Rethinking Tradition and Sola Scriptura

Posted on October 31, 2009 by me

Rethinking the Reformation concept of Sola Scriptura is a rather intimidating task, especially for someone who was raised Lutheran (and especially on Reformation Day!).  Sola Scriptura – the principle that says that the sole authority of the Church rests in Scripture alone – is one of the hallmarks of the Reformation.  It was a response to the abuses of Church Tradition by the Roman Catholic Church, who had added teachings that included Papal Infallibility, the Immaculate Conception (the belief that Mary the Mother of Jesus was born without original sin), and of course, the doctrine of Purgatory and the benefits of purchasing Indulgences.  It was this last doctrine that prompted Luther to post his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Chapel.

Martin Luther saw the dangers in following the obviously arbitrary doctrines created by the RCC, and at the Diet of Worms (yeah, I’ve always laughed at that, too) made this famous statement:

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other.  God help me.  Amen.

The interesting thing about Luther is that he actually tried to follow church authority, going back to earlier Papal teachings that contradicted those he was questioning.  When he found out that he couldn’t reconcile the various “authoritative” teachings, he turned to the only unchanging authority, that of the Bible.

Sola Scriptura has become foundational to hundreds of protestant denominations, each of which follow “the plain meaning of Scripture” but yet disagree with each other on any number of points.  When someone claims to follow “the plain meaning of Scripture,” you really have to ask, “which one?” To most evangelical Christians, sola scriptura has come to mean, “the Bible means whatever I think it means.”  I have heard this theory of Biblical interpretation referred to as “solo scriptura.”

How far we’ve come from Martin Luther, whose intent was never to disregard the tradition of the Apostles, but rather to remove the authority of men from the Church.  The irony is that today, each Christian who asserts his own right to interpret the Bible for himself is once again relying on the authority of man, not the authority of the Bible.

What?

Sola Scriptura is not without its problems.  For one thing, the Bible didn’t exist in it’s current form(s) until the 4th Century; it wasn’t just handed down from God with a gold-embossed burgundy leather cover.  Decisions were made – by men – as to which of the many books that had been collected met the standards of Scripture. Even then, there were books – such as those we call the Apocrypha, as well as some we find in our Bibles today – that have been routinely questioned.  Luther himself questioned the inclusion of one or 2 books.  How, then, could Luther rest on the Bible’s authority alone?  For that matter, how could the Church of the 2nd and 3rd centuries exist without what is considered by many to be the sole authority of the Church?  It seems obvious that Luther had some different thoughts in mind when spoke of the Authority of Scripture alone.

While I haven’t found any specific quote from Luther defining sola scriptura, he does give some clues as to his thinking:

“Now it is the office of a true apostle to preach of the Passion and resurrection and office of Christ, and to lay the foundation for faith in him, as Christ himself says in John 15[:27], “You shall bear witness to me.” All the genuine sacred books agree in this, that all of them preach and inculcate Christ. And that is the true test by which to judge all books, when we see whether or not they inculcate Christ. For all the Scriptures show us Christ, Romans 3[:21]; and St. Paul will know nothing but Christ, I Corinthians 2[:2]. Whatever does not teach Christ is not yet apostolic, even though St. Peter or St. Paul does the teaching. Again, whatever preaches Christ would be apostolic, even if Judas, Annas, Pilate, and Herod were doing it” (Prefaces to the New Testament, LW 35:396).

Luther, it seems, was never ruling out the authority behind the Bible: Apostolic Authority.  For Luther, the key in determining whether a book deserved to be included in the Canon of the Bible, it had to contain the Apostolic message.

The point Luther was making, and which is more obvious today than ever, is this: no man has an infallible interpretation of the Bible.  This, then, begs the question: Where is such authority to be found, if not in the Bible itself?  This is not to suggest that the Bible is not authoritative; I believe that it is.  The problem is in the exegesis, the interpretation.  It seems logical to conclude that either there is no source of authority in interpretation, in which case we have problems, or there is an authority, in which case we should find it.

Next, we turn to the issue of Tradition.

