CLEAR OR OBSCURE? It is no exaggeration to say that the sixteenth-century Reformation was, at bottom, a hermeneutical revolution. Luther’s meeting with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg in 1518 developed into a discussion of Unigenitus (a papal bull published in 1343), which asserted the notion of a treasury of merits. In response Luther wrote a statement in which he refused “to discard so many important clear proofs of Scripture on account of a
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