prima scriptura v sola scriptura
A lively discussion has ensued on the Divinity of Christ thread about the place of Scripture in Christian theology. I thought it might have wings to fly on its own.
A good summary and comparison of the two Western approaches to Scripture is here. The people of the Eastern tradition can feel free to add their perspective.
I have to say I was taught under the Lutheran understanding of sola scriptura, but I also was taught that we should look back at the history of the development of a doctrine in order to fully understand it. We did not put the history on par with scripture, but we do not necessarily discount it either. The creeds certainly help to focus our study of Scripture, much like guardrails on a highway.
Let's see if this puppy can fly. Feel free to add your own understanding of prima v sola scriptura.
(ETA removed erroneous code in title, DT)
A good summary and comparison of the two Western approaches to Scripture is here. The people of the Eastern tradition can feel free to add their perspective.
I have to say I was taught under the Lutheran understanding of sola scriptura, but I also was taught that we should look back at the history of the development of a doctrine in order to fully understand it. We did not put the history on par with scripture, but we do not necessarily discount it either. The creeds certainly help to focus our study of Scripture, much like guardrails on a highway.
Let's see if this puppy can fly. Feel free to add your own understanding of prima v sola scriptura.
(ETA removed erroneous code in title, DT)
Comments
There is, perhaps reasonably, a fear that people will lose the gospel in the shifting currents of cultural negotiation, which I have heard voices sometimes from those of a more conservative bent, but I think what happens in "sola scriptura" churches is that those cultural currents are just shoved under the Bible unconsciously and taken for granted instead of openly owned as cultural attaches.
I am somewhat aware of the historical arguments of centuries ago, back when reading the Bible in your own language was an incredible power grab for the common people, but in the modern era I'm very suspicious of the idea of sola scriptura.
There's a famous line from To Kill a Mockingbird that comes to mind: That's my experience with sola scriptura. I've seen the blast radius it can create in people's lives. I know victims, personally, and I've been privileged to examine their wounds at close range. If it was that or atheism, I'd be an atheist.
[If anyone wants personal context, I grew up mainline PCUSA, been through various other protestant denominations, and have been a 'piskie for some years now.]
We certainly accept extra-biblical material in a way that Protestants wouldn't.
When it comes to Bible study, I'm finding that the Orthodox approach isn't a million miles away from what I was used to within evangelical Protestantism only with more Patristic commentary and gloss. Sadly, Bible reading and study is pretty rare in many parishes and there's a woeful level of scriptural knowledge among many Orthodox.
At it's best though, and I don't mean this to sound 'superior', there does seem to be a more 3D element as it were than I've come across in some Protestant circles as scripture is tied in more closely with the liturgies and isn't confined to the sermon as it is in some places.
Scripture feels less 'isolated' and less 'stand-alone' if I can put it that way. That's a very broad generalisation on my part and I don't mean to disparage the richness of Protestant exegesis, preaching and teaching. We could do with of that, only with an Orthodox flavour of course.
The fundamental problem with the term sola scriptura is the nature of scripture. Historically, following the emergence of the printing press and the possibility of being able to read scripture for themselves, the proponents of sola scripture were fighting against human authority telling them what and what not to think and do. “We don’t need a pope, we don’t need clerics, we can work stuff out for ourselves”. Essentially it was a freedom move, a rejection of current human authority.
Its basis, stated or not, was that scripture was perspicuous (transparent) and its meaning obvious, therefore it could be trusted as a God given authority on all things Christian. But scripture isn’t always transparent and its meaning is often far from obvious. Therefore who decides on its application?
Sola scriptura churches tend to have a different sort of authority problem. It comes from leaders who say in effect “The Bible says what I say it says”. Or maybe an eldership who say “The Bible says what we say it says”.
Most of the harm done by sola scriptura churches comes from the character of their human leadership. Billy Graham used to tell a good joke about that. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Resist the deacons and they will fly at you!”
In the dissenting church world, where authority is vested in the local church leadership, it’s perfectly possible to have generous church leadership and plenty of scope for diverse views, for example, on all the hot button issues. Yes, even in a church whose foundational documents declare that the bible has supreme authority. A clear recognition of the absence of perspecuity and the presence of room for different meanings will allow that. But I think in practice that most such churches have leadership looking over its shoulder. For example, in the UK, at the Faith basis of the Evangelical Alliance to see what the standard might be. Whether or not they are formal members. They don’t want to get out of line. So you tend to get reinforcement of the conservative view on hot button issues.
It’s an irony in a way. The original nonconformist view was very hot on respect for individual conscience. But many of its descendant churches have forgotten that. They were born out of resistance to higher human authorities but far too many go down the authoritarian route in practice. “Let all things be done in order. My order”.
Re “plenty of scope for diverse views, for example, on all the hot button issues,” the US Southern Baptist Church had a lot more of that before around 1980, when there was a kind of fundamentalist takeover. So some churches started out more broad than they’ve become since.
/pedant alert
By that I'm not implying that I'm 'further on' or have 'developed' further or anything of the kind. I'm simply saying that I recognise the territory you inhabit.
That said, I do think there is something in the jokey adage, 'Don't call yourself post-evangelical but pre-catholic.' 😉
I have a lot of time for the more 'reflective' end of the broadly evangelical spectrum which is apparent, I think, in some Baptist settings and across groups like the Northumbria Community.
I once heard a Benedictine monk say that he thought such groups held out great promise for ecumenical relations.
Whatever the case, you raise some important issues. Where does or should the focus of 'authority' lie? In the Tradition or the tradition?
In a body of elders, a 'college of bishops', a hierarchy, the individual congregation or affiliated group of congregations? With the individual?
One of the good things about Jewish spiritual wrestling was that it was ongoing, not too bothered about resolving differences, but concerned to preserve Community good will. One of my beliefs is that we could do with a lot more of that.
Actually, we could just do with a lot more reflection.
I was thinking this morning about the abolition of slavery. It’s a matter of fact that conservative Christians thought the abolitionists were dangerous liberals. I wondered what dialogue there ever was. After all, it’s quite right to say that the fair interpretation of scripture is that it condoned slavery but condemned bad behaviour by slave masters. How did abolitionists get to the further step, that slavery was bad in itself?
Of course I know that no mainstream denomination holds that understanding now. There are new rationalisations. But I wonder what wrestling might have achieved at the time?
And I think it’s a good example with which to confront the more fundamentalist understanding of scripture.
What led to the churches, and the church generally, changing their minds?
In the nineteenth century it was a hot button issue. It isn’t any more. Maybe there is something to be learned about today’s hot button issues? Did the wrestling then produce some lessons for now?
So they use the Bible for this, but I think it just doesn't work. Even the Gospel says that "The Sabbath was made for humanity." I think it is an extremely rare individual who can self-erase like that, and it's not healthy when you do.
So to me, when one says "Well, I'm just reading what the Bible says," and one implies one is merely reading the text, what I see is an ego using the text as an amplifier, thus undermining the entire purpose of having a restraint in the first place.
It's like text is supposed to be a cage for the demon, but really it turns itself inside out and the demon comes out with twice as much bulk as it had before, because now it's persuaded of its own divine sanction.
I think if there is a healthy way to be religious, it is to train yourself, not to erase yourself.
That's a good example, combined with the fact that these folks would swear up and down they were biblical, hiding the shadow of the fact that they were profiting off of slave labor.
At some point, I think biblical interpretation itself is a battlefield, or a fortress that people are fighting over, confusing it with God.
I knew the Southern Baptist Convention issued an apology for racism in the 1990s. Presumably that included an acknowledgment that slavery was intrinsically evil? Better late than never.
Of course, while it's easy to knock sola scriptura, interpretation is always a battlefield, I think. And maybe that was the advantage back in the day, and still is in a weird sort of way, that it's a leveler. You don't need an advanced degree to read the Bible. You don't need to learn Hebrew or Greek or Latin. You don't need an ordination. Any common Joe (or Jane, eventually) can pick up a text and read it. It's one kind of egalitarian.
If the field of battle requires academic degrees and the ability to toss around words like "hermeneutic" or "eschatology," then it closes a lot of people out of the conversation, creating an intelligentsia who, if they're not careful, turn into an elite.
Of course, sometimes the intelligentsia really know what they're talking about, which is why we're kind of the canaries in the coalmine when fascism comes around.
That's a really interesting observation. We fail to follow Christ, or we try to follow Christ who in some ways will reflect differently to each of us. And any place of mediation is going to become a place of contest when you have differences of opinion on matters of perceived importance.
The classic three legged stool of scripture, tradition and reason is often very much alive in dissenting churches, regardless of the formal primacy given to scripture. But pastoral issues, whether hot button issues or not, can be complex and difficult, and do require careful thought and reflection.