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Ancient Faith, current faith

Posted on October 28, 2009 by me

Michael Hyatt is CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and Chairman of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.  He is also a Deacon at St. Ignatius Orthodox Church in Franklin, Tennessee.  That’s right, Orthodox church.  I recently started listening to podcasts of the Sunday School class he teaches, which are available at Ancient Faith Radio, an Orthodox Website with tons of great podcasts, all from an Eastern point of view. Hyatt’s show is entitled At the Intersection of East and West, an appropriate title for him.  He covers a number of very interesting topics including Mary, sola Scriptura, and his current series is teaching through Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World, a great little book I read about 30 years ago which explains the essence of Orthodox worship.

For those of us who have been raised in an Augustinian, Enlightenment-saturated church, listening to or reading theology from an Eastern point of view is often shocking, but I highly recommend it.  As far as I know, it is really the only way to get any kind of sense of what the pre-enlightenment and pre-Augustine church thought.

That’s not to say that I accept everything I read or hear from the Orthodox; no, I’m still too modern for that.  However, more and more I am tending to accept some of their views, such as the Christus Victor view of the atonement (adopted in some fashion by more and more people in the west, such as NT Wright and Greg Boyd), and concepts such as theosis (which is not unlike some of Luther’s views).   Hyatt’s thinking on sola scriptura is quite interesting: he brings up a number of issues that most people in the west don’t seem to consider, including the interesting paradox of putting the Bible above any church tradition, while not realizing that the Bible itself relies entirely on Church tradition.

I’ve been interested in Eastern Orthodox theology for nearly 30 years, and find that more and more, the ancient faith is perhaps more relevant than modern evangelicalism.  Ancient Faith Radio is a great resource for exploring non-Western Christianity, and also a great place to learn about early church history and theology.

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N.T. Wright’s Justification, Pt. 5

Posted on October 27, 2009 by me

This post continues my series as I think through NT Wright’s recent book, Justification. For those who are lazy or short on time, I’ve bullet-pointed my thoughts at the bottom of the post.

In Chapter 6 , entitled Interlude, Wright addresses Paul’s letters to the Pilippians, Corinthians, and Ephesians.  None of these are major books in dealing with justification, but he doesn’t want to ignore them, either.  It’s an interesting chapter, one which let’s Wright retell some of his main points.  I still am struggling, however, with really getting a handle on his definition of “justification.”  It seems that it could be said like this: Justification is not having your sins forgiven, it is belonging to the people of God (who, as it turns out, have and will have their sins forgiven).  The “old perspective” view is generally that justification provides forgiveness of our sins, so we can then be part of the people of God.  Most people probably won’t care about the distinction, but many folks – especially Calvinists like John Piper – do.  Justification is a specific response to John Piper’s criticisms; I would probably understand some of Wright’s statements better had I read Piper’s book, but I just can’t bring myself to devote time to reading Piper.  So, let’s continue on looking at various statements I flagged as I read this chapter.

First, on page 145 Wright states, “The keeping of the law was not a way of earning anything, of gaining a status before God; …  All that Torah-obedience does … is to express what is already given.”   Of course, some of this is obviously true; the majority of the laws reflected God’s holiness, and the Law set Israel apart from the rest of the world.  However, this doesn’t seem true for that part of the Law dealing with atonement.  On p.146 he summarizes, “The question is not,’What must I do to get to heaven?’ but How can you tell in the present who will be vindicated in the future?” This, however, is not any of purposes that Paul gives for the Law, that I recall, although Wright specifically claims (p. 147) that “This is what Paul the apostle referred to as ‘justification by works.'”

Wright admits (p. 149) that justification means “the establishment of a personal relationship,” but says, “But this is extremely misleading.”  Wright is reacting against the contemporary existentialist interpretation of “personal relationship with God” that suffers when someone has a moment of personal crisis.  This I agree with; however, I don’t know that this justifies (pun intended once again) Wright’s re-definition.

