Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 39:3 (Sep 1996)
Article: "Claritas Scripturae": The Role Of Perspicuity In Protestant Hermeneutics
Author: James Patrick Callahan

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JETS 39:3 (September 1996) p. 353

Claritas Scripturae:
The Role Of Perspicuity
In Protestant Hermeneutics

James Patrick Callahan**

The affirmation claritas Scripturae has taken various and distinct shapes in the history of Protestant hermeneutics, each corresponding to the religious and intellectual climates encountered. Scripture’s clarity can be described as a protean principle in Protestant hermeneutics. It is never finally severed from the larger issues of Scriptural authority, efficacy and suffi-ciency. It is meaningless alone but is implied by a multitude of issues rooted in a Protestant concept of Scripture. 1

This paper proposes to evaluate the manner in which assertions of Scripture’s perspicuity have been presented in Protestant hermeneutics, with the actual appeals to a Protestant idea of Scripture’s clarity illustrating the complex relationship of Scriptural and hermeneutical authority. Of principal interest are the various characterizations of perspicuity by Protestants, the means employed in its defense, and the value of affirming claritas Scripturae. This is an exercise designed to test Protestant appeals to perspicuity historically rather than a retrieval or archival effort to prove an assertion of the Protestant concept of perspicuity. 2 The method employed is to be distinguished from efforts to offer exegetical or epistemic warrants in favor of Scripture’s clarity. Rather, this is an attempt to justify perspicuity historically precisely because perspicuity is grounded in a unified vision of historical and hermeneutical warrant.

I. What Is Clear About Clarity?

Protestant ideas of Scripture’s clarity were never as simple in their argumentation as Scripture itself was thought to be plain. As illustrated in Luther’s work, the appeal to perspicuity can be described in terms of its polemical context. It also introduces the inherent limitations of perspicuity within Protestant hermeneutics.

* James Callahan is visiting assistant professor of theology at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187.

JETS 39:3 (September 1996) p. 354

Luther’s encounter with Erasmus in 1524–1525 first brought the subject of perspicuity into prominence. 3 Luther objected that Erasmus projected the reader’s inability to understand Scripture on Scripture itself rather than admitting that the darkness of sin obscures the reader’s understanding. 4 Erasmus attributed to Scripture a lack of clarity when Scripture “simply confesses” certain assertions but does not explain how such doctrines...

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