Christianity Today

Last Fall, InterVarsity Press launched its new Reformation Commentary on Scripture (RCS) as a follow-up to the landmark Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. They selected historical theologian and Beeson Divinity School dean Timothy George to serve as general editor. Christianity Today editor in chief David Neff interviewed George, who also serves as a columnist and theological adviser to CT, about the Reformers' continuing relevance.

In your introductory volume to the RCS, Reading Scripture with the Reformers, you talk about the superiority of pre-critical exegesis. What really makes that better than how we interpret the Bible today?

Much good can be gleaned from a critical study of the Bible, but sometimes it comes with blinders. When we study the ancients, the Medievals, and the Reformers, it lifts off the blinders and puts us in touch with a wider community of discourse.

When we today think about reading the Bible contextually, we want to hear from different communities: from women, from different ethnic groups, from global voices. That gives us a wide range. Pre-critical exegesis brings in the wider community that we need chronologically in order to get a balanced understanding of Scripture.

Unlike post-critical exegesis, pre-critical exegesis is done in the context of and for the sake of the community of faith. It's churchly exegesis that puts us in touch with the life of prayer, the great doctrines of the faith, the catechetical tradition of the church, and the liturgy of the church, and it helps us to see Scripture as part of that whole.

There are obviously still people trying to do that, but the discourse that informs biblical studies at most modern academic conferences cares very little about this.

The magisterial Reformers both taught the faith and preached it.

Exactly. There was a symbiotic relationship between what they preached and what they wrote in their commentaries. The Reformation was a preaching movement. They did what they did to advance the proclamation of the Word of God. Their commentaries on Scripture were not simply to be read for personal edification or even for the sake of knowledge. It was so the gospel of Christ would be proclaimed to all of God's people.

Some say the Reformation as a historical movement is not as relevant to us as it once was. You yourself have been deeply involved in Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Evangelical historian Mark Noll wrote Is the Reformation Over? Just what is over, and what is the unfinished business?

In endorsing Noll's book, I said that the Reformation is over only to the extent that it has succeeded. And it has succeeded in bringing change to both sides of that 16th-century divide. Back in the 16th century, the two sides shared in common the written Word of God. They had different interpretive patterns. We shouldn't minimize that. But in that pre-critical world, what they shared, often as unspoken assumptions, was far greater than the issues that divided them. So in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture, we include Catholic authors from before the Council of Trent.

We have too much material for the RCS. So we had to draw the line. We're not getting into the exegetical controversies during and after the Council of Trent. But we do include the early Catholic reformers, many of whom were commentators on Scripture. People like Cajetan, for example, whom Luther opposed at Augsburg. After that encounter, the great Thomist theologian gave the rest of his life to writing biblical commentaries. Many of his commentaries even show a similar perspective on some of the doctrinal matters to what was promoted in Wittenberg, Strasburg, and Zurich. The lines aren't neat and tidy when you read the Reformation through the lens of Scripture commentaries. That's one of the benefits of this study for ecumenism.

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