Dealing with Ephesians on page 170, Wright mentions that Eph. 2:8 is the only place where Paul mentions being saved by faith; in other places, he talks about being justified. Rather than make the assumption that the terms are therefore equivalent, he states that here Paul is talking about salvation, where elsewhere he is talking about justification, making the distinction, “justified in the present, saved in the future.”  But then, he states that Paul sees both justification and salvation as past, present and future.  So, where does this leave us?  “… justification is God’s declaration that someone is in the right, is a member of the sin-forgiven covenant family, while salvation is the actual rescue from death and sin.”  Personally, I don’t think Paul is being that precise, but rather uses justification and salvation as different expressions to explain a rather large concept.

Then in verses 14 & 15, he sees what he believes is the point Paul is trying to make,

14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.

pointing out that this is where James Dunn had his “major breakthrough” in discovering the new perspective.  The Law was the divide between Jew and Gentile, and now Law has been removed, so that the 2 can be one.  Rather than the Law being the enemy of grace, the Law is the enemy of the unified Church, which is crucial for the continuation of God’s plan for the healing of creation. On page 173 he states

…the church, thus united through the grace of God in the death of Jesus, is the sign to the principalities and powers that their time is up.

For NT Wright, the point of justification is that the church is now united without the Law, that ecclesiology is at the “very center of the gospel.”  For Wright, this also means that the church has a political role, suggesting that the evangelical church doesn’t want to consider this, although he points out that some of the kingdom theology of Luther and others touches on this point.

Thoughts

There are a number of things with which I think I agree with Wright (that is, if I am following him accurately).

  • Justification and salvation (regardless of their relationship to each other) have a broader scope than simply our individual “relationship to God” and “getting to Heaven when we die.”
  • God’s plan was to bless the world through Israel and that work was and is being completed through Jesus, and the Church now carries on as a part of that work.
  • Furthermore, God’s plan for salvation/justification was to redeem all of creation.
  • I believe – so far in my studies, anyway – in the Christus Victor theory of the atonement, which is quite in line with the Eastern Orthodox view.  This also means rejecting the penal substitution view, which is central to Calvinism (explaining at least some of Piper’s heartburn).
  • Salvation/justification cannot be understood as merely an individual issue; our individual relationship with God flows from his Covenant with Israel/the Church.

I also do not disagree with much of what he is saying about how justification impacts the church and the Jew-Gentile divide; I simply question whether that is indeed the central point.  Again, I see Wright as reacting to the contemporary evangelical existentialist model of Christianity, where the church is, if anything, optional, and our only focus is heaven, not Earth.  But, I have never had this view.

Finally, I agree with Wright’s closing comments in this chapter, where he says that both old and new perspectives “belong within a larger vision of Paul’s gospel and theology than much … had ever invisaged.”

Next, Wright tackles Romans.  This should be interesting.

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Support for the authenticity and authorship of the Gospel of John

Posted on October 23, 2009 by me

From Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength:

Of the four canonical gospels of the life of Christ, the one I have most often seen dismissed outright for historical value is the Gospel of John. The early church agreed that it was the latest written of the four. In the early church, the name attached to the gospel was that of John the Apostle. But scholars have found signs of editing; was it tampering? There is also clearly an appendix in Chapter 21 with multiple authors referring to themselves as “we” (John 21:24). Could anything refute the traditional attribution to John more clearly? Can anything in an altered document be trusted?

Interesting questions. Folks like Bart Ehrman and the pop atheists would answer, “no.”  But wait, there’s more…

This excerpt is from the Muratorian Canon, probably dated to the late 100’s A.D., commenting on how the fourth gospel came to be written:

“When his fellow-disciples and bishops encouraged him, John said, “Fast along with me three days from today, and whatever may be revealed to each, let us relate it one to another.” The same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John in his own name should write down everything and that they should all revise it. (from the Muratorian Canon, likely dates ranging from 170 A.D. – 200 A.D based on internal evidence. Emphasis added.)”

The very early church, still in the 100’s, retained this information on how the fourth gospel came to be written, how it came to be edited, and why it has an appendix. One of the names of the editors is retained for us: Andrew the apostle, who was Simon Peter’s brother.

This is not the kind of scholarship that makes the secular Bible scholars happy.  Oh well…

Read the rest of the article here.

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