Christians with their Bible in hand, in mouth and ear, on scroll, codex, leather-bond or scrolling again across the screen, have always been concerned with interpretation. Claritas Scripturae, the efficaciousness or sufficiency of scripture to communicate its message to the people of God via the Holy Spirit, was one of the clarion calls of the Protestant Reformation, but it need not nor should be a call to either a closed interpretation by one group or, worse, by one person. A Christian catholicity is always gathered at the communion table of ecumenism, trusting that the clarity of the Bible fully speaks and guides our differing tradition-shaped hermeneutics, but this promise never deifies our traditions or their shared, often troubled ecclesial history.
Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin used the term claritas to argue that scripture was not the custody of only the church elite but could be read and understood by all Christians. This was a rich insight, for it freed up whole generations of Christians to more directly encounter God's Word. Before many had only received it in mediated forms through sermon, play, and visual art, and there is much to be said for this, but there is also a particular power in having access to the texts yourself, at least in translation. Unfortunately, this call for clarity was abused by some who used it to suggest that readers of scripture could safely ignore the gifts of scholarship, as well as the teaching of other Christians. Some went so far as to believe that a Christian's personal understanding of scripture was not open to any external test or gauge of its validity. This was a radical individualism that the Reformers were shocked by.
Luther and Calvin did not understand the clarity of scripture to suggest that it was not in need of interpretation but that it was sufficient for God's purposes and that scripture possessed the resources aided by the Spirit to test the fallible understanding of each generation of the church. Indeed, scripture as the instrument of the Spirit could act as a corrector and refiner of received understanding. This is why the public reading and preaching of scripture in corporate worship is so essential. That corrective is mediated via the community of interpreters, the church as the people of God, the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Spirit. Scripture is not the sole trust of any one class of Christians, and as such, it is therefore best understood by bringing together the insights of the larger people of God. This claritas does not deny the need for tradition as the bed in which our readings lie nor does it mean to discount that Christo-typological reading which shapes and collects the Canon.
Scripture carries a certain authority and perfection that no other text has. It therefore has a uniqueness that sets it apart in vital ways from other works. God's Word is without fault, while human works always carry some fault line of error. God's speech is always the prophetic pouring forth of his divine love; Revelation is an act of divine beauty and grace. And the love that dwells in perichoresis is found in words and images. The Son is the eternal Logos of the Father, and the Holy Spirit continually teaches us that Word in the apostolic testimony.
Yet scripture also shares a human element with other words. The clarity of scripture reminds us that human texts are best understood in a community of interpreters with a tradition and a history of reception. We need multiple counsel to explicate meaning, and that counsel is more than our contemporary debates. We learn with the Christian dead, the communio sanctorum (“the communion of saints”), by subjecting our interpretation to the history of interpretation. Equally, scripture's clarity also reminds us that texts are partially independent of our understanding of them, even as they are taught in a history of professional and readerly reception.
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