The Solas-Sola Scriptura

The Five Solas- Sola Scriptura: The Formal principle of the Reformation

October 31, the last day of this month, marks the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 thesis on the door of the church castle in Wittenberg Germany, marking the beginning of what is known as the protestant reformation. To mark this momentous milestone, the elders desired to take the opportunity to have a sermon series on the theological impact of the Reformation. The reformation spread through in multiple countries throughout Europe yet at the end of it all the essential doctrine of the Reformers was the same. The essence of Reformed doctrine is typically summed up with 5 alones.

Sola Sciptura- Scripture alone- that the churches ultimate authority is the Bible

Sola Gratis- Grace alone- that men are depraved and therefore can only be saved by God’s sovereign grace

Sola Fide- Faith alone- Men are saved through faith not works

Solus Christus- Christ alone- One can only be saved through the work of Christ

And Soli Deo Gloria- To the Glory of God Alone- the aim of everything that we do

Today we will look at what was known as the Formal Principle of the Reformation- The Doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

In this one verse, you have two statements that summarize the essence of sola scriptura. Your word is truth: the authority of the word of God; and Sanctify them in the truth: the power of the Word of God.

The three men most identified as the beginners of the Reformation were John Wycliffe, John Huss, and Martin Luther. Each successively built upon the works of the other. What is most striking is that as each of these men were brought to trial for their beliefs, and they all fell back one ultimate standard of authority- the word of God. The reason they held unswervingly to their beliefs was the plain interpretation of scripture.

All three willingly confessed that if any of their doctrines could be repudiated by scripture they would recant them.

But the Catholic church was unable to refute their teachings by scripture. Instead, they appealed to the writings of Popes, Councils, and Church Fathers as refutation against the Reformers convictions. But not scripture.

In their trials, those representing the church were shocked, not because of their appeal to scripture, but the audacity that they thought their interpretation was the accurate one. They would ask in essence, “Who do you think you are that your interpretation is right and all these other people for over a hundred years were wrong?” “Don’t you realize how inflated with pride you have become to think you have the only right interpretation, against a church who has been interpreting the Bible for centuries?” A loaded question.

But the reformers were not stupid, they held doctorates in theology and were some of the brightest minds in history. They knew that there were many other men in history that disagreed with the current teachings of the church and that many of these teachings that they repudiated were relatively new. They also knew that the documents and Popes and church fathers that the church leaned on for their convictions also disagreed with one another. This is why Martin Luther, echoing previous statements made by Wycliffe and Huss proclaimed in the famous diet of worms…

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason--I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other--my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other.

In order to understand the doctrine of Sola Scriptura more fully. I want to address it in three parts. First we will look at the problems in the church that led to the development of this doctrine. Second, we will look at the Biblical support for this doctrine and see how the Reformers applied it. Third, we will consider how this doctrine should practically effect how we live and minister in the church.

Problems
1. Tentative Theology

The way the Catholic Church would approach a theological problem or interpretation was by looking at a variety of sources. In particular they appealed to the writings of the Church Fathers, Statements made by church Councils, Creeds, and apocryphal books as well. They would look at some Scripture. But the problem even here was their bad hermeneutics. Their interpretation was largely allegorical. In the middle ages, they also appealed heavily to Aristotelian philosophy. Yet when all was said and done they acknowledged that their conclusive answer was still- tendentio- tentative. It was their best guess.

The Pope was the deciding factor in issues of conflict.

Pathetic Preaching

After the fall of Rome, preaching largely fell out of practice and subsequently immorality increased. In 1209, St. Francis Francis saw increased immorality, coupled the lust for power and wealth, particularly within the clergy and so started an order of mendicant monks who took vows of poverty and who ministered particularly to the sick and the poor, since they were largely neglected. His followers became the Franciscans.

After a few generations, his order gained considerable wealth through the generosity of others. Their vows became relatively meaningless, but they continued to seek financial assistance. Wycliffe wrote of them, “These friars were said to kidnap children from their parents and shut them up in monasteries. They affected to be poor and, with a wallet on their back, begged with a piteous air from both high and low; but at the same time they dwelt in palaces, heaped up treasures, dressed in costly garments and wasted their time in luxurious entertainments.”

In order to gain a crowd, meaning more money, they began to preach simply to entertain, and they abandoned scripture for storytelling. Much of Wycliffe’s writings were meant to expose the abuses of the Franciscan friars.

“While the diverted themselves, eating and drinking at their well-spread tables, they used to send ignorant and uneducated persons in their place to preach fables and legends to amuse and plunder the people. “ (D’Aubigne)

To counter the pathetic preaching Wycliffe began a school for training pastors who became known as the Lollards. They received no money for their ministry and preached and taught out of the English scriptures.

Through their influence reformation doctrine began to spread throughout England. 20 years later, their influence England frightened the Catholic Church so much it, outlawed Lollard preaching. Anybody who preached without being ordained by the Catholic Church and adhering to Catholic doctrine would be decried as a heretic and subject to execution. The other major problem in the church was the suppression of scripture.

Suppression of scripture

The only available Bibles were written in Latin. And there were very few even in circulation. Luther never read a Bible until he was 20 and had been a monk for a number of years. The reason why the Bibles were not translated in to the common tongues was fear of their being misinterpreted. It was assumed that the scriptures were so difficult to understand if it was put into the common language people would destroy it.

