does not demand an ontological sense of preexistence, but it allows for this.
In evaluating this evangelical commentator, we should first note the manner in which he treats human and divine authors. He distinguishes the writing and theology of Luke and John, warning against reading the theological concept of Christ’s preexistence into Luke 1:35 since he believes Luke nowhere teaches the concept. He uses Luke-Acts alone to determine the meaning of Luke 1:35. In other words, Luke’s canon interprets Luke’s texts and since John’s writings are not within Luke’s corpus, they have no theological bearing upon Luke 1:35.
But is this how the text should be read? This method of interpretation fails to do full justice to the role of the Spirit as the author and interpreter of Scripture and, in doing so, restricts Luke’s own meaning by assuming that he did not explicitly or implicitly assume John’s theology. The commentator allows Luke’s writings to establish the meaning of the text but appears reluctant to allow the Spirit’s writings to establish the meaning of the text. If we should consult the human author of Luke-Acts in order to attain a proper understanding of Luke 1:35, how much more so should we consult Genesis through Revelation in order to rightly understand the intention of the divine Author?
We affirm that the Spirit’s work in Scripture requires us to situate every verse theologically according to the intention of its primary Author. In the same way that we would allow Luke to interpret Luke-Acts, we allow the Spirit to interpret the canon of Scripture without limiting his intention to any particular book or author. Just as our first commentator would cry foul if we refused to allow Acts to illuminate our understanding of Luke, we cry foul when the Spirit’s work through the pen of John is prohibited from influencing the way we read Luke. The point is not minor. The commentator assumes that greater danger exists by reading preexistence into Luke-Acts than in leaving it out!
As an alternative, consider commentator 2: “Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. The human nature of Christ is here called a thing; for it was not a person; it never subsisted of itself, but was taken at once into union with the person of the son of God, otherwise there would be two persons in Christ, whereas he is God, and man, in one person; and it is said to be holy, being free from that original pollution and sin, in which all that descend from Adam, by ordinary generation, are conceived, and brought forth; and is, moreover, said to be born of a virgin, of thee, or out of thee. Christ’s flesh was formed out of the virgin’s; he took flesh of her; his body did not descend from heaven, or pass through her, as water through a pipe, as some heretics of old said: nor did his human nature, either as to soul or body, pre-exist his incarnation; but in the fulness of time he was made of a woman, and took a true body of her, and a reasonable soul, into union with his divine person; and therefore should be called the Son of God: not that he was now to become the son of God; he was so before his incarnation, and even from all eternity; but he was now to be manifested as such in human nature.”
Note that commentator 2, John Gill, does not read preexistence into the text as if it were a foreign concept forced upon Luke’s writing; rather, he discerns the anhypostasis/enhypostasis doctrine as taught by the Spirit, avoids Nestorianism, affirms the hypostatic union, denies the eternality of Christ’s human nature, and argues for eternal generation all from Luke 1:35. Gill’s commitment to the inspiration of Scripture obligates him to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, or, he allows the Spirit to interpret his own words without unnecessarily atomizing the text where John’s pen stops and Luke’s pen begins. This method prohibits Gill from reading his theology into the text but enables him to see the theology in the text as he uses the analogy of faith as a means of interpretation. Gill’s commentary produces a reading in accordance with classic Chalcedonian Christology by showing how to read with rule of faith in order to arrive at biblically warranted conclusions that are theologically and metaphysically rich. Such a reading reflects the organic nature of Scripture and precludes the interpreter from arriving at a conclusion that a tota Scriptura reading prohibits.
The doctrine of inspiration affects our hermeneutic because it forces us to reckon with the entire canon in order to accurately understand what the Spirit says in a particular passage. The Spirit reveals the unified thoughts of the divine mind that ground the organic nature of dogmatics. Our theological projects fall woefully short of God’s revelation when we fail to allow the Spirit’s role as interpreter to serve as our guide in each and every passage. For this reason, we interpret Scripture with Scripture and incorporate the analogy of faith as a subordinate means of interpretation because we seek the mind of God as revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through his chosen and providentially shaped instruments.