I remember hearing Luis Palau say that evangelists were dumb! They presented a “black and white” gospel without room for grey. He observed that grey was pastoral territory and he was glad they were much better than him in navigating it.
Alfredo Cooper, a South American evangelist, said in my hearing that revival was an evangelist’s dream and a pastor’s nightmare!
Both showed a very clear awareness that real life problems could get complicated and not amenable to glib, pat, simplistic solutions.
We do need canaries in the coal mine. Churches are lucky if they have them. And should cultivate them.
An overconfidence in the power of sola scriptura can be a very big problem.
On the slavery thing, interestingly several Popes condemned it early on. Nobody listened. Some of the very earliest 18th century British abolitionists drew on Anglo-Saxon law and precedent. Not that the Anglo-Saxons were squeaky clean in this respect. They had 'bondmen' who were effectively slaves.
On the intellectual/anti-intellectual thing ... sure, anyone who can read can pick up a Bible and whilst there's nothing wrong in that, it's best understood in community.
The Ethiopian eunuch asked Philip to explain the scriptures to him. He didn't rely on his own understanding.
I recognise that it saying that I'm going to ruffle the feathers of those who place great store on the Protestant Reformation and 'soul-competence'. I'm not dismissing that but issuing a note of caution.
We interpret the scriptures in community and in the context of whatever tradition we inhabit. None of us are 'saved' alone.
I’m not going to be able to take part for another day or two, given my schedule. I’m not at all sure I want to, to be honest. I figure I’ll be playing target for sins which are not my own. Because it’s a very broad brush some of you are painting with as you characterize “those people.”
I try to stick to targeting faulty and logic rather than foul people. I do know rather a lot of people who have been emotionally abused by sola scriptura churches, to the point of effective exile. I just have too much sympathetic pain associated with this particular doctrine to feel comfortable in it. Being a thinking sort, I've tried to draw lines in a way that focused on the teachings instead of lazily assuming that these were just objectively bad malefactors.
Ironically, what I try to do is avoid saying "Well, those people are just assholes apart from us morally superior people" because, in my eyes, we're all assholes. Self included. I've just been burned in ways that make me avoidant of certain ideas in their contemporary context.
I've always understood that good, kind people can endorse terrible ideas, even worse ones than are discussed here, and I've known some real not-so-kind people who could line up with the "best" ideologies. I think simply saying "those are bad people" is a bad way to go. Sola scriptura is a teaching that, to me, can very logically lead to a very particular set of negative outcomes when taken to certain extremes. That doesn't mean everyone who endorses it is a terrible person, or that it's necessarily always terrible.
As I've tried to observe, for its abuse, it has a history of being liberatory. For some folks, it still is. It's interesting to see how that has evolved over the past five or seven centuries.
Thank you!
I’d also make a distinction between ancient world slavery and modern racially-based slavery, plus what was called “man-stealing” back in the day (abducting people into slavery, which was punishable by death—see verse below). I’m not sure that the ancient Jews or Christians would have seen what was done in the colonial period as being the same kind of thing as the slavery they condoned/accepted.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus 21:16&version=ESV
It’s tangential to the theme but on historical attitudes to slavery within Catholicism the picture is mixed.
Plus Catholicism, like Orthodoxy, does not embrace sola scriptura while also asserting the authority and inspiration of scripture.
It’s a generalisation (pace Lamb Chopped) but I find this a useful summary. Non-sola scriptura churches understand that the church guards scripture (eg in terms of content and interpretation). Sola-scriptura churches believe than scripture guards the church; scripture does not need to guard itself because it is without error. It stands over us rather than we over it.
In practice the picture is more complicated than that but I think it’s a useful way of getting into consideration of how belief can affect practice.
I’m not a fundamentalist, believing neither in the infallibility of Tradition (or traditions) nor the infallibility of scripture. I accept that both have authority and inspiration, and should be taken seriously. Submission to both in their local and more general application is both necessary and subject to the limits of personal conscience. I don’t believe personal conscience is infallible either, but in the end I reserve the right to stand on it, while seeking to be a member in good faith, both of a local community, and global Christianity. My local membership is 50 years in duration and during that time I’ve both submitted and dissented. Either can be difficult. But I’m not a fly-by-nighter.
I see tradition, reason and experience as lenses through which we gaze upon scripture and attempt (in community with the aid of the Spirit) to perceive God's self disclosure in christ (Luther had something to say regarding the scriptures being like the manger in which jesus is laid).
These lenses can at times act in a distorting way and we all have plenty of blind spots. Often the lenses are adjusted through tough times, interaction with folk holding different perspectives (or from different times) and growing older and less foolish and in these moments we hopefully see more of God's glory and wisdom than we did before.
@Barnabas62 very helpfully points out the importance of the voice of conscience which sadly isn't emphasised much these days.
I find this interesting as I have a strong (as opposed to necessarily correct) moral sense, the source of which is not clear to me but seems to be empathy based, with an assumption other people are no more or less valuable than I, and an aversion to pain and suffering.
It's one thing for Scripture to tell me something doctrinal but if it tries to tell me that something is right or wrong without giving a rational reason then my thought processes can't really assimilate it. It's perhaps significant that the first cracks between me and my Evangelical time was over LGBT+ issues - words like "abomination" with no qualification as to the why have very little meaning to me.
To put it in simple terms, the Evangelical view seemed to be that if you and Scripture differed over the morality of something (e.g. sexuality on the one hand and genocidal wars of conquest on the other) then you must be wrong and must just change your mind. The logic of that is - logical. Being able to do it - no.
It's not that I think I know better than God. It's just I find it hard to believe God thinks some of the things Scripture is interpreted as him thinking.
My sense reading this thread is that sola scriptura is being used to cover a variety of approaches without any attempt to distinguish between them. That sense is reinforced when concepts like “soul competence” are thrown into the mix.
Different Protestant traditions use or have historically used sola scriptura, but they don’t all necessarily mean quite the same thing by it, or think of it in identical frameworks. As I said earlier, at least for Lutherans and the Reformed, I think sola scriptura has to be understood in the context of the debates of the time in which it became a slogan. Used without reference to the papacy of the 16th and 17th Centuries, the context is lost and the meaning can easily become skewed.
I would add to that that I don’t think—again, at least for Lutherans and the Reformed—that sola scriptura can be properly understood unless joined with the other solae—sola fide (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone), solus Christus (Christ alone) and soli die gloria (the glory of God alone). They’re all part of a package, as it were.
Have you ever seen this?. An interesting example of how to confront those who advance an authoritative claim for the biblical interpretation to which they adhere. Made me laugh and made me think when I first heard it.
Yes. I like that too. The fate of prophets. Canaries demonstrate there is something bad in the air. Prophets claim there is.
I’ve always been taken by the fate of Amos, told to get himself back south because “the land cannot bear your words”. And poor Jeremiah got stuck in a hole in the ground.
Canaries and prophets face uncertain futures!
I’ve said it probably far too often but the lines from “Dune Messiah” seeking to speak truth to power keep coming back to me. Especially in the second age of Trump.
“If you put away from you those who speak the truth, those who remain will know what you want to hear. I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections”.
Good, isn’t it? Inspired, almost! Pretty Amos-like!
It's the perfect description of social media!
'Our church holds to scripture more faithfully than yours does - na na nah na nah.'
'We are solely focussed on the glory of God but [/i]you[/i] aren't- na nah na nah na ...'
The same applies to Big T Tradition and Big O Orthodoxy of course.
'We are more Orthodox than you are ... na nah na na nah!'
And so it goes on.
I've been trying to be more 'we' than 'they' on this thread, but probably not entirely successfully.
Things have moved on from the 16th and 17th centuries. The RCC isn't the same as it was back then. Neither are the Reformed churches. That doesn't mean the differences have been resolved but I think both sides have adjusted, adapted and modified their respective positions to some extent. It's been, and will be, a slow process but there's been dialogue and that dialogue continues.
I don't think sola scriptura is a tenable position. Those who bristle at the idea of Tradition invariably replace it with a small t interpretive tradition of their own, sometimes not even being aware that this is what they are doing.
That said, there are of course agreed interpretations and approaches that we all hold in common, whether we are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Wesleyan, Reformed or whatever else.
However we do it, we all do our theology in community. That doesn't negate personal apprehension or engagement with scripture but unless we are on a desert island we all bounce ideas of one another or absorb them from whatever religious culture we inhabit.
Yes, the Apostle Paul was out in the desert for a while but he didn't stay there.
Yes, conscience can be overlooked, but so can the influence - and necessity - of community. That community includes those who have gone before us and who will come after us as well as whoever we chat to over coffee after the service.
I can't speak for anyone else but I don't see the need for anyone to feel 'got at' on this thread. I don't hold a 'sola scriptura' position but I can see that it can be more nuanced than its detractors claim.
What causes harm are brittle and inflexible fundamentalist attitudes and those can occur both in settings that pride themselves on the apparent primacy of scripture as well as those which make a big deal out of Tradition in a banner-waving kind of way.
I once met an Orthodox Archbishop who told me that he felt the biggest threat to the churches - 'all the Churches' - was an internal one, the threat of fundamentalism.
Indeed. And as a very young child I remember we were taught that conscience is the voice of God. And that can be a challenge as well, when it tells us we shouldnae've done something.
The Evangelicalism I had experienced later was unbalanced; listen to your conscience if it's condemning you; ignore it if it's challenging the implication of the Scripture you're reading.
It's all an oversimplification of course; we can also feel unnecessarily guilty on the one hand or fail to think through the implications of an action to see its harm on the other.
I'll take a look.
To be honest, when I read things like I feel like you’re describing a world I don’t live and don’t think I have ever lived in. I don’t think in all my 64 years I’ve heard sola scriptura used as that kind of stick; I certainly haven’t in my own denomination.
That’s not to discount your experience at all; rather it’s to caution against any of us universalizing our own experiences.
And it’s also to caution against assuming we’re working with the same definition and connotations of sola scriptura. It seems to me that problem with a discussion like this that we’re not all talking about the thing, but we’re not acknowledging that we may be talking about slightly different things.
Yes, on reflection. I’ve realised that too. It’s too much of a portmanteau term.
I’m very conscious of the damage done by what I see as “undue certainty” coupled with “top down management”. I’ve known quite a lot of the casualties of that in various Protestant church settings. It may be more constructive to consider the underlying causes of spiritual abuse, rather than consider relative denominational weaknesses in that respect.
That would be a different thread of course!
There have been times when the church has had to change its understanding of Scripture. For instance, Psalm 104:5 and Psalm 96:10 both say God has set the earth in its place, and it shall not be moved. Then some scientist came up with the heretical idea of the earth moving around the sun. Eventually, the church moved its position.
There was the six day creation. A few denominations still give lip service to it, but most everyone else has taken another look at the creation stories.
And then there are the condemnations against homosexuality and gender diversity. The nuda people are still arguing that point. The prima and even some sola people have moved beyond it.
Time goes on. When new challenges arise, the church works through it.
And I think that's a problem sola scriptura is trying to solve, at least politically. There's a need for objective authority. We are Christians, we are following God, and we recognize this Father figure incarnate in Jesus Christ via the Holy Spirit. But...who sees that? Even Paul admitted it was only via faith. And it has been 2000 bloody years since the last appearance!
When I was in undergrad, I studied Japanese Thought and Religion and learned about a Buddhist notion of map-po (spelling uncertain,) the decline of the dharma. That there would come a time when - naturally - people would forget and be unable to keep all of the teachings together. They were too complicated! And the temples were corrupt and indulgent! Who could find the truth in this mess? The answer that evolved was Chan Buddhism, translated Zen in Japanese, which is how Americans usually encounter it. The practice? "Just Sit." Back to basics. Meditate. That's it. No frills, no texts, no fancy, elaborate dogmas, none of that. Just sit.
I think Christianity went through something like that. We realized that we'd lost something in the beautiful baroque mess of the medieval Catholic Church and, like children rummaging through our father's possessions, had to decide what to hold onto because it was all too much. So what did we have at the base of it all? The Bible! Just Read! Read the text, inwardly digest, and that's all you should ever need to do! There's Jesus!
I think, fairly, this was later overdeveloped to an unhealthy extreme in America with Reconstructionism, with folks thinking they could build an entire civilization around "Just Read" praxis, trying to build a new America out of the mere Bible. This does come out of long conversations with victims of that sort of practice, so I've got baggage there, but I think it's a pathological expression of the doctrine.
And per @KarlLB , I also tend to go backwards to authority and look at consequences. Even when I was a kid and more open minded to the possibility that being gay was disordered, or that gay kids were "weird" (as the culture I was raised in opined) I couldn't get my head around the harm of being gay when I was exposed to so much more abusive behavior by otherwise "normal" straight kids. As I got older and looked around more, and as I got into more historical-critical reads of the text, I jettisoned the entire notion.
But in doing that, I understood myself to be criticizing the biblical take I had received from sola scriptura. I had taken resources outside the Bible and applied them to the text, thus granting these scholars a sense of authority that was certainly not divine revelation. They're just scholars.
And of course, most every proponent of "sola scriptura" I've ever read hates that kind of thing, which doesn't help.
At the end, I think I can say I read the Bible very seriously, with an eye to its historical context and an eye to my own context and an eye to God as best I can understand the Father in Christ through the Holy Spirit, Amen. But I do not pretend to read the Bible alone. That would seem - to me - to be incredibly arrogant, showing disrespect to many teachers I have met along the way who have enlightened me about many things.
Perhaps one could say that I am still sola scriptura in a sense, I certainly don't take ecclesial authority more seriously than scriptural authority. But I don't think I can honestly say that I am.
Geez, that was an awful lot to shove into one post. Hope it doesn't stink up the room too much.
This is not a failing unique to sola scriptura, let me be very clear. You can see it all over the ideological spectrum. Sometimes it seems there's no escaping it with humans. It's what we do. We can just try to be kind in how we do it.
Of course, being kind is often not a winning tactic in war. And I fear these days that politics is war by another means.
Dammit.
The same applies to Big T Tradition and Big O Orthodoxy of course.
'We are more Orthodox than you are ... na nah na na nah!'
And also:
'I can't speak for anyone else but I don't see the need for anyone to feel 'got at' on this thread. I don't hold a 'sola scriptura' position but I can see that it can be more nuanced than its detractors claim.'
Rather than come back at me over things I didn't say, it might help if you actually engaged with what I do say and stop interpreting my comments as some kind of attack on your particular position.
I've said several times that I recognise that 'sola scriptura' is more nuanced as a position than its detractors can often allow. How can I state things more plainly than that?
I've also said that nobody should feel 'got at' on this thread and that I do attempt to say 'we' rather than 'they'. I also try to balance out any comment I make about someone else's tradition with a critical reflection on my own.
I don't hold to a 'sola scriptura' position myself. Of course not. I'm Orthodox and so have a different take on these things to Reformed Christians. That doesn't mean I despise Reformed Christians or dismiss them out of hand.
I really don't understand why you are being so touchy when all my comments carry caveats and acknowledge strengths and weaknesses in our respective affiliations.
I’m sorry if I’ve misunderstood you, and doubly so if I’ve shown unwarranted touchiness. I guess from my read, while you say “that 'sola scriptura' is more nuanced as a position than its detractors can often allow,” and while you note the similar pitfalls to which other traditions can be prey, the way you sometimes continue at length to talk about it gives me, at least, a sense that the nuance is really being ignored.
Again, my apologies if I’m bringing assumptions into my reading that aren’t actually in what you wrote, and if that’s resulting in misunderstanding and touchiness on my part.
What I probably should have said was that I certainly believe that 'sola scriptura' is an oxymoron and that it doesn't actually exist in the terms in which it is wielded and weaponised by its more fundamentalist proponents.
I'd actually propose coining another term for it in the way that @Gramps49 and your good self are framing it on these boards.
The caveat 'primacy of scripture' may go some way towards that but even that probably needs some expansion to make it clear what is meant by it.
You've acknowledged yourself that as a term in the bald sense it only makes sense in the context of the debates and controversies of the 16th century.
I was agreeing with that.
I think we are talking past one another to some extent as you're clearly part of a mainline Protestant denomination and although surrounded by more fundamentalist types have never been part of a congregation that verges on the fundamentalist.
I have.
That doesn't mean I tar all Protestant Christians or even all Protestant evangelicals with the same brush.
I applied the 'na na nah na nahs' to any group that uses its particular distinctives to beat everyone else over the head and I included my own 'side' in that. I didn't apply it to you nor to the PCUSA or any named or specific Protestant church or denomination.
I agree with @BroJames that our respective experiences are likely to be very different and therefore not always applicable.
I completely recognise that sola scriptura in the way you are using the term does not equate to 'solo' scriptura.
I apologise if you felt 'got at'. That wasn't my intention. I am always very careful to be even-handed although I can be rather flippant at times.
I’d say what would be more helpful is for everyone to be clear what they mean by sola scripture—what they are actually talking about. The term is too well established and too entrenched historically for a relative few on an internet discussion board to foment widespread use of some other term. But it’s also used to mean slightly (or maybe more than slightly) different things in different contexts.
So, as a starting point, what exactly does Lutheranism (from whom we all got the term) mean by sola scriptura?
