Introduction and Definitions.
This is to be an in-depth, essay-length article. I shall attempt to be as concise as possible, but it is an issue for which there are very many important points to make. My method of defending the Evangelical1 doctrine of Sola Scriptura will appeal to God’s Word itself, because I think the most rhetorically powerful way to demonstrate the truth of any doctrine is to show that God Himself commands it. Under the assumption that all of my (Christian) readers believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments not only contain but are the inspired and infallible Word of God, this method should be theoretically acceptable to all, even if you don’t think I can accomplish it.
As a Lutheran I believe and confess that Sola Scriptura, properly understood, is a critical article of faith. I also believe that Sola Scriptura is a doctrine which can be argued from the Scriptures themselves. In other words, my position is that God, in His Word, tells us how He wants His Word to be used among us. This is the confessional position of the Lutheran Church:
1. First, then, we receive and embrace with our whole heart the Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel, which is the only true standard by which all teachers and doctrines are to be judged.
2. And since of old the true Christian doctrine, in a pure, sound sense, was collected from God’s Word into brief articles or chapters against the corruption of heretics, we confess, in the second place, the three Ecumenical Creeds, namely, the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian, as glorious confessions of the faith, brief, devout, and founded upon God’s Word, in which all the heresies which at that time had arisen in the Christian Church are clearly and unanswerably refuted.2
I’ve selected this excerpt from the Formula because it provides me a solid basis on which to found my explanation and defence of Sola Scriptura. In order not to commit any ‘Motte and Bailey’ fallacy, I want to clearly define the position I want to defend, defend it, and sit back down. I do not wish to be deceived into advocating a bold position and be forced to retreat to defend a more modest one. Far better to begin at the modest one and defend the Motte from the outset.
To begin with, I want to draw attention to some key notions in the above definition. Firstly, the term Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures. This means that the writings which God has inspired as His infallible Word are the writings of the Prophets and of the Apostles: the Word of the Church’s Bridegroom, penned by the shepherds He sent to guide her. These writings are rightly called the ‘pure, clear fountain of Israel’, because by them God guided and nourished His people, making known to them His salvation. Secondly, the Formula outlines Sola Scriptura as a way to understand standards by which authorities (teachers and doctrines, in this case) are judged.
Scripture’s authority is ‘norma normans’ or, the ‘ruling norm.’ The standards established by the ‘ruling norm’ are contained in God’s Word. Teachers in the Church hold authority by virtue of their ordained office, and the Word of God establishes their office such that they are subject to the standards of the ‘ruling norm’ and will be judged according to it. The Spirit, by means of the Word, guides us into all truth, which enables us to discern and recognise the truth in the testimony of our forebears in the Faith.
Hence, as the Formula declares, in the second place Lutherans receive confessions of faith, such as the Ecumenical creeds, as refutations of heresies which stand under the ‘ruling norm’ of the Word of God. Sacred tradition fits into this category. It ruled by the Word of God, and from the ruling norm it receives its normative authority. Creeds, confessions and catechisms are the ‘norma normata’, the ‘ruled norm’.
This, then, is Sola Scriptura properly understood: that we hold the Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures to be the pure, clear fountain of Israel, and the only true standard by which all teachers and doctrines are to be judged. We do not cast out extra-biblical authority and we do not teach that Christians are not subject to the authority of Church teaching. We posit a distinction between the ruling norm and the ruled norm, where all teaching authority in the Church is subject to, and receives its authority from, the written Word of God. If this conceptualisation of Sola Scriptura is ‘not what Sola Scriptura is’, then I’m afraid whatever competing conceptualisation (likely as not, a motte and bailey fallacy version) is wrong, and is incongruous with the way Lutherans (who originally posited the term as a way to understand how God instructs us to use His Word) define it.
I will now proceed to defend the hermeneutic of this concept of Sola Scriptura, before I move on to the Scriptural basis for it.
Defence of Hermeneutic.
The first relevant question is whether the Church compiled the Scriptures. If she did, does her teaching authority stand over Scripture? My position here is that the Church, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, prayerfully discerned according to the will of the Spirit the collection of the main canon of the Scriptures, which she did not author. Holy men sent by God spoke and wrote down the Word which He authored for His people, the Church, which the Church recognises in faith granted her by the Spirit.
