Sola Scriptura Principle

Sola Scriptura Principle. This principle maintains that Scripture possesses unique, infallible, and supreme authority (under God) in all matters of faith and practice.

Disputed historical meaning. The historical understanding and employment of the sola Scriptura principle, rooted in the Protestant Reformation but with significant conceptual antecedents far earlier in Christianity, is disputed among scholars. Some argue that while some of the later radical reformers employed this phrase to mean "Scripture alone" over and against the authority of tradition, the magisterial reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, did not mean to discard the authoritative role of Christian tradition but called instead for a return to Scripture's normative role alongside the first few centuries of Christian tradition as the normative guide to interpret Scripture, over and against what they viewed as recent corruption in the medieval church. Others contend that, while the magisterial reformers had high regard for the early Christian tradition as a helpful tool and affirmed creeds insofar as they viewed them as biblical, the magisterial reformers explicitly maintained that tradition and all other human authorities are fallible and thus should be consistently and intentionally subordinated to the normative authority of Scripture, over or alongside which there can be no normative source or arbiter of interpretation (save God Himself).

Disputed contemporary meaning. Not only is the historical meaning of the phrase disputed, whether and how the phrase should be employed today is a matter of considerable disagreement. Even among Protestants who affirm and employ the phrase, its meaning differs considerably.

Much of the disagreement revolves around the relationship between Scripture, individual interpreters, and communities of interpreters and their traditions (and other factors). On one hand, isolationist approaches understand sola Scriptura to mean that Scripture can and should be interpreted privately by each individual, apart from the influence of any tradition or other factor. On the other hand, numerous communitarian approaches advocate that Scripture must be interpreted according to some community-determined, normative standard outside the Bible, whether that be the community or community leadership itself or some past tradition or part thereof (e.g., the ecumenical creeds).

Advocates of communitarian approaches sometimes raise two primary objections to the sola Scriptura principle, claiming that sola Scriptura: (1) itself is not in the Bible and is thus unbiblical, and (2) is isolationist and thus leads to widespread and irreconcilable interpretive disagreements. These claims will be addressed below.

Understanding sola Scriptura. The sola Scriptura principle, however, need not be understood or employed in either an isolationist or communitarian fashion. Rather, one might recognize that Scripture holds unique and unequaled authority in all matters of faith and practice while at the same time recognizing that no one can read Scripture in a way that is entirely free from the influence of factors outside of the Bible such as extra-biblical traditions, personal experiences and culture, and one's faculty of reason.

Scripture might then be understood as "alone" or unique in the following respects: (1) Scripture is the unique and infallible source of divine revelation (under God) that is collectively available, (2) Scripture is fully trustworthy as the sufficient basis and rule of faith and practice, and (3) Scripture is the uniquely authoritative, final norm of theological interpretation that norms all others.

This understanding of sola Scriptura functions along with three integral corollaries: (1) tota Scriptura, which holds that all of Scripture functions as the infallible source, sufficient basis, and final norm of theological interpretation (2 Tim 3:16), (2) the analogy of Scripture (analogia Scriptura), which approaches Scripture as a unified and internally coherent corpus such that each text should be understood in light of the entire canon (Isa 8:20; Luke 24:27, 44-45), and (3) Spiritual things are Spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2:11-14), which teaches that the Holy Spirit should be continually sought for guidance and illumination.

Such an understanding of sola Scriptura rebuts the primary objections noted earlier and helps to avoid some significant misunderstandings. First, while this understanding maintains the unique nature and authority of Scripture, it does not claim that Scripture is the only source of knowledge or even of revelation. According to Scripture itself, there is partial revelation about God in nature, typically called general revelation (Ps 19:1-4; Rom 1:18-23). Further, the sola Scriptura principle does not exclude the proper use of one's faculty of reason (e.g., Acts 17:2; 18:4), without which one could not even read Scripture, but maintains that infallible Scripture should never be subjected to fallen and fallible human reason and/or experience (1 Cor 3:19-20; cf. Prov 28:26; Jer 17:9; Rom 1:21; 3:11; 1 Tim 6:20).

If Scripture is to function as the supreme rule of all faith and practice (under God), its interpretation cannot be ruled by anything else, whether a creed, a group of people, or an individual's private interpretation. All faith and practice should thus be tested by Scripture but Scripture itself should never be subordinated to any external standard, even the church. As such, whereas sola Scriptura does not require a direct biblical statement for each doctrine or practice, every doctrine should be grounded in Scripture and every practice should be governed by biblical principles, while recognizing that Scripture does not directly address every issue of practice such that practices are permissible that do not contradict biblical principles. In this regard, whereas it is true that the phrase sola Scriptura is not found in the Bible, the concept of sola Scriptura (understood as Scripture's unique authority over all other factors save God Himself) is derived from Scripture, which consistently evinces the divinely commissioned authority of Scripture as rule (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:20-21; cf. Isa 8:20; 1 Thess 2:13) over and against all other factors (Acts 5:29; cf. Jer 17:9; Matt 15:3-6; Gal 1:8).

However, whereas Scripture should not be subjected to either private or communitarian authority, communities and traditions (past and present) should not be dismissed or ignored. On this understanding, the sola Scriptura principle does not affirm or engender isolationism or the private interpretation of Scripture but maintains that Scripture should be read within community and across communities, without subjecting Scripture to the authority of any community or any other extra-biblical factor, interpretatively or otherwise.

References

Allert, Craig D. "What Are We Trying to Conserve? Evangelicalism and Sola Scriptura."

Evangelical Quarterly 76, no. 4 (2004): 327-348.

Lane, Anthony N. S. "Scripture, Tradition and Church: An Historical Survey." Vox Evangelica 9

(1975): 37-55.

Peckham, John C. Canonical Theology: The Biblical Canon, Sola Scriptura, and Theological

Method. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016.