Sola Scriptura?

[Athanasias]

what is the reformed definition of sola scriptura?

 

[Augustinus51]

Good day Athanasias!

Often, people make a confusion between the "objective" autority in the Church (for Roma, this autority is verbal tradition and bible), and the "directive" autority (for Roma: the Magistery and Pope), and imagine that by "sola scriptura", Protestants (among them: Reformed) mean "myself alone with the Bible".
It would exlpain, of course, the great number of schisms and divisions you can see todays.

In fact, "sola scriptura" means that everything wich is necessary for salvation of your soul, worship of God and morality in your life, God made wright in the Bible's canon, outside from what you cannot establish a dogma, or another law in the worship. So, in the Protestant doctrine, the "objective" autority is not both verbal and biblical teachings, but only biblical, on the contrary to Roma and Constantinople which admit to stand a dogma upon not only scriptura, but also berbal teachings.

Now, we must see what is the "directive" authority in protestantism. Is it a infaillible magistery, like at Roma?
No, of course.
Here, that's the Holy Ghost, through scriptures (John 14. 25// Ephesians 6. 17, etc; ), Holy Ghost who is not in only one man who would be right a priori (= a guru! ), but whith all the Church (as long as she refers to Scripture), in everyone of her members (universal priesthood), so that if everyone Christian can read and understand Scripture, all of them can also do the same thing!
So, Scripture must be read commonly with all the Church, which commonly interprets it (thanks to the differents gifts gave by God --Eph 4. 11-14) without any other doctrinal spring than scripture (scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres = Scripture interprets itself sufficiently).
Prudence and charity must be observed by everyone (Gal 5. 19// Jacq 3. 1// Eph 4. 15// Jacq 3. 13-18), so no one is allowed to profess a new doctrine (or contest an old) "just for fun", if you see what I mean... (= without serious and uncontestables reasons and demonstrations).

To sum up, "Sola Scriptura" means that Christians have to believe anly what God obviously gave to the Holy Churh for all the times by the mean of biblical canon (cf Luke 1. 1-4).
Every others things being not enough sure (imagine people who think that S Luke was the first to paint an icône! Build a dogma upon a such legend would be the shame and the ruin of the Church!).

It is what the first article of the Tetrapolitan's Confession said strongly, and what the 21st article of the Augsburg's confession said more implicitly.

PS: it doesn't mean that a non biblical tradition can't be observed at all in the Church. But in a such case, the caracter of this human-tradition must be claimed as being.... a human tradition (free, or established only for discipline), and (especially) MUST be not opposed with the biblical teaching.

 

[Athanasias]

Good day Athanasias!

Often, people make a confusion between the "objective" autority in the Church (for Roma, this autority is verbal tradition and bible), and the "directive" autority (for Roma: the Magistery and Pope), and imagine that by "sola scriptura", Protestants (among them: Reformed) mean "myself alone with the Bible".
It would exlpain, of course, the great number of schisms and divisions you can see todays.

In fact, "sola scriptura" means that everything wich is necessary for salvation of your soul, worship of God and morality in your life, God made wright in the Bible's canon, outside from what you cannot establish a dogma, or another law in the worship. So, in the Protestant doctrine, the "objective" autority is not both verbal and biblical teachings, but only biblical, on the contrary to Roma and Constantinople which admit to stand a dogma upon not only scriptura, but also berbal teachings.

Now, we must see what is the "directive" authority in protestantism. Is it a infaillible magistery, like at Roma?
No, of course.
Here, that's the Holy Ghost, through scriptures (John 14. 25// Ephesians 6. 17, etc; ), Holy Ghost who is not in only one man who would be right a priori (= a guru! ), but whith all the Church (as long as she refers to Scripture), in everyone of her members (universal priesthood), so that if everyone Christian can read and understand Scripture, all of them can also do the same thing!
So, Scripture must be read commonly with all the Church, which commonly interprets it (thanks to the differents gifts gave by God --Eph 4. 11-14) without any other doctrinal spring than scripture (scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres = Scripture interprets itself sufficiently).
Prudence and charity must be observed by everyone (Gal 5. 19// Jacq 3. 1// Eph 4. 15// Jacq 3. 13-18), so no one is allowed to profess a new doctrine (or contest an old) "just for fun", if you see what I mean... (= without serious and uncontestables reasons and demonstrations).

To sum up, "Sola Scriptura" means that Christians have to believe anly what God obviously gave to the Holy Churh for all the times by the mean of biblical canon (cf Luke 1. 1-4).
Every others things being not enough sure (imagine people who think that S Luke was the first to paint an icône! Build a dogma upon a such legend would be the shame and the ruin of the Church!).

It is what the first article of the Tetrapolitan's Confession said strongly, and what the 21st article of the Augsburg's confession said more implicitly.

PS: it doesn't mean that a non biblical tradition can't be observed at all in the Church. But in a such case, the caracter of this human-tradition must be claimed as being.... a human tradition (free, or established only for discipline), and (especially) MUST be not opposed with the biblical teaching.

Thank you for the clarification on your position. God bless you!

 

[hedrick]

I don't disagree with the initial response, but I'd like to add an observation.

Protestants effectively believe that Scripture is identical to the public revelation. Of course God may reveal things to individuals, but such private revelation can't be authoritative for the whole Church.

In the earliest years, of course one could also hear revelation directly from the Apostles. But there's a limit to how far down in history we can believe in some stream of revelation transmitted privately, without having been recorded in Scripture.

Using Scripture is more complex than we sometimes acknowledge. There is more than one problem: Individuals can go off half-cocked in some idiosyncratic way. But communities can also depart from the truth. To guard against both kinds of problem requires more than an individual going off alone with the Bible. Because that kind of individualism is asking for idiosyncratic interpretation. So the Reformed model actually says that Scripture is interpreted by the community. The difference between this and the Catholic model is that we acknowledge that communities can go astray. So we say that individuals have a role in calling the community to account for itself using Scripture as a standard. But this is a different thing than saying that everyone interprets Scripture individually. Individuals and the community each have their role.

In order for this process to work, we have to be clear that Scripture is the final authority. Of course such a statement alone doesn't solve the problem, because the real question is "Scripture interpreted by whom?" And for that there's no neat answer. Like many other issues in Christianity, it requires humility and good judgement. Individuals have to be willing to listen to the community, but the community also has to be willing to be challenged by individuals.

However if we don't say that Scripture has the final authority, this process can't work. The moment we let tradition be "irreformable," there's no way to fix it when it goes wrong. For most of history, institutions have done just fine in defending themselves, it's the right of the individual to challenge tradition based on Scripture that needed reinforcement. Of course at the moment individualism is strong enough that we often have to emphasize that Scripture ultimately speaks to the community and is interpreted by the whole community. In many ways the situation in the 21st Cent is opposite the situation in the 16th Cent. Then we had an overweening Church, which needed a way to call it to account. Now we have rampant individualism. This doesn't change the overall approach, which has to balance both the role of the community and the prophetic role of individuals. But it presents the danger that Protestants repeating slogans intended for the 16th Cent situation could emphasize exactly the wrong thing for the 21st Cent.