I see essentially two main objections to Sola Scriptura in the Christian world today. Firstly, if the Scriptures were written as human expressions of the divine, a human book which we treat as a meditation on God and not the divinely-authored revelation of God, then it would follow that the Church should engage the Bible in a way which understands its faults and creates doctrine using the witness of God’s people in ancient times. There would be no presumption at all that any of the authors were infallible in everything they wrote. This is why we sometimes see Christ and St Paul pitted against one another in liberal theology.3 Under this view, the bible either merely ‘contains’ the Word of God, or it is not the Word of God at all, but the word of men about God.
On the other hand, there are the various versions of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox objection that what is contained in the Scriptures is part of the oral tradition of the Church’s teaching passed down through her ministers, the Apostles and their successors before the written Scriptures were compiled sometime around the 4th century. According to this view, tradition also contains the Word of God, and not everything needful to believe is contained in the Scriptures. The Church’s teaching authority thus interprets the Scriptures because she produced the Scriptures. Christ is the Word of God, the Scriptures are the writings of the Apostles which proclaim the Word of God, and the canon of Scripture is what the Councils of the Church decided on the authority given them to collect and recognise as the writings which proclaim the Word of God. Christ gave us a Church, not a bible.
The liberal objection to Sola Scriptura is an objection to the reality of God’s special revelation to us, and destroys the confidence faith has in the truth of our religion. I don’t wish to spend much time discussing this, perhaps another time. More relevant is the ‘Ecclesialist’ objection to Sola Scriptura, which I will discuss now.
The Scriptures are not only the writings of the Apostles. The Jews had the Law and the Prophets, the written Word of God which we now receive as the Old Testament. They understood, though not without some debate4, which books God had inspired for their instruction. Israel in the Old Covenant is the Church in the New Covenant. The deposit of the Divine revelation in the Law and Prophets was collected and safeguarded by the ancient Church, those of Israel who held to the faith of the Patriarchs and looked forward to His promised redemption. Since it’s well-attested that the documents of the New Testament were definitely written before the 3rd century, I shall omit discussing that issue for now.
Though in 2nd Thessalonians 2 St Paul exhorts his readers to hold fast to what the Apostles taught ‘either by word of mouth or by letter’5 it is problematic to posit that what was taught by word of mouth differs enough substantially from what was written to invalidate the idea that written Scripture contains everything needful (i.e. that Scripture is formally sufficient). The reason is what is written in John 21:25:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.6
Presumably, the opponents of Sola Scriptura agree that what St John means here is that what he wrote is what the Spirit inspired him to write, and that the Spirit inspired him to write these things because these are the things necessary for us to believe, in order that we may have life. The implication of this is that what was not recorded is not necessary for us to believe in order to have life, i.e. are not doctrinal matters. Therefore, whatever the Apostles taught as Apostolic doctrine by word of mouth must be identical to that which they taught by letter. If there is Apostolic doctrine which was taught by word of mouth only, then the Apostles’ teaching falls foul of the principle St John declares to us, that that which is written is written so that we might believe. Thus, the formal sufficiency of Scripture can be demonstrated on this basis. The Holy Spirit inspired the Apostles and Prophets to write that which is necessary for us to believe, and believing have life. All other traditions which derive from extra-biblical sources are not matters of faith.
With that said, I now turn to what the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostles and Prophets to write concerning His Word.
Sola Scriptura in The Old Testament.
Let’s begin at the beginning.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.7
The primacy of the Word of God is due to its sovereignty as the means by which the universe was established, the kinds which make up our universe distinguished: light, dark, day, night, dry land, wet land, waters above, waters below, etc. The Word of God came to Adam and Eve after God created them, and Adam was charged with preaching the Word to his wife Eve. As we read through Genesis and Exodus, there are many more instances in which the Word of God comes to man and man is given the duty to hear, keep, and preach it. God understands that oral tradition is unreliable, however, and in His good time introduces a better way for His revelation to be kept and learned, after He saves His people, sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who have forgotten the God of their fathers, from Egypt. The point at which the Word of God begins to become the Scripture (the writing) is here:
And he gave to Moses, when he had made an end of speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.8
God spends the majority of the latter half of the book of Exodus telling Moses what commands he is to bring to the people, and at the conclusion, when Moses descends from the mountain, God gives him two tablets with the 10 commandments, the two tables of the testimony, inscribed upon them. Thus, God Himself begins the process of the compilation of the Scriptures by first writing down His Word for His people with His own finger. He then inspired Moses to write down the sacred history of all that had happened up until his death, before Joshua led the people into the promised land of Canaan. This we call the pentateuch, or the five books of Moses, comprising the first category of the Old Testament Scripture: the Law.
