Sola? Scriptura

Sola Scriptura, Latin for ‘scripture alone,’ was the battle cry of the reformation and is still the line in the sand between protestants and the Roman Catholic Church. What is Sola Scriptura though? In this post I want get my hands around the idea of Sola Scriptura and offer up some thoughts on how to make more sense of this protestant doctrine.

Many Catholic apologists argue that Sola Scriptura is an untenable doctrine because it cannot stand against the very standard of truth it claims. The argument starts with a simple observation of the Bible; scripture does not say that scripture is the only authority on matters of faith. The scriptures certainly display a high value of scripture and claim it as authoritative (see II Timothy 3:16 and the numerous authoritative uses of the Old Testament in the New Testament), but you cannot find a verse that explicitly states that scripture is the only religious authority. In fact, you can find a couple other sources of great authority, those being teachings handed down, we can call this tradition, (see Romans 16:7 and II Thessalonians 3:6), and councils (see Acts 15).

How can a protestant hold on to Sola Scriptura in light of the fact that the Bible does not explicitly teach Sola Scriptura? My attempt at a solution is three-fold.

1) Take down the straw-man

While Sola Scriptura literally translates to ‘scripture alone,’ the doctrine doesn’t really mean ‘scripture alone’ in a literal sense. The protestant leaders of the reformation did not mean to say that scripture is the only authority on religious matters and all else must be shut-out. A better way to understand Sola Scriptura is that scripture is the final or ultimate authority. Councils and tradition are still authoritative, but they are subject to the authority of scripture. If a tradition or decision of a church council is in clear contradiction with scripture, than scripture should be accepted above it.


2) Argument from Scripture

I think this true sense of Sola Scriptura as defined above is evidenced in the Bible. The author of Acts says this about the Bereans.

“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.” – Acts 17:11

Paul had apostolic authority in a sense and a blessing of the council of leaders in Jerusalem, but what mattered was whether or not his teachings jived with scripture. Even his apostolic status did not put him above scripture. Aside from this, we can also note all of the occasions in the New Testament in which the Old Testament was used to support a position. I will admit that these biblical examples do not explicitly state that scripture is the final authority, but it seems to me that they do clearly imply it. At the very least, it is clear that scripture does not contradict the idea of scripture being the final authority. That fact allows us to look other places to see if scripture is indeed the final authority.


3) Argument from Tradition and Council

What most convinces me is that the authority of scripture rests in the authority of tradition and the decisions of councils. The protestant cannot fully despise tradition because scripture is really nothing more than tradition. However, unlike other tradition that can be severely warped by human intervention, the scriptures are codified tradition from the earliest Christians. We value scripture for the very reason that it is trustworthy tradition, in fact since it is the most trustworthy tradition, we ought to hold it up above all other tradition.

I also mentioned that scripture draws authority from councils. As was popularized in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the New Testament was approved by church councils. Now this approval process was not the kind of unilateral power move that Brown made it out to be, but rather it was a bunch of Christian leaders coming together and saying, ‘these are the books which we all agree are sacred and authoritative.’ Many of the Christian communities had been using the same documents as scripture before the council, but the council worked out a few discrepancies and then stamped it with council authority.

So, the Bible is our final authority (though not our only authority) because it contains the most trustworthy tradition and the councils of church leaders approved it as authoritative literature, essentially lifting it above the councils themselves. Protestants must understand Sola Scriptura in order to see the authority that affects their faith, while Catholics must understand Sola Scriptura in order to appreciate the perspective of their protestant brethren.