It was on 18 April 1521 that Luther appeared before the powers of this world and, ostensibly, the next, at at the Diet of Worms. It was there he announced publicly the formal cause of the Reformation, sola Scriptura. That doctrine says that Scripture is the unique, final, ruling authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life. Scripture trumps popes and councils. It alone is the final court of appeal and unlike popes and councils, it does not contradict itself. Unlike popes and councils it is sufficiently clear regarding salvation and the christian life.
Twenty years later we find another man facing some of the same questions. He was not German but Italian. He name was Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562). In May of that year he had been elected Prior of St. Frediano at Lucca. Since the city had an absentee Bishop, the Prior more or less functioned as a kind of Bishop in his absence. Further, because there was a shortage of pastors for the city, public officials were filling in. Philip McNair (Peter Martyr in Italy: An Anatomy of Apostasy (Oxford, 1967) , 210) writes that the church in Lucca was “abominably corrupt.” The leading families controlled the cathedral chapter and its “enormous riches.” In the decade prior heterosexual immorality between priests and nuns, homosexuality between monks, crime, violence, and even pederasty marked the life of among religious (those who had entered monasteries or taken holy orders; ibid. 211–12). Remarkably, in September of this same year “the two heads” of Roman Christendom Pope Paul III (1468–1549) and the Emperor Charles V (1500–58) met in the wake of the failure of Colloquy of Regensburg to resolve the Reformation crisis by formulating a genuine consensus on the doctrine of justification. Read more»
R. Scott Clark, “Lucca: Cradle of the Reformation”
You stated,
“It was on 18 April 1521 that Luther appeared before the powers of this world and, ostensibly, the next, at at the Diet of Worms. It was there he announced publicly the formal cause of the Reformation, sola Scriptura. That doctrine says that Scripture is the unique, final, ruling authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life. Scripture trumps popes and councils. It alone is the final court of appeal and unlike popes and councils, it does not contradict itself. Unlike popes and councils it is sufficiently clear regarding salvation and the christian life.”
Two questions.
First, if “Scripture is the unique, final, ruling authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life,” and, “Scripture trumps popes and councils” and, “It alone is the final court of appeal and unlike popes and councils, it does not contradict itself,” then “How is it that the Reformed tradition elevates the Westminster Confession and “good and necessary” over that of Scripture?
Second, regarding “Scripture is the unique, final, ruling authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life.” It is common to read similar teaching under “the final authority of faith and practice.” This allows for a false-dichotomy of “science-religion (theology), history-religion (theology) to be created to get around the teachings of Scripture. Is Scripture the uniques final, ruling authority for all that it “teaches” not just for the Christian faith and the Christian life?”
Bryant,
1. You’ll have to help me to understand your first question. I don’t understand the problem. Good and necessary consequences are those that are implied in Scripture itself. This is the “plain reason” to which Luther appealed at Worms.
2. I’m not sure that I fully understand your second question either. Are you asking about the limits of the sufficiency of Scripture? If so, there is a discussion of it (and footnotes) in Recovering the Reformed Confession.
We would do well to recover the sufficiency of Scripture for those things (e.g., public worship) for which Scripture intends to be authoritative. As to science, well, anyone who is not a geocentrist (see the discussion) in RRC has acknowledged, to some degree, that science helps or can clarify our reading of Scripture since it the plain historical facts are that it was not biblical exegesis but the new astronomy that drove us to re-think our assumption, which we had long read into Scripture, that the world is at the center of “the universe” (as they conceived of it in the 16th and 17th centuries). Geocentrism was widely held by the orthodox Reformed until it wasn’t.
I’m with Machen et al. There is no need to set good science against good biblical exegesis. We need both.
First, if “Scripture is the unique, final, ruling authority for the Christian faith and the Christian life,” and, “Scripture trumps popes and councils” and, “It alone is the final court of appeal and unlike popes and councils, it does not contradict itself,” then “How is it that the Reformed tradition elevates the Westminster Confession and “good and necessary” over that of Scripture?
I guess it’s a good thing Dr. Clark subscribes the Belgic Confession?
On a more serious note, it isn’t clear which tradition you *think* elevates a man-made confession (an agreeable form of words expressing what some body of congregations says the Bible teaches) over Scripture, whether that’s a Presbyterian body (usually some form of the WCF) or some other. If it were true, then that would certainly be a problem; but the WCF itself states that Scripture alone “is the supreme judge” for determining all controversies in religion and examining all decrees such as itself (ch.1 para 10). And again, ch.31 para.3, “all synods or councils… may err, and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice; but to be used as a help in both.”
Now those are statements (based on the Bible’s witness) that probably even you are in formal agreement with. So, what exactly is the problem with congregations banding together and making a common confession of these (and other) truths? It’s slanderous (and sinful, by the standard of Scripture) to assert that men are lying by these statements, and don’t really think councils can err, or that the Bible is underneath such confession. But maybe you’ve encountered some such? If so, why have you painted with so broad a brush, and inculpated the innocent?
If you don’t think “good and necessary” postulates (logically valid conclusions from true premises) are as binding as the plain Scriptural propositions that produced them, how is it possible then to “Come, let us REASON together?” How is it lawful to compile Scripture verses and passages together, and establish true doctrine based on the cumulative witness of the Bible? All heretics quote the Bible. How are we to find words to bind them to the *meaning* of the verbum Dei, if we are disallowed from explaining the meaning of Scripture in terms that they cannot wiggle out of, unless they lie and dissemble and equivocate.
I may be guessing, but I think that you believe certain Scripture texts MEAN something different from what I think those same Scriptures mean. One or the other of us is correct, or both of us are wrong; but barring an equivocal interpretation allowed by the Holy Spirit inherent in the text, both of us certainly are not correct in our interpretation. Shall I just give in to your interpretation, and to those men who Confess the same as you? Or shall you just surrender to me, and to others who share my confession of Scripture’s teaching?
I can’t tell from what you write, whether you acknowledge some “superior” tradition, or whether you deny that you belong to a tradition. Both attitudes are pretty old traditions….
In any case, the Bible is authoritative in any particular to which it bears a clear and ongoing witness. Some things that were once binding (take sacrifices, for instance; or rules for grooming your beard, etc.) Jesus at a later date rescinded. If you think the Bible teaches X, then if you believe the Bible is authoritative then you have a conscience issue to mind respecting X. Paul himself tells us that Christian brothers will sometimes disagree over which items God has made a conscience matter, whether a matter of simple faith or with specific obedience annexed.
But in spite of disagreement, we ought to seek for unity of mind. Yet, sometimes we will have to go separate ways, as did Paul and Barnabas. Only heaven will sort out where the true blame lay between those two men. You seem to have disagreement with one or more things that the Reformed (WCF Presbyterians) have general consent upon, as to what the true biblical teaching is.
How would you like me to assert: You are putting your own individualistic “spin” on what the majority is convinced is right and true, and you have a “tradition of one” that’s clearly “over Scripture.” That’s what you’ve done; is the sauce as good for the goose and for the gander?
Bruce, R. Scott,
The phrase, “Christian faith and Christian life,” is a reference to “religious doctrine and practice,” equivalent to “faith and practice” in my circles (Baptist). The doctrines of God as Creator is considered “religious.” Thus, when statements found in Scripture speaking of God creating the universe, then those statements are not considered to accurate since, according to science, not scientific. What is held up to be authoritative is science, i.e. theistic-evolution or evolution, since that is science not religious doctrine. When Scriptures indicates that there was an Exodus out of Egypt, we now have many who state that the Exodus never happened nor conquered Canaan as described, i.e. an indigenous people who were in the land already. It is these and other examples that modern scholars, even within evangelicalism, nay, may I say Protestantism, that is causing a lot of problems.
EVERY person whether believer or non-believer uses faith. Faith is the degree of reliability that one places on the evidence presented to that person whether it be physical, textual, or through the senses. In fact, faith and knowledge go hand in hand. Both are intuitive, intellectual and experiential. There is a difference between faith and knowledge. Knowledge is limited in time to the past and present. Knowledge is not capable of knowing the future. On the other hand, faith takes the evidence has been revealed about the past and present and projects that knowledge to the future. How do we know that Scripture is sufficient as the authority in all disciplines? By faith. It is the evidence from Natural and, especially, Special Revelation that gives us the knowledge to believe.
Luther, from what I have read of him and his writings, would not allow external authorities to dictate to him what his conscience was supposed to believe. It was Scripture that guided his conscience. Yet, even Luther, later Zwingli, et al, brought with them some of the baggage from separating from Roman Catholicism. It is how one acknowledges what that baggage is and how to unload it that creates problems. The Holy Spirit will guide one in that endeavor.
Bryant,
Historic Christianity is a religion anchored in the real world. It is predicated upon a certain Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who was God incarnate, “born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate.” His ministry was inaugurated “in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,” Lk.3:1. This makes our Lord a figure of history, as well as predicted in history by the prophets of the Lord, who lived in time going back to the beginning of the world. The Bible is a record of this.
It’s true that certainly by the 18th century, and accelerated in the 19th century, both rationalism and empiricism were making various attempts to undercut the reliability of Scripture, and “public Christianity” having made its peace with the principalities and powers tottered (because it had removed its foundation). The 20th century saw a herculean effort by the apostles of neo-liberalism to “save” the edifice by acknowledging that Christianity is a castle-in-the-air, that it floats free of real-world constraints of any kind: physical, chemical, mathematical, genealogical, historical, even moral.