The Prophets, the second category of the Old Testament which includes the sacred history from the book of Joshua onwards (including the Wisdom literature, and the major and minor Prophets themselves)9 follow this new pattern of revelation as God inspires more writings which will declare His Word to subsequent generations of His people, and promise eventual salvation by the atoning work of Christ. I will provide a few particularly indicative citations from the books of the Prophets which pick up the tradition from the books of the Law, the books of Moses. I will cite from the Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Consider these as starting places for your own search of the Scriptures.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.10
This passage sets up the contradistinction between walking in the counsel of the wicked, etc on the one hand, and delighting in and meditating on the law of the Lord day and night, on the other. That ‘day and night’ is significant. In the Psalms is mirrored the ‘evening and morning’ of creation in the various passages which speak of patterning our lives of adoration by the beginning and end of each day.11 The man is blessed who patterns his life by his daily meditation on God’s Word. Psalm 119 goes further:
How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to thy word. With my whole heart I seek thee; let me not wander from thy commandments! I have laid up thy word in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.12
Through thy precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to observe thy righteous ordinances.13
Here, we receive the exhortation to order our lives according to God’s Word, submitting everything to His commands and ordinances. No matter of faith or morals, doctrine or practice escapes the purview of God’s sovereign Word. The entire psalm is a stunningly beautiful testimony to the treasure of the revelation of God’s Word. I would say the whole Psalm is proof enough of the teaching of Sola Scriptura on its own, and I oughtn't need to cite anything else. But I’ll let you read the rest of it and decide. In the Book of Proverbs, the wisdom which comes from the Word of God is praised, as we read in Chapter 1:
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; behold, I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.14
And in Chapter 2:
For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.15
The rest of the chapter goes on to list the promises of God which come from needing the words of Wisdom, which come from His mouth, His Word. We understand from these passages that the Wisdom which comes from the mouth of God enlightens the simple, and enables understanding. We would accordingly do well to yield to God’s instruction, and hold the Word of the Teacher up as the greatest standard of truth. Finally, from the Prophets themselves:
A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people is grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever.16
What God teaches us through Isaiah here is the eternity of God’s Word compared with everything else. All else will fade and fall away, but God’s Word will define His people forever. What is true is unchanging. No heresy will outlast true doctrine which hears the Word of the Lord, and responds “Amen.” This truth will never depart from us. This we also read in Jeremiah:
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.17
The ultimate purpose of God making known to us His Word is proclaimed here in Jeremiah. We are being taught wisdom so that, when we are resurrected on the last day, and the new heavens and earth come, we will be a people who have the Word of God inscribed upon us, defining our very identity, and our obedience and love for Him will be perfect as we dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Sola Scriptura in The New Testament.
Thus now we are able to turn to the Apostolic writings: the Gospels and the Epistles. To sum up what has been shown above, I have selected this from St Luke’s Gospel:
And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.’18
The conclusion to Jesus’ story about the rich man who, having much, disobeyed God’s Word, and Lazarus who, having little, came into glory, is this sobering declaration from Abraham, that if one hears not Moses and the Prophets, no manner of miracle will serve as a testimony for them, to make them believe. The Word of God is the means by which we come to possess faith, and receive life eternal. To hear and believe is to be justified, and have your sins forgiven. Thus St Paul says:
As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.19
Referring again to the Law and the Prophets St Paul says in 2nd Timothy:
Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.20
This passage sums up his whole teaching, and as his last letter to St Timothy, it has something of a tragic note. But the main point I want to extricate here is that St Paul exhorts St Timothy to follow the example of his teaching, by telling him to continue firmly in the sacred writings he learned growing up which will make him wise for salvation, and which equip him, the man of God, for every good work. This is the spirit of Sola Scriptura expressed beautifully. The apostle to the gentiles pens his last letter to his spiritually-adopted son, and exhorts him to stand firm on the Word of God, and in everything seek guidance from the Word.
Now, before I conclude with what I believe is the ultimate expression of God’s will that the Scriptures be treated in the way I’ve spent this article describing, I think this remark from St Peter’s Second Epistle is helpful to draw attention to.
Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.21
St Peter is referring to St Paul’s letters and exhorting his readers to return to what they had been taught by St Paul, but critically, he is referring to St Paul’s writings as scripture. Secondly, he is exhorting his readers to turn to the Scriptures despite the fact that the ‘ignorant and unstable’ twist them to their own destruction. This is an important point since one often hears the objection that Sola Scriptura cannot be true, since without the authoritative interpretation of the Church to define the meaning, everyone will simply go anywhere they like with Scripture and will interpret it wrongly. St Peter doesn’t appear to share this worry. He warns us about the ‘ignorant and unstable’, who ‘twist’ the Scriptures, describing a certain disposition toward Scripture as the cause of heresy. For us, the faithful, he places the Scriptures in our hands so that we may be found by the Lord at peace, without spot or blemish.
Finally:
Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.22
If we are to understand the God-ordained pattern for marriage from this text, we have to understand the pattern of Christ’s marriage to His Church. The Church is subject to Christ. She is not above Him, she does not possess the same authority as Him, but she hears Him and responds in faith. Therefore, St Paul here expresses the ultimate argument for Sola Scriptura: it is the relationship between Christ and His bride. She hears Him say ‘Take, eat, this is My body’, and she says ‘Amen.’ She hears Him say ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’, and she obeys. We are to ‘take every thought captive to obey Christ’23 by subjecting everything to what our Bridegroom has told us, and wait for Him to return and reveal the fullness of the eternal truth, goodness, and beauty He has declared to us.
Everything the Church preaches and teaches is what she has heard from Him. She speaks no further than He has spoken, she speculates no further than His Word allows. If any teacher in the Church teaches strange doctrine, Christians are to hold his words to the Divine Words, and let him be ruled by them. In this way, the New and Better Adam redeems the first Adam who listened to the voice of his wife, and the rebellious bride Eve is redeemed in the holy bride the Church, who submits to the Word of her Bridegroom. The pure, clear, fountain of Israel, the Holy Word of God declared by the Prophets’ and Apostles’ teaching, is therefore the sole supreme ‘ruling norm’ over all matters of doctrine and practice in the Church.
Wednesday Evening
Heavenly Father, as I come to the close of this day, I bow my head to receive Your benediction, eternal caretaker of my body and soul. Shut out all sins that would cling to me, and wash me in Christ’s precious blood from all my iniquities. Remove the worries and the cares of the day, and fill my soul with contentment and peace. Enter in and take full possession of my heart, that, standing in Your grace, I may be faithful, trusting, and forgiving. Watch over me and over all Your own during this coming night, and preserve our homes from danger and destruction. Bless all Your children, and let Your divine presence give strength to the sick and consolation to the suffering. I ask this of You as my Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ, my Saviour and Redeemer. Amen. (25)
Evangelical in the historic sense, the doctrine of the reformed Western Church, purified with the true Gospel.
Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Comprehensive Summary
As an aside, ‘liberal’ is the best term for such doctrine. They are too ‘free’ with their interpretations, and instead of being constrained by the Word of God, they assert themselves over it and refuse the responsibility of obeying it.
Debate over the canon persisted for some time, and there are various views on the canonical status of certain books throughout Church history.
2 Thess. 2:15 (RSV)
John 20:30–31 (RSV)
Genesis 1:1–5 (RSV)
Exodus 31:18 (RSV)
The sacred histories following the five books of Moses here are considered among the ‘prophets’
Psalm 1:1–2 (RSV)
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to thy name, O Most High; to declare thy steadfast love in the morning, and thy faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. (Psalm 92:4 RSV)
Psalm 119:9–11 (RSV)
Psalm 119:104–106 (RSV)
Proverbs 1:22–23 (RSV)
Proverbs 2:6 (RSV)
Isaiah 40:6–8 (RSV)
Jeremiah 31:33 (RSV)
Luke 16:27–31 (RSV)
Romans 10:15–17 (RSV)
2 Timothy 3:10–17 (RSV)
2 Peter 3:14–16 (RSV)
Ephesians 5:22–27 (RSV)
2 Corinthians 10:5 (RSV)
lots to object to here but i also learned much as well. looking forward to your next post....
Even thought I adhere to sola scriptura, I have not studied the topic, let alone a systematic defense of it. This essay served as a nice introduction for me that I will dive further into. Thank you. If you don't already plan on it, an essay offering defeaters for the Catholic's oppositional position would be a nice follow-up. (: