Category Archives: Sola Scriptura

The Church Fathers on Sola Scriptura

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Nathan Busenitz – original source Arius was arguably the most notorious heretic of the early church.

Though Arius’s heretical views were soundly condemned by the Council of Nicaea (in A.D. 325), the controversy he sparked raged for another fifty years throughout the Roman Empire. During those tumultuous decades, the defenders of Trinitarian orthodoxy often found themselves outnumbered and out of favor with the imperial court. Yet they refused to compromise.

Among them, most famously, stood Athanasius of Alexandria—exiled on five different occasions for his unwavering commitment to the truth. He was joined by the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzas, and Gregory of Nyssa.

But how did these early Christian leaders know that the doctrine they were defending was, in fact, a truth worth fighting for? How did they know they were right and the Arians were wrong? Was it on the basis of oral tradition, a previous church council, or an edict from the bishop of Rome?

No. They ultimately defended the truth by appealing to the Scriptures. Continue reading →

Sola Scriptura – By the Scriptures Alone (3)

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Continued…

If we look at the word “authority,” the first six letters spell the word “author.”

Christians believe the Bible to be the Vox Dei (the voice of God), or the Verbum Dei (the word of God). Yet the Bible did not come down out of heaven on a parachute, and we do not believe that the Bible was actually penned by God. The actual writing was done by human beings. However, the Bible is God’s message.

GOD’S GOSPEL

Romans 1:1 – “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the Gospel of God.”

In the phrase “the Gospel of God,” the word “of” usually means “about,” but in this particular case, the original construction of the language (Greek) does not allow for that understanding. The “of” here is possessive. It does not refer to the Gospel about God, but rather it is talking of the Gospel belonging to God, or “God’s Gospel.” Paul declared that he was set apart to announce God’s Good News, or announce God’s announcement. God is the Source of the announcement – it is God’s Gospel.

CONSIDER THE SOURCE

In Luke 1:11-25, the angel Gabriel announces to Zacharias that his wife Elizabeth is to have a son (who we will come to know as John the Baptist). Zacharias protests that his wife is too old and that he also is an old man. Note Gabriel’s response in verse 19, “I am Gabriel. I come from the Presence of God.”

He was saying in unmistakable terms: Zacharias, consider the Source of this announcement. I am Gabriel, and I’ve just come from the immediate Presence of the Lord. The message therefore comes with the highest possible authority, so don’t think you are too old! My announcement destroys all human limitations.

Zacharias probably said something like, “Oh!” and if you remember the rest of that story, that’s about all he would say for the next nine months!

But let’s not fail to notice the point being made here – the claim Scripture makes for itself is that it is the very word of God Almighty.

But simply making a claim doesn’t make it so. Anyone can claim to be speaking for God. But what would happen to our confidence in a claim such as this, if someone claimed to be speaking with the authority of God but we were able to find obvious mistakes, discrepancies and errors? What would happen to our confidence in his claim to be speaking with the authority of God?

I think we all know the answer. We would begin to question the fact that he is speaking for God.

Why? Because although we expect human beings to make mistakes; we don’t expect God to make mistakes. If the Bible claims to be the Word of God and it is not the word of God, it could still be generally true, but the claim would be exposed as a fraud.

I certainly would not devote my life to worshipping and serving a man, about whom all I know comes from a source that has proven to be fraudulent. I’d have to commit intellectual suicide to do that!

The point then is that when a claim is made that something is the word of God, the stakes are very high. Either it demands our complete attention and obedience or else it is a fraud and would not even be considered a “good book” to read.
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Sola Scriptura – By the Scriptures Alone (2)

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Continued from Part 1 “is God’s authority invested in a book or in an Institution (the Church)?”

The Protestant Reformers believed in Sola Scriptura (the Scriptures Alone), and would declare the Roman Church to believe and practice Sola Ecclesia (by the Church Alone), for quite simply, what the Roman Catholic Church says to be true, is true because the Church speaks with infallibility and cannot possibly be wrong.

The response of the Roman Catholic Church was to remind the Reformers that the Church would not even have had the Bible except that Church councils actually defined what the Bible actually was. The reasoning went like this: if the Church is the Institution that declares the Bible to be the Bible, does not that indicate that the Church would have at least the same authority as the Bible, or even more?

RECIPIMUS

Both Martin Luther and John Calvin responded to this by reminding Rome that the key word the Church used, when it did define the Bible, was the Latin word “Recipimus,” which means “we receive.” The Church declared “we receive these books as sacred Scripture.”
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