It seems to me that you are encountering some variation of this general malaise upon the church broadly conceived in your own circles. That, in order to placate their divided minds about final authorities, some folks you know (or know of) are “saving” their religion by hermetically sealing it off from the rest of their mundane lives. In this manner, they hope to preserve what they know in the realm of “faith” undisturbed; while in the realm of day-to-day living they operate on utterly different certainties, or none at all but only a form of pragmatic, fatalistic dependence on the reliable (for now) laws of physics supplying order to a chance and random universe.
That’s not my religion. It’s not RSC’s religion. It certainly isn’t a faith compatible with one of the historic confessions of the Faith, but is marked by a rejection of such confession’s derivative authority as true declarations of biblical doctrine. The new religion makes a claim to some connection with Christianity and it’s Document. But this is merely a subterfuge, and attempt to cash in on an inheritance without being a true scion. They claim to honor the Bible, while cutting the nerve to it.
By the way, this is not a problem confined to Protestantism. Romanism is just as riddled with these same tendencies; it’s only that they maintain a veneer of serene unity and encourage implicit faith in their captains of the “ship of state,” of whom it is an article of faith that they can never capsize it.
In Confessional Protestantism, the genuine historic faith is carried on with much greater consistency than in Big-tent Romanism, Liberal Protestantism, or Me-n-my-Bible congregationalism (large or small version). We actually care about history, not only the history contained in the Bible but the ongoing history of the Church led by Spirit and Word.
Yes, there are sometimes disagreements in our ranks over how to interpret the Flood (was it universal or local), or the timing and process of Creation (was it recent/aeons ago; is the account more of a chronology of successive moments or a symbology of incomprehensibly vast perspective). But these are variations of opinion within an agreed upon framework of historicity. Moreover, because the Bible itself appeals to the historicity of events like the call of Abraham and the Exodus to ground its claims, we cannot deny them without denying both the Bible and our confessions.
As to the future, we do know certain things about it, because the God Who Is There already has imparted limited details to us. You are right that faith is indispensable to everyone, however saving-faith is a unique gift of God that not everyone possesses. Ordinary faith just helps everyone get by in the world where radical skepticism is a handicap (but would be the most rational position if there really was no God).
But the question is this: does the Bible exist to help my daughter with her calculus homework? Where is the chapter on differential equations? The Bible only affirms the creation of the world, and therefore the reliability of the laws of nature. The Bible made Newton and Leibnitz possible, not necessary. The Bible is a history book, not a science book. Ax heads don’t float as a rule, and certainly not because anyone throws a stick in the same grid coords; but the iron floated one time at one place near the Jordan, 2Ki.6:6, because of the will of God in time and space.
When we say the Bible’s concerns are doctrine and life, we are not denying the history in which it is embedded, nor the ordinary physics of the world we share with those who lived the window of events it records. Apart from divine intervention, we do not know *how* the iron floated, nor *how* the sun stood still in Jos.10. The range of good interpretations may be wider than the ones we know about right this minute; and we may still prefer what ends up being the wrong idea until we get to heaven and have perfect understanding.
But being wrong in any degree about those events is a long way from denying them, and even further from denying the gospel. The Bible is a book about Jesus Christ, he is the reason for the book, and without him you may as well believe whatever you want. Jesus accepted the truth of the OT, in ethics, prophecy, and history. However well we do it, our job is to conform our regard of the Sacred Record to his because of Who he is, and not because we think Scripture prescribes godly workplace safety regulations–or doesn’t, and therefore prohibits them.
Now, if you think Luther or Zwingli or some other reformer brought along some unnecessary baggage with them as they left Medieval Romanism, how about you make a case for it, rather than merely asserting that they didn’t get far enough away. You seem to think you know how to acknowledge the baggage and unload it–I guess because you have? You think? You must, right, because you definitely have the Holy Spirit? Surely thou art the people, and wisdom will die with you.
Dr. Clark,
I agree with you that Cardinal Contarini is a fascinating figure. This is especially the case given Turretin’s citation of him as part of his proof that inherent righteousness cannot be the cause of justification: “Eight, we cannot omit here the remarkable testimonies of two cardinals, who, overcome by the power of the truth, agree with us. The first is Cardinal Contarini…” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 16.2.XVIII; vol. 2, 643) . What do you make of Contarini?
Neil,
Yes, I’m not sure that Turretin was right about Contarini.
See: “The Benefits of Christ: Double Justification in Protestant Theology Before the Westminster Assembly,” Anthony T. Selvaggio, ed., The Faith Once Delivered: Celebrating the Legacy of Reformed Systematic Theology and the Westminster Assembly (Essays in Honor of Dr. Wayne Spear). (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 107–34.