Scripture Alone

The Bible says that all men are liars, and I’m afraid that I verified the truth of that, at least in terms of its application to myself in our last session because I concluded our last session by saying, “From now on, we were only going to consider the distinctives of reformed theology,” and the next two sessions we’re going to be studying the doctrine [sic] of sola scriptura and sola fide, which I’ve already told you are critical doctrines held in common by the evangelicals and their traditions, and so: I lied.  But I didn’t lie intentionally, but I was mistaken.  I don’t want to leave you with the impression that the doctrine of sola scriptura is a distinctly or uniquely reformed theological principle.  It is part of that body of truth that we share in common with historical evangelicalism. 

But having said that, let’s look then at this principle that historians call the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura.  In one sense, this concept was born publicly in Luther’s famous confrontation with the rulers of the State and the Church at the Diet of Worms, whereupon Luther was called to recant of his teaching, and you recall on that occasion when he stood at this solemn place, he said, “Unless I am convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason, I cannot recant, for my conscience is held captive by the Word of God.  And to act against conscience,” said Luther, “is neither right nor safe.  Here I stand, God help me.” 

Now that’s been memorialized in motion picture lore and in the history books and so on.  But though this was the public debut in a historic sense at Worms, it was not a new concept with Luther.  Luther had been more or less forced to say this in earlier debates with some of the theologians that were trying to persuade him to change his views, where he earlier had said that it was possible for popes to err, to make mistakes, and even for church councils to make mistakes, but the only absolutely authoritative written source of divine revelation is the Scripture itself. 

And so we get this word sola that we place before the word scriptura and the phrase simply means “by the Scripture alone.”  Well what does this mean?  What is the, the vantage point that we’re concerned about here with the use of this term “alone”?  Well actually, there’s more than one consideration though they’re all interrelated.  In the first instance, one of the disputes at the 16^th century level was the question of the SOURCE of divine revelation.  All Christians in the 16^th century believed that Christianity is a revealed faith, that its content comes from God.  And both sides of the dispute, Rome and Protestantism in the 16^th century, agreed that there were at least two distinct places where God gives revelation of Himself.  One is in nature, which is called natural revelation or general revelation, whereby the heavens declare the glory of God, and the other, of course, is the Bible.  Now both sides agreed that the Bible was revelation.  And both sides agreed that nature is also revelatory.  But the dispute over the “alone” was whether there was more than one source of what we call “special revelation.”  And the Protestant movement said there is only ONE SOURCE of what is called special or written revelation and that is Scripture, where Rome confessed its confidence in TWO SOURCES of special revelation: Scripture and tradition.  I’ve gone over this in other courses, but I want to review the bidding on it now for the context of this study of the essence of reformed theology.

At the Council of Trent, in the 16^th century, which was the Roman Catholic Church’s response to Luther and to Protestantism, the Council was held in different sessions, at different times, spread out over a few years.  And at the fourth session of the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church declared that the truths of God are found in the Scripture AND in tradition.  And the Latin word that is in the final text of the Council of Trent that links Scripture and tradition is the somewhat innocuous simple Latin word et, which I used to think when I listened to my grandmother, was the past tense of the verb, to eat., because she would say, “Have you et your supper?”  But that is not, that is simply the Latin word for “and”.  Well, this is a complicated discussion, because an Anglican scholar in the 20^th century was doing his research for his doctoral dissertation and he was focusing on this fourth session of the Council of Trent, which session ended unexpectedly and abruptly because of the outbreak of war on the continent.  And there were some loose ends left dangling and some difficult things to explain from the discussions that went on at that time.  And what this Anglican scholar noted was that in the first draft of the fourth session of the Council of Trent, the statement was made in Latin that the truth of God is contained partly, parting, PARTLY in Scripture and PARTLY in tradition.  Partly in Scripture, partly in tradition, which would indicate clearly that there were two separate, distinct sources for the Church’s doctrine: one from the Bible, and the other from the historic tradition of the Church. 

