Lesson 1: Sola Scriptura
A Polluted Stream
Since we no longer live in the 16th century, or are under the dominion of the Roman Catholic Church, why does it matter if we hold to sola Scriptura?
It matters because we suffer from a specific disease in our culture for which sola Scriptura is the antidote: individualism.
Led by thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Gibbon, and Hume, the misnamed 18th-century “Enlightenment” spread darkness throughout the world—the darkness of skepticism, the worship of rationalism, and the cult of the individual. They taught that no authority was higher than reason, and the location of that authority became the autonomous individual. Someone quipped that while “[t]he Protestants talked about Sola Scriptura, ‘by Scripture Alone,’ ... the post-Enlightenment view became ‘by Reason Alone.’”¹
Even though the 21st century seems far removed from the 18th, we are located downstream from that time period. The poison and pollution from that era continue to kill the fish where we live.
We are living in the full effects of [the Enlightenment] today, and dealing with the full effects of a postmodern age in which people believe they have the authority to say there is no absolute truth.
—Paraphrase of theologian Matthew Barrett, from What Is Sola Scriptura?.
So a Canadian Baptist pastor can tell his congregation in 2020, “I’m not just supposed to be a pastor, I’m supposed to be a woman.”² And a youth leader at that same church can respond by calling this decision “incredibly brave,” and that the pastor’s announcement means that “she will now be living as her true self. … We applaud her courageous decision to speak authentically Sunday morning and look forward to a future where June can live fully into who God made her to be.”³ The terrible thing is that nobody laughs and snorts, but rather solemnly nods at the charade. “Truth” has become whatever I say it is. Authority no longer rests in God’s Word or in God’s world, but in my will. This is the poison of the Enlightenment.
Even we as believers have this poison in our system, seeping into our brains and infecting our thoughts. Have you heard anyone say, “Well, what that verse means to me is…”? Someone with this viewpoint, sometimes called nuda Scriptura (“bare Scripture”), or “biblicism,” would say that we need only our reason, with the help of the Spirit, to arrive at a knowledge of the truth of Scripture. Such people would say, “My authority is the Bible alone; I don’t follow the creeds and historic doctrinal confessions, because they are not the Bible.” Alexander Campbell, a 19th-century preacher, exemplifies this mindset. He wrote, “I have endeavored to read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before me.”⁴
To interpret Scripture in this way dethrones tradition. That’s beneficial in the sense that tradition is not the ultimate authority. But the problem is that this philosophy enthrones the individual! Keith Mathison, a systematic theologian, points out that, according to this viewpoint, everything in the Bible is “evaluated according to the final standard of the individual’s opinion of what is and is not scriptural.”⁵ A “Bible-alone” mentality exalts self, not God.
Scripture sets itself wholly against this kind of individualism. Even though 1 John 2:27 does say that “the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you,” and that this “anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie,” you cannot set it in contradiction to Ephesians 4:11–14:
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. —Ephesians 4:11-14
Knowing God is not a DIY project. God never promised you personal infallibility. Yes, you have the Holy Spirit—but so does everyone else in Christ. And our personal intellectual ability, blind spots, receptiveness to the work of the Spirit, and so on, makes us differ in how we read and interpret the Bible. Some people are better at this than others. We need each other.
So even though our mental picture of the ideal way to study the Bible often looks like this first picture, it should look like the second:
In this course, therefore, we will seek to access the rich treasury of interpretation from across the centuries. We will seek to use resources written by men and women who know and love God, such as commentaries, study Bibles, encyclopedias, and more.
I like how theologian Michael Horton explains this reality:
The Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura did not mean that each individual interprets the Bible for himself. ‘For that would mean,’ said Luther, ‘that each man would go to hell in his own way.’ Rather, the Reformation included the whole church, the laity as well as the clergy, in the discussion.
Confessions and catechisms represent the common voice of the whole congregation, not just the dictates of a religious elite. The Reformation ideal, and the biblical ideal, is to learn the Scriptures together, as a church, and not by oneself. If the imagination is an idol-factory, then surely individualism is the gristmill of heresy.
—Michael Horton, If the Creeds Aren't Infallible, Why Use Them?, emphasis mine.
Assignment 1c
Where can you see the danger of individualism in your own life? In others’ lives?
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