Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Irena Backus on Luther's Attitude Toward Different Types of Prophecy

  

In his 1530 preface (WA Deutsche Bibel 7, in Martin Luther, D. Martin Luther’s Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe [Wimar, 1883-], 406-408), Luther took the self-evident prophecy (or revelation), or one needing no interpretation, to be the superior. In this category, he placed the prophets’ revelations of the coming of Christ. The second, inferior, type of prophecy is one requiring interpretation such as Daniel’s dream), with the prophet himself providing it. The third, very inferior, type of prophecy is one which is not self-evident and for which the prophet does not provide any interpretation. In this last category, he placed the Apocalypse. (Irena Backus, Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 151 n. 24)