Now when that first draft was presented to the Council, two priests who were delegates to the Council stood up and protested the language.  I don’t know why I remember their names, but their names were Bonuccio and Nacchionti.  These two Italian priests protested this language saying that it undermined the sufficiency of Scripture.  And there the record stops.  And we don’t know what then transpired in the further debates about their objections.  All we know is that the final draft exhibited a change, and the words partim partim, which CLEARLY taught a dual source of special revelation, were crossed out, and in their place was the word et, which may or may not mean two separate sources.  The use of the word “and” here is a little bit ambiguous, isn’t it?  Because if you said to me, “Where would you find the reformed faith?”  I would say, “Well you can find it two places.  You can find it in the Bible, or you can look at the confessions that appear in Church history that try to give a summary of the reformed doctrine, that insofar as those creeds are consistent with the Bible, they are repeating it, and it’s just another place that you could go to find it.  And so the Church MAY have meant simply to say that we find the truth of God first of all in Scripture, and then as it is RE-presented to us in the historic councils or the decrees of the Church, that’s the other place you can look. Which somebody could say, and still hold to sola scriptura.  And now that debate continues to this day among contemporary Roman Catholic scholars as to whether their Church is committed to TWO sources or one.  Unfortunately, there are those conservatives in the Church who said that the change from partim partim to et was not a substantive change, but merely a stylistic change, and that the Church clearly WAS meaning to affirm in the 16^th century TWO sources of written revelation. 

Now that debate, though it continues, was more or less settled a papal encyclical of the 20^th century which UNAMBIGUOUSLY refers to the TWO sources of revelation.  And that has been the mainstream of thinking within the Roman Church since the 16^th century, that truths that are founded in the tradition of the Church are just as binding upon the consciences of believers as the truths of Scripture.  Whereas in Protestant heritage, the principle of semper reformanda is, is embraced by virtually all Protestants.  That is, that the Church is ALWAYS called to undergo reformation, and ALWAYS called to check her own creeds and confessions to make sure that they are in conformity to sacred Scripture.  And virtually every Protestant Church that HAS a creed or confession that is unique to their communion will go to great pains to say that their own confessions are not infallible and do not carry the weight of Scripture except insofar as they faithfully reproduce the doctrines of the Scripture.  Because the overarching principle is affirmed, namely, that the Bible ALONE is that written source that has the authority of God Himself, the authority to bind our consciences absolutely.  And though we are called to be submissive to lesser authorities, and respectful of other authorities, in my own church I’m called to submit to the authority of the presbytery or to the session of the local church.  There are all kinds of levels of authority.  And, and I’m told that if I find in conscience I can no longer genuinely submit, then it is my DUTY to withdraw from that communion peaceably.  But otherwise, I’m not to disturb the peace of the Church by acting in direct conflict to the confessions or the government of the Church.  And yet at the same time the Church says, “We know our confessions could be wrong, and some of the ordinances of our church are POSSIBLY in-, incorrect, but this is what we believe to be the true [sic] and as long as you’re going to serve here, you have this obligation to submit to us.  Not that sola scriptura eliminates other authorities, but what it says is there’s only ONE authority that can ABSOLUTELY bind the conscience and that authority is sacred Scripture, and that ALL CONTROVERSIES over doctrine and theology must be settled, in the final analysis, by SCRIPTURE. 

Now, there are other aspects, as I said, about this sola besides this business of being the only SOURCE of written revelation, and second, the only authority that can bind absolutely, but not the only authority at all, but also involved in this affirmation in the 16^th century, was a clear affirmation that the Bible is the vox Dei, or the verbum Dei.  The Word of God, or the Voice of God being infallible and inerrant because it comes to us by the superintendence of God the Holy Spirit; that the Bible is inspired in the sense that its Author ultimately is God, even though it is transmitted through human writers.  The ultimate SOURCE of its truth and of its content comes from God, and God, of course, is infallible.  Human writers, in and of themselves, are fallible.  But the view of historic Protestantism WAS that God so assisted the weaknesses of our fallen humanity as to preserve the Bible from the corruption that one would normally expect to find from the writings of human beings BY HIS DIVINE SUPERINTENDENCE and by the special ministry of the Holy Spirit.  And so that even though the Bible comes to us in human words and by human authors, it is considered to be of divine origin. 

Now I realize that in light of the dispute in our own day over the infallibility of the Scripture and the inspiration of the Scripture, and the inerrancy of the Scripture - words that have engendered all KINDS of theological controversy - there have been those that have protested loudly that the very idea of and infallible or an inerrant Scripture was not something that was taught and embraced by the magisterial reformers of the 16^th century, but was the result of the intrusion of a kind of Protestant scholasticism that came to pass in the 17^th century, which is called the “Age of Reason,” where these rationalists were so concerned about certainty, that they had almost a psychological or emotional need for certainty to such a degree that they invented this concept of inerrancy and infallibility.  Well now that question directly is not a question of whether the Bible IS infallible, it’s a question of WHERE the doctrine came from.  It’s a historical question.  Is this something that was invented in the 17^th century or in the 16^th century? 

