Sola Scriptura

I have said much about why I have been uncomfortable with the path Protestantism has taken, particularly in the last century or so. But I do not wish to be unclear. I remain "Protestant" in many ways. And I should be clear about some things I still cling to from my Protestant heritage. One is the authority of scripture.

I am always curious about the assertion of apologists for Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism that the Protestant conception of Sola Scriptura is a rationalist invention of independent radicals Reformers in the 16th century, with no basis in scripture or church history.

On the one hand I sympathize. Liberal Protestantism has, on the one hand, turned the scripture into a pliable document which has been twisted to support virtually every faddish political cause of the 20th century, not the least of which are condoning abortion and endorsing ordination of practicing homosexuals. On the other hand, many Evangelicals, particularly during the New Age era, were content to use the scriptures as a sort of sanctified ouija board, gleaning subjective "personal" guidance from obscure passages with no regard whatsoever for grammar, syntax, context, historical background or any sense of the history of the church's long understanding. Today scripture is often seen as a self-help text from which only "positive" messages can be harvested leaving the husks of the hard sayings of scripture behind.

But to say, as many advocates of the primacy of "tradition" do, that the Bible was a product of the church, is a bit of an exaggeration, to say the least. And to say that the history of the church had no conception of scripture being an ultimate authority by which all else should be judged simply ignores evidence to the contrary, exhibit A being the very word "canon".

The term canon means measuring rod. In saying scripture is the canon the early church established a standard of teaching by which all other teaching must be judged. What the reformers, for all their faults and excesses, had in mind was simply to allow the canon to be the canon.

Lest I neglect to offer at least a bit of support for this contention, I should quote scripture itself to start. Deuteronomy 30:10 is just one Old Testament example of the typically Jewish understanding that written scripture has a unique authority, saying, "if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul." It should be clear to anyone who reads scripture that the authority of written revelation is assumed from cover to cover.

Jesus constantly argued with the Pharisees, the advocates of "tradition" of his day, by quoting scripture. "It is written" is his constant refrain. He chides them, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me," (John 5:39) I do not think Jesus meant to totally discredit tradition, that is, the "passing down" of truth from one generation to the next, but he said much about scripture in a way that acted as a check on abuses of tradition, which were rampant in Jewish Pharasaism.

Paul clearly articulates the concept of a "canon" in 1 Cor 4:6, "Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written. Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.' So written documents clearly are authoritative and are intended as a limit on subsequent teaching.

For those who need patristic evidence, I could quote Cyril from the fourth century:

"For concerning the divine and sacred Mysteries of the Faith, we ought not to deliver even the most casual remark without the Holy Scriptures: nor be drawn aside by mere probabilities and the artifices of argument. Do not then believe me because I tell thee these things, unless thou receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of what is set forth: for this salvation, which is of our faith, is not by ingenious reasonings, but by proof from the Holy Scriptures." (The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril 4.17)

Gregory of Nyssa, also in the 4th century articulates the concept of scripture as canon: " ...we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet (dogma); we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings." (Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Peabody: Hendrikson, 1995), Second Series: Volume V, Philosophical Works, On the Soul And the Resurrection, p. 439). Gregory of Nyssa

And Athanasius seems perilously close to arguing for a supposedly "modern" concept of inerrancy: "We, however, who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to the merest stroke and tittle, will never admit the impious assertion that even the smallest matters were dealt with haphazard by those who have recorded them, and have thus been borne in mind to the present day." (Athanasius, Orations 11.105)

Augustine bluntly points out that the writings of the fathers, though valuable, are in no way equal to scripture. "As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises ...Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. ...In the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as in Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself. (Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, book 11.5)

When the Reformers looked at what they believed to be significant changes in the understanding of the Eucharist, the novel additions of teachings on Purgatory, indulgences, and excesses in ecclesiastical authority, they argued simply that the canon should be the canon, that scripture should be the measuring rod by which those teachings should be evaluated. They were doing exactly what the Bereans were commended for in Acts 17. "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true."

Converts and apologists for Orthodox and Catholic traditions are correct to point out the excesses of Protestant abuse of scripture (which began almost immediately after the start of the Reformation). They are not correct to blame the excesses on Sola Scriptura itself. Sola Scriptura is simply a restatement of what the church had laid down as a standard in the fourth century, that Scripture is the Canon, the measuring rod.

Rather than tear down Sola Scriptura, I would wish that Roman Catholic advocates of Holy Tradition would heed the words of Vatican II document Dei Verbum a bit more closely, "This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed." (Dei Verbum 2)

The Pope formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger once said that Dei Verbum attempts to "take into account, to the widest possible extent, the points made by the Reforchurch'srchs and was intended to keep the field open for a Catholic idea of Sola Scriptura." (Thomas G Guarino, Catholic Reflections on Discerning the Truth of Sacred Scripture, Quoted in "Your Word is Truth", ed. Colson and Neuhaus, p 86)

And as Orthodox Theologian Georges Florovsky has stated, echoing the fifth century figure Vincent of Lerins, "Tradition was actually Scripture rightly understood. And Scripture was for Vincent the only, primary and ultimate, canon of Christian truth." (Quoted in Eastern Orthodox Theology ed. Daniel B. Clenendin, p 99)

Sola Scriptura does not mean the Bible is my personal property to be read outside the understanding of the whole of church history. Evangelicals should be most severely chastised for allowing this travesty of subjectivism to flourish. Catholic and Orthodox believers have every right to challenge these excesses and many Protestants make the same point. But Sola Scriptura does mean the church has a responsibility to restrict itself to what can be reasonably gleaned from scripture. Where teachings develop in any tradition that seem to have no basis in the written text, according to scripture and many of the early fathers, we have a right to demand proof or reject such teachings as false, or at best, unnecessary.

Which is why, though I am uncomfortable with evangelical excesses, I am unwilling to let go of this particular Protestant distinctive.