What does the Reformed tradition mean, and how does that differ, if at all, from what Lutheranism means.
And then likewise in other traditions. Only then can we start to recognize that what someone else has in mind with the term isn’t necessarily what I have in mind, and so therefore what I think about the term as I use it may not apply to how they’re using it.
Only then can we actually discuss, instead of talking past each other.
It would be rude of me, I suppose, to make this suggestion and then not follow through myself. What I have been taught in my American Presbyterian/Reformed context is that sola scriptura means that Scripture is the only authoritative word of God,* that Scripture contains all teaching necessary for salvation, and that no teaching that cannot be shown to be grounded in Scripture can be treated as binding.
*Yes, Christ is the authoritative Word of God, but it is the Scriptures that witness to Christ. As the ordination vows of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) put it, the Scriptures are “the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal.”
There has been some interesting and fruitful Anglican/Orthodox dialogue on scripture and Tradition/tradition and joint statements on all that.
I'm pretty tired, otherwise I'd find and post some links.
The Orthodox would certainly agree that the scriptures witness to Christ of course, but would equally emphasise that the scriptures don't stand alone. They were written in the context of a believing community, the Church. The Church wrote the scriptures. The scriptures emerged from the Church. Not the other way round.
But, as a both/and person I'd also say that the scriptures shaped the Church and informed its development. The Church through the scriptures and the scriptures through the Church.
We can't disaggregate the scriptures from the Church which wrote and canonised them through a protracted process of debate.
We wouldn't have the NT as it stands without that process.
Now, I know you aren't arguing otherwise but it's a point worth making I think. I know you aren't advocating approaching the scriptures in isolation as if that were even possible but there is a difference in our respective approaches here, as well as considerable overlap too, of course.
But you know that already...
We either work it out or we don’t, we agree or we disagree.
But if we aren’t even talking about the same thing to start with, the criteria we use is pretty irrelevant. You’re talking about how to build the house when we don’t have a foundation yet.
What specifically are you talking about, GG, when you say sola scriptura? What exactly do you mean by that phrase?
The church grows until it gets big enough to host a major dispute, and then it splits into two churches.
Someone had a thread about "unity" and I'd quipped, perhaps seriously, that the goal of unity was less about unity around unity of dogma or doctrine but unity around continued conversation. And maybe that's the healthier approach to scripture, if it can be said to carry authority. If no person has the authority to tell others how to interpret, then that means everyone is free to interpret the text.
In a way, it reminds me of how some of my Jewish friends used to describe being Jewish. It wasn't always clear what the basic beliefs were, but they all agreed to argue about them in a relatively coherent fashion.
For the simple reason that Scripture doesn't have a plain meaning in so many areas, some of which have been recently discussed on this forum. Eternal conscious torment, annihilationism, or universal salvation can all be found in Scripture by someone who already knows what they believe. As can salvation by faith alone versus the need for good deeds. That can also be said of the adoption of Jesus as God's Son versus his eternal pre-existence.
These are fundamental issues which make a huge difference as to how we see our relationship with God, each other, and the world. Wars and persecutions at worst, and just plain bigoted intolerance have been the result of interpretations of Scripture and the authority to make such interpretations.
I could be wriggly and say I mean different things by it depending on context. 😉
Or I could say that it's not really a phrase I use anyway as I tend to think it's oxymoronic, in the way @pablito1954 has outlined.
But I'll play a straight bat and say that how the PCUSA defines it is how I think it's understood within mainline Protestantism as a whole.
From Orthodox and RC perspectives of course, this definition begs some questions such as what do we mean by the 'universal church' and so on.
We could also ask why Protestants are so keen to stress the authority of scripture but not the authority of the Undivided Church which canonised that scripture in the first place - or recognised its scripticity as it were - to coin and mangle a phrase.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying the communal and collegial aspect is entirely absent within Protestant positions but it can end up as everyone doing what is right in their own eyes.
Who gets to decide what the 'correct' scriptural approach is to issues like the Real Presence in the eucharist, for instance, or the relationship between faith and works or how we administer baptism or understand freewill and predestination or ... ?
I could be cheeky and suggest that 'sola scriptura' means 'sola scriptura providing it accords with own particular group's interpretation or my own individual take on things.'
Hence Luther's issues with the Epistle of James, understandable though that might be in his particular context. It didn't 'fit' with what he wanted it to say or thought it should say.
