Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers tried to combat Catholic exaltation of tradition to a status equal or superior to Scripture. (The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Canon of the New Testament by Milton C. Fisher. Pages 67.)
Beliefs
All things were being reexamined, so some Reformers sought means of reassuring the canon of Scripture. Unfortunately for them, once God had determined for his people the fixed content of Scripture, that became a fact of history and was not a repeatable process. Nevertheless, Luther established a theological test for books: "Do they teach Christ?" Equally subjective was Calvin's insistence the Spirit of God bears witness to each individual Christian in any age of church history as to what is his Word and what is not. This reduces canonicity to an intuitive process, not one of obedience to God in accepting the inspiration of Scripture.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Canon of the New Testament by Milton C. Fisher. Pages 76.)
Justification by faith is a theological doctrine that had to be enunciated at the time of the Reformation.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Canon of the New Testament by Milton C. Fisher. Pages 67.)
In the patristic period, the inspiration of the Apocrypha of the Greek and Latin Bibles was uncertain. During the Reformation, the church of Rome insisted the Apocrypha was Old Testament, while the Protestant churches denied it. The Church of England includes it in its lectionary (example of life but not to establish doctrine). The Eastern Orthodox Church was divided but has recently tended more to the Protestant side.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. Page 51-52.)
Augustine's literary approach to the Bible, the dominant view during this time period
Augustine's approach is defined in On Christian Doctrine IV, 6-7. It's narrow, only analyzing rhetoric or style.
- He asserted the writers of the Bible followed the ordinary rules of classical rhetoric. He explicated passages from Amos and the Epistles to prove the Bible can be compared to familiar literature.
- He admired the eloquence and beauty of the Bible as having inherent value.
- He foreshadowed a cornerstone of modern literary theory when he claimed that the style of the Bible is inseparable from the message that it expresses
- For all his enthusiasm over the literary eloquence of the Bible, he showed an uneasiness about viewing the Bible as being totally similar to other literature, claiming, for example, that the eloquence of the Bible was not "composed by man's art and care" but instead flowed "from the Divine mind."
Though he had a minority opinion among church fathers, his view became the majority opinion during the Renaissance and Reformation and was expanded to champion a many-sided literary inquiry into both the content and form of the Bible. Exegetes (Luther, Calvin, and the Puritans) and writers of imaginative literature alike analyzed the Bible as literature.
Writers were motivated to form a Christian defense of imaginative literature. Sir Philip Sydney's Apology for Poetry is a typical example. He appealed to the concreteness or "figuring forth" of human experience in the Bible, as well as emphasizing the importance of literary genres and figurative language in the Bible.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. The Bible as Literature by Leland Ryken, Page 114-115)
Figures
History
After the Reformation, rationalism arose.
(The Origin of the Bible: Newly Updated by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip W. Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry, 2020. THe Inerrancy and Infallibility of the Bible by Harold O. J. Brown. Pages 43.)