Perhaps no doctrinal emphasis in Protestantism is more commonly misused and misunderstood in our time than the idea of sola scriptura. This constant misuse is rooted in several major fallacies. The harm done by this misuse is very often tragic, leading to prideful falls on the part of individuals and many completely unnecessary church splits.
The first fallacy with regard to sola scriptura occurs when the term is defined incorrectly. Sola scriptura, which appears as an idea in Luther, eventually became a slogan of sorts. The point Luther actually made was crucial to the Reformation, namely that Scripture was the sole source of authority for the Christian and the church. The Reformation did not invent the idea that Scripture came prior to doctrine, or that Scripture was the norming norm in theology. What the Reformers did was assert in a new way, under unique circumstances, that Scripture held priority over all traditions that were outside of, or beyond, the Holy Scripture. The Scripture, in this view, was understood as "self-interpreting." The medieval church had understood that tradition and Scripture were saying the same thing, thus rarely did anyone question how the two were to be correctly related. This assumption was what the Reformers challenged by showing that tradition must always be subject to Scripture, which is itself the true reforming principle.
The central challenge the Reformers raised, early in the sixteenth century, was regarding the use and abuse of indulgences. These indulgences were seen by the church as established through the authority of the medieval papacy, an authority that Luther rightly believed went beyond the clear teaching of Scripture. (Calvin and Luther eventually argued that this practice denied the plain teaching of Scripture!) In addition, these Reformers further concluded that later church councils had clearly violated the teaching of Scripture in condemning the writings and person of the Bohemian reformer John Hus, a major source of the tempest that arose in the century following his untimely death. The Protestant view was actually quite simple-claims to inerrancy in the church were simply wrong. The church had historical and creedal authority but it must always live under the norm of Scripture, which itself is the basis for the creeds and the historical development of doctrinal understanding.
But another fallacy has arisen in the modern use of sola scriptura because proponents do not relate the doctrine properly to the specific polemics of the sixteenth century. This historical failure results in the modern errors of radical free thought and personal private opinion being equated with the Bible, or with sola scriptura. Many evangelicals have turned this doctrine into an excuse for believing just about anything a person desires to believe so long as they cite a biblical text to support their view. Witness the myriad sects and groups that have arisen in the West with little or no relationship at all to the historic church or its creeds. This non-creedal tendency has no inherent relationship to the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura.
In the historic debate, the issue was really about whether divine revelation was given to the church apart from Scripture. More to the point, the question came down to this: "Was the church an infallible interpreter of Scripture, and thus was the church in the magisterium a continuing apostolic authority, even when the church went beyond the apostle's testimony as given in the Scriptures?" There is no real debate that certain dogmas, made official after the sixteenth-century debate, have been received as infallible by the Roman magisterium since Luther's time. To my mind, and to that of many non-Catholic Christians, these dogmas go well beyond Scripture's plain meaning.
The third modern fallacy among evangelicals, with regard to sola scriptura, is to believe that the Scriptures clearly and authoritatively address every issue in the church's life and ministry. Modern polemicists reason that every decision an individual, or congregation, faces can and should be referred to the issue of biblical authority, understood again as the Bible alone. By this step I am freed to interpret the Bible in any way that I please so long as my conscience is sound. This is a huge assumption often falsely made by sinful persons who assume only the best about their own conclusions.
The central error in this third fallacy is that the person making this mistake fails to understand the purpose of Scripture. For Luther Scripture's intention was Christocentric. Every word was meant to reveal Christ. Scripture is the Word of God precisely because it reveals the Word, who is Christ. Luther referred to Scripture as the "crib in which Christ lies" as a babe. We are not meant to quibble over every question that arises, proving and disproving every action with proof texts from the Bible alone. We are to read Scripture, both in private and public, in order to find Christ, using both reason and prayer for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And we are to do this in community, listening to the whole church because we believe in catholicity. It is in this sense that the Bible is its own interpreter and thus it will direct the church. What the Reformers really opposed was the opposite error, namely that the church was the instrument through which God directed our conscience and our seeking for Christ. This is precisely why Luther said the Reformation was carried forward, while the reformers sat in Wittenberg and drank their beer, because "the Word did it all."
This third fallacy especially occurs when people do not see that every idea they gain from Scripture does not have equal authority. There is room for degrees of importance to be attached to different portions of the Scripture. The Gospels, for example, have far more importance to the day-in and day-out life of the Christian and the church than Ecclesiastes. This does not diminish the importance of Ecclesiastes but rather puts a proper emphasis upon the true story line of the Bible. Modern evangelicals are in danger of missing the biblical story line because they regularly misuse the doctrine of sola scriptura.
Finally, there is an all too common fallacy that says sola scriptura means Scripture without tradition. Face it, many evangelicals disdain tradition. The most common reaction to our ACT 3 name, at least among certain evangelicals, has been that we have no business seeking to advance Christian tradition since tradition is really a bad thing.
Neither the Reformers, nor their immediate heirs, rejected the church's tradition in this manner. Almost every Protestant confession in the sixteenth century posited a clear statement that the ecumenical creeds of the early church were normative for Christian life, though subordinate to Scripture. Put very simply, these Reformers would be appalled at the way we have abused their teaching on this matter.
As an example consider John Calvin's thought on this matter. In a letter written to Cardinal Sadoletto (1539) he clearly indicated that the Reformers saw the identity of their communion with the Holy Catholic church. Historian Richard Mueller indicates that they assumed "consequently, the continuity of their theology with right teaching in all the ages of the church, in particular with the Augustinian tradition" (The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, New York: Oxford, 4:36). Mueller adds that, "as the sixteenth century progressed, Protestant teachers increasingly stressed the relationship between the reform and the teachings of past ages" (TheOxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 37).
Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586), one of the foremost second generation Lutheran theologians, relied heavily on the church fathers in his writing and theology while on the Reformed side the second generation theologian Lambert Daneau (1530-1595) showed not only great respect for the fathers but also for the medieval doctors of the church, men such as Lombard and Aquinas. Thus Richard Mueller concludes, "It is clear that sola scriptura did not mean Scripture without tradition, but Scripture as the prior norm, potentially set in judgment over the tradition albeit not untraditionally interpreted" (The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 37).
Clear and strong doctrinal continuities run from the patristic writers, through the medieval period, and right into the Reformation. The Reformers understood this and appealed to it powerfully. And the best of those Reformation continuities run right into the confessional life of early Protestantism and then into the modern world as America was settled by Protestant pilgrims. To act as if this is not so only makes the life of the modern church considerably weaker.
Sadly, modern evangelicals often associate the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura with their own individualistic ideas of the Bible alone. In many cases this Bible alone idea has been at the heart of the dissolution of modern Protestant theology in conservative circles. We have wrongly use sola scriptura as a warrant for going in a hundred different theological directions, unchecked by the restraint and influence of any serious attempt to allow Christian tradition to have a defining role in our practice. The Reformers would be stunned to see what we have done with their emphasis on Scripture. The sooner we learn this, the sooner we can correct our numerous modern errors with a healthy recovery of classical Christian faith rooted in the consensus of the church. But this recovery will never even begin, in many evangelical circles, until we admit that we have fallaciously used a doctrine that we thought we understood.