Let me take a few moments to just read a few quotes to you from the magisterial reformers of the 16^th century and let you decide for yourself.  Here are a few observations that come from the pen of Martin Luther.  Luther says this, quote:  “The Holy Spirit Himself, and God, the Creator of all things, is the Author of this book.”

Another quote: “Scripture, although also written of men, is not OF men, nor FROM men, but from God.”

Again, “He who would not read these stories in vain must firmly hold that Holy Scripture is not human, but divine wisdom.” 

Again: “The Word must stand, for God cannot lie, and heaven and earth must go to ruins before the most insignificant letter or title of His Word remains unfulfilled.”

And then he cites Augustine, saying Augustine says in his letter to St. Jerome, quote: “I have learned to hold ONLY the Holy Scripture inerrant.”

Now that’s not Luther quoting a 17^th century scholar, that’s Luther quoting Augustine from the end of the 4^th century, where Augustine says, “I have learned  to  hold ONLY the Scripture inerrant.”

Again, he says in the books of St. Augustine, “One finds many passages in which flesh and blood have spoken.  And concerning myself I must also confess that when I talk apart from the ministry, at home, at table, or elsewhere, I speak many words that are not God’s Word.”  That is why Augustine, in a letter to Jerome, has put down a fine axiom the, that only Holy Scripture is to be considered inerrant. 

So we see that Luther hardly hedges.  Another passage I could quote from Luther in which he says, “The Scriptures NEVER ERR.” 

Now I don’t know that Luther ever used the word “inerrancy,” he just used the word “inerrant” and said that the Bible never errs, which is the very essence of the concept of inerrancy.  So I think it’s a fool’s errand to try to argue that the reformers of the 16^th century were strangers and foreigners to the idea of the inspiration of and the authority and the infallibility and the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture. 

But one of the other important points of sola scriptura in the 16^th century which has become a very important principle for historic evangelicalism was a hermeneutical principle.  Now the Scriptures, now the reformers not only confessed their view of what the Scriptures ARE and where they came from, but they also expressed their views on HOW the Bible is to be interpreted and WHO has the right and responsibility to read it.  One of the radical things that happened in the Reformation was the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, taking it OUT of the hands of those who were able to read Latin and/or Greek or Hebrew and putting [sic] it into the hands of people who could only read their native tongues.  As Luther translated the Bible into German, and Wycliffe translated the Bible into England, English, and so on, and in some cases the people who did that paid for it with their lives, because the principle that was asserted in historic evangelicalism was the principle, first of all, of private interpretation, meaning that every Christian has the right and the responsibility to read the Bible for themselves.  And they have the right to INTERPRET for themselves.  Now that was heard by Rome, as witnessed in the 4^th session of Trent, to mean that the Protestants were giving license to the rank and file church member not only to READ the Bible for themselves, but to distort it at will.  And of course, the reformers were horrified at that idea.  They said every Christian has the right to interpret the Bible for themselves, but NO Christian has the right to misinterpret it or to distort it according to their own whims or their own prejudices.   But the principle of private interpretation was based upon an, another principle, which was the principle of the perspicuity of Scripture, which is a three-dollar word for “clarity.” 

Now Luther said there are MANY parts of Scripture that are difficult to handle, that’s why we NEED teachers in the Church, and the commentaries and all of that, but that the BASIC MESSAGE, THAT message that is necessary for a person to understand and grasp is plain for any person to see.  And when, when Luther talked about giving the Bible to the, to the laity the Church said, “If you do that, that’ll open up a floodgate of iniquity because people will start creating all kinds of horrible distortions.”  Which is exactly what happened.  But Luther said, “If that is the case, and IF a floodgate of iniquity is opened by opening the pages of the Bible to people, so be it, but the message that IS clear is so important.  It contains the message of our salvation.  It is so important and so clear that we’ll take the risks of all of the distortions and all of the heresies that go with that to make sure that the central message of Scripture is heard.”  And as a result of this affirmation of sola scriptura, the Bible was put into the Church.  And the reading of the Scriptures and the preaching from the Scriptures became central to the liturgy and to the worship of historic Protestants.

(using some fragments of RC Sproul dissertation on Sola Scriptura)*