“Exploring Meaning by Scripture” and “Sola Scriptura”

Abstract: “Exploring meaning by Scripture (Confucian canonical texts)” is a challenging hermeneutical method and proposition in the Chinese “Exegetical Reformation” of the Song Dynasty, as well as “sola Scriptura” in the Western “Reformation”. Rejecting the overinterpretation and contradiction of their respective exegetical tradition, both Ouyang Xiu and Martin Luther take it as their responsibility to champion or reaffirm the “authority of Scripture”, which leads them all to choose the exegetical strategy of “Scripture is clear”. In the specific operation of interpretation, the two exegetical reformers also resist “the four fold sense” of their respective exegetics by appeal to some simple “original meaning”. However, due to the “precedence” of this original meaning and its internal “duality”—the Sage’s ideal/the poets’ intention, spirit/letter, “exploring meaning by Scripture” and “sola Scriptura” are reversed to “exploring Scripture by meaning” in the hermeneutic circle of faith and understanding.