In which case, scripture wasn't the final authority but Luther's own individual interpretation of it.
Scripture does not stand alone. We receive and interpret it in community.
Historically, I think Protestants were “protesting” about what they saw as the dog’s breakfast of Catholic dogma at the time. Some of that was of course tacitly accepted and justified the clarifications of the Counter-Reformation.
Specific targets, like Purgatory and the consequential indulgences, were asserted as unscriptural. And indulgences were seen, correctly, as a form of blackmail designed to extract money from the fearful.
So I think it was common ground amongst Protestants that something needed to be done about Catholic and in particular Papal authority claims. “Let’s put scripture above any human authority” they argued.
In the process some babies were thrown out with the bathwater. But it’s pretty hard to argue that they did not have a point about the bathwater.
Of course a “paper Pope” has been discovered, through human fallibility, to be as problematic re infallible claims as a human one! A different lot of bathwater got mixed in with the Baby.
In particular, Protestantism has proved to be good at splitting! I like the Baptist joke that Baptist belief grew by schisms! But that’s another story.
My repetitive posts on the filioque clause thread ought to be sufficient evidence of that!
'Rome has added, the Protestants taken away,' would be a fair summary of our position on this one.
Please don’t misunderstand me though. Protestant debates and scholarship bring a great deal to the table.
It’s quite a while since I read Calvin’s “Institutes”. They are hard work. So I can’t recall what he had to say, if anything, about the Orthodox/Catholic schism.
I think he believed that Tradition was a means not of preserving the faith once given but of adding to the faith once given. But I’ll have a look.
It might also be an idea to look at Martin Luther’s writings re Orthodox Tradition but I don’t think he was as systematic as Calvin.
There is I think an identifiable Orthodox Tradition but from comments by other Orthodox Shipmates, I’m pretty sure there is no codified Magisterium equivalent, and there are different factions within Orthodoxy. In short Orthodoxy is not a unified picture of sweetness and light. Mind you, I don’t believe it is a patch on Ptotestantism re internal divisions!
If I dig out anything useful I’ll post again.
That is not a rejection of Tradition but an assertion that Tradition itself should be subject to the Scriptures.
It is also an assertion that Tradition is fallible.
But Luther was definitely a believer in the Trinity
These are summaries by others of his writings but I have not found the source
Finally, Luther’s view on Scripture
Those are summaries by others from Luther’s writings. Again I’m not sure of the source.
They identify Luther as a sola scriptura believer who did not dismiss Tradition but saw it as subject to the test of the scriptures and reasons. He saw Tradition as self evidently fallible because of contradictions between the popes and the councils. He seems to me to have lumped Orthodoxy and Catholicism together in his general view of the fallibility of Tradition.
The fly in the ointment for the Reformers position from an Orthodox perspective is that the very Tradition which gave them the scriptures in the first place is something they reject.
We wouldn't have the New Testament if it wasn't for Tradition.
That said, by and large, the Orthodox are better disposed towards the Magisterial Reformers than they are towards later developments within more 'sectarian' Protestantism, particularly from the 1830s onwards.
As far as Lutheran/Orthodox dialogue goes, Philip Melanchton entered into correspondence with the Ecumenical Patriarch and eventually received one of the most passive-aggressive put-downs in epistolary history.
Something to the effect of, 'Learned Germans, please do not write to us again on these matters but only send greetings in the context of fraternal love.'
Don't call us. We'll call you.
I was intrigued in the account of Bayly, chaplain to the Marquess of Worcester of alleged theological discussions between his master and Charles I when he stayed at Raglan Castle after his defeat at Naseby.
If Bayly is to be believed, the King assumed that the Orthodox were pretty much the same as the Anglicans as they didn't acknowledge Papal supremacy.
The Marquess, a Catholic, had to point out to him that the Orthodox went in for icons and images and the invocation of Mary and the Saints.
Equally, I've read accounts of 18th century dialogue between Anglican divines and a delegation from Greece in which both sides 'talked past' each other. The Anglicans were disappointed as they felt the Orthodox were 'no better than the Papists', the Orthodox delegation were disappointed as the Anglicans were more 'like the Calvinists and Lutherans' than they'd anticipated.
You are right that there is no Magisterium within Orthodoxy. That's one of the criticisms the RCs have of us as they think we ate almost as divided as the Protestants.
There are scandalous spats and schisms among the Orthodox but those are more about ecclesial politics than matters of belief or doctrine.