It is, however, clear that at least a few key texts are essential to understanding Luther (e.g., Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, Hebrews 10:38, all of which refer to Habakkuk 2:4; or Ephesians 2:8-9). But it is also clear that no one text in Scripture will capture God’s totality or will encapsulate His entire plan of salvation.
One of the many texts which is key to understanding Luther is Hebrews 4:12 — “The Word of God is living and active.”
Luther’s linguistic insight is that the Hebrew word dabar and the Greek word logos have semantic fields which extend far beyond the German Wort or the English word. The word ‘word’ is a complicated word!
The Hebrew word dabar can mean, simply, ‘word’ — a linguistic unit. But its semantic field is far greater than this. It can mean: situation, event, activity, circumstance, or a group or cluster of related things. It is rendered into English in a wide variety of ways, again going beyond the simple word ‘word.’
It is therefore appropriate that Luther’s writings about The Word are confusing, as Frank Seilhamer notes:
Luther means so many different things when he uses the term “Word of God” that at times he may seem confused, as well as confusing. Depending on the context in which he is writing, “Word of God” may refer to anything from the Bible, to the whole of divine revelation, and the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, to the apostolic Kerygma, the preached Gospel, the Sacraments, or the advice given by a brother monk. Basically, however, in its deepest sense the “Word of God” is the creative, redemptive activity of God, who is constantly at work revealing himself to man, calling him to repentance and faith. As was true for the ancient Semites, for Luther the “Word” is nothing other than God himself at work with the two-fold purpose of redemption and revelation. The “Word” found, and continually finds, expression in the historic sense in concrete acts of God in the created world, and in concrete events in human history.
Likewise, the Greek word logos means ‘word’ and beyond that can refer to discourse or conversation as a rational process. Logos can also refer to a organizing principle.
As a scholar who was intimately acquainted with both Greek and Hebrew, Luther understood that word in the Scriptures refers often to something deeper and more significant than a linguistic unit, as Frank Seilhamer explains:
The “Word,” as Luther comprehends it, is the dynamic activity of the living God. The “Word” is God actively engaged in “speaking” to his creation. “The ‘Word of God’ is the speech of God,” writes Jaroslav Pelikan, “ and ‘the God who speaks’ would be an appropriate way to summarize Luther’s picture of God.” As Luther so vigorously points out, the God of all creation is not a God of isolation, who exists far off, but is a God who is near. He is a God who by nature wants to “speak,” is able to “speak,” and who is never “speechless.” And when he “speaks” it is not just sounds that he utters. In a “good” Hebraic framework, Luther held that in his “speaking” God himself is present in his “Word.” The “Word” of God is as eternal as God himself. “This voice and eternal speech of God (is) the cosmic sense of the term the ‘Word of God.’”
The implications for the reader are that, when reading Scripture, words like ‘thing, matter, activity’ and many others should be examined to see if they are English renderings of dabar. The phrase ‘The Word of the Lord’ turns out to be a phrase of expansive depth and breadth, and God’s ‘word’ is present, “living and active” in many passages of Scripture which do not contain the English word word.
When the Scriptures speak of the ‘word’ of God, they speak not only of His linguistic activity, but His presence and interaction in all of creation. This observation is not the conclusion of a thought, but rather merely the beginning of the task of reading the totality of Scripture with an eye to the underlying dabar or logos.
