“Scripture Alone” vs. “Scripture Only”

My lovely wife bought me a copy of Keith Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura for my 27th birthday a few weeks ago. I already had a few books sitting on my plate at the time, but I really wanted to start digging into this one, as I recently enjoyed another of Dr. Mathison’s books. Thankfully, one of the books I was in the midst of reading was really short.

The premise of the book is essentially that over the last couple of hundred years, Protestants (especially modern evangelicals) have taken the great “scripture alone” doctrine recovered by the sixteenth-century Reformers and changed it into something that it never was intended to be: an exaltation of the role of the individual and a repudiation of the role and authority of the church. This bastardized version of the doctrine has been weighed and found wanting by many thoughtful now-former Protestants and has (in part) led them to seek stability in Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. A few passages that struck me as I began reading today . . .

[A] new generation of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists has been publishing an ever increasing number of books critical of the doctrine of sola scriptura. Many of these men and women who have left Protestantism claim to have grown increasingly frustrated at the tendency within evangelical Protestantism to divide continually over numerous differences of interpretation and at its seeming inability to even begin resolving these differences. They cite the numerous theological fads that permeate Protestantism and the numerous heretics that are readily given a hearing in evangelical circles as long as these heretics claim to be preaching “what the Bible says.” Seeking shelter from the theological chaos that is modern evangelicalism, these men and women fled to communions which claim to have the answer. Part of that answer is a rejection of sola scriptura.

Within evangelicalism, many professing Christians use sola scriptura as a battle cry to justify endless schism. Other professing evangelicals use the slogan sola scriptura to justify every manner of false doctrine imaginable.
( . . . )
If sola scriptura is true, . . . critics ask, then why are Protestants unable to come to agreement on what the Scripture teaches? For these reasons and more, it is absolutely imperative that the heirs of the Reformation be able to define accurately their concept of authority and be able to defend it against its opponents.

Roman Catholic and Orthodox apologists have been effective in their criticisms in large part because of the fact that most Protestants have adopted a subjective and individualistic version of sola scriptura that bears little resemblance to the doctrine of the Reformers. As long as Protestants attempt to maintain this defective version of sola scriptura, and as long as this version of the doctrine is allowed to be identified as the Protestant position, Roman Catholic and Orthodox apologists will continue to effectively demolish it and gain frustrated seekers.

All of that is just from the introduction. Eleven chapters and three hundred pages to go. I’m excited.

(Tags: sola scriptura, keith mathison, bible)