The Constitutions of Oxford (1408), which outlawed Lollard preaching and Wycliffe’s translation presented their explanation:

The translation of the text of Holy Scripture out of one tongue into another is a dangerous thing… therefore we enact and ordain that no one henceforth do by his own authority translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue or any other by way of book, in part or in whole.

By authority of this decree- anyone caught reading the scriptures in the English tongue would be excommunicated.

This meant that one could be burned alive by the Catholic Church for simply reading the Bible in English. The dramatist John Bale (1495-1563) “as a boy of 11 watched the burning of a young man in Norwich for possessing the Lord’s prayer in English.” John Foxe recorded that seven Lollards burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English.

Why did the Reformers move away from the tentative theology of the Catholic Church and place their whole confidence in the Bible? They understood the Bible was the Word of God. In order to know what God wanted, they needed to listen to God. God has spoken through his word.

Principles

¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

Authority
Power

¹⁶For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” ¹⁸we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. ¹⁹And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, ²⁰knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. ²¹For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:16-21)

Peter says the Word of God, is more reliable than his testimony of hearing God’s voice speak directly to him on the mount of transfiguration. The Bible is more fully confirmed than that, which is why he says we need to pay attention to what it says.

He says, no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

What this means is that even though men wrote the word of God as the Spirit moved in them, guiding them as they wrote. None of the scriptures which they wrote were ever produced by them, rather those scripture were breathed out by God.

¹⁶All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

All of the Bible is breathed out by God. All of the Bible is God’s word. And God does not lie. As Jesus says, thy word is truth.

It’s not just that the Bible communicates the message of God- in a general sense. But that the very grammar of the Bible exactly presents God’s Word.

¹⁸For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matt 5:18)

Every letter is purposeful. Every noun, every verb, everything is stated exactly as God purposed it. And all of it will come to pass. As Jesus said in John 10:35- The Scripture cannot be broken

As Paul write to Timothy- Because it is God’s word- it is sufficient to teach, rebuke, correct, and train us in righteousness. Everything we need to know and grow spiritually is found in his word. Because of the authority of God’s word Paul told Timothy his responsibility is to preach the Word. That is what a pastor’s job is- to preach God’s word.

4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: ²preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. ³For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, ⁴and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Tim 3:16- 4:4)

This is how church leaders were to lead, but hardly anybody was doing this prior to the reformation- for fear of misinterpreting God’s holy word. While such reverence for God’s word is admirable and appropriate- (Is 66:3)- The proper response is not to hide God’s word- but to make sure it is rightly interpreted.

¹⁵Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Tim 2:15)

It was because of their confidence in the ultimate authority of God’s word that the reformers were willing to challenge the authority of the Catholic Church.

When John Wycliffe was summoned to appear before the Archbishop of Canterbury upon a charge of heresy, it was his confidence in the authority of scripture that strengthened him. It so happened that a nobleman favorable to Wycliffe intervened before the trial could be completed- so Wycliffe was spared.

But before he left the trial Wycliffe asserted “I resolve with all my heart, and by the grace of God, to be a sincere Christian; and while my life shall last to profess and defend the law of Christ so far as I have power.” His enemies, who were listening, responded by asserting that whatever the Pope ordered should be looked upon as right. “What,” answered the reformer, “the pope may then exclude from the canon of the Scriptures any book that displeases him, and alter the Bible at pleasure?”

His enemies, knowing they had little power while some of the nobles defended him sought to humiliate and discredit him instead. So, one day, while he was seated in his doctoral chair in Oxford, and calmly explaining the nature of the Lord’s Supper, an officer entered the hall, and read a Papal sentence of condemnation, in order to humble the professor in the eyes of his students. Wycliffe remained silent while the sentence was read, but then afterwards responded, “Since the year of our Lord 1000, all the doctors have been in error about the Sacrament of the Altar- except, perhaps it may be, Berengar of Tours. Hou canst Thou O priest, who art but a man, make your Maker? What? The thing that grows in the fields- the ear which you pluck today, shall be God tomorrow!...As you cannot make the works which he made, how shall you make him who made the works? Woe to the adulterous generation that believes the testimony of (Pope Innocent) rather than the gospel.”

Scripture is not only our ultimate authority, it is also the ultimate source of spiritual power.

Power- Sanctify them in the truth

Jesus in this statement asserts the power of God’s word. It is what sanctifies. It is what makes people holy.

The power to change people’s hearts doesn’t come from clever speech, awesome illustrations, or inspiring preaching- it comes from God’s word.

¹⁸For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor 1:18)

Knowing the power was in the word and not in the preacher or his eloquence is what shaped Paul’s preaching:

³And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, ⁴and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor 3:1-5)

Knowing the power of God’s word his also what compelled him to boldly share the gospel with the lost.

He knew that the simple message presented asserted massive supernatural power.

¹⁶For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)

Because the Reformers recognized that the source of spiritual power was God’s word- they sought to translate the Bible into the language of the people. It is no accident that where the Scriptures were translated is exactly where the Reformation took root.

After being condemned as a heretic at the Diet of Worms for his unwillingness to recant his convictions, Luther’s life was forfeit. In order to spare him from being captured by the Church, his friends kidnapped him on his way home from Worms. They hid him away in a castle where his spent the next few years translating the Bible into German. Later in his life Luther clarified that he was not the reason the Reformation took place, but the reason was the releasing of the Bible.

I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.

The same phenomenon happened in England. Wycliffe first translated the Bible into English from the Latin.

But, 200 years later, inspired by the work of Luther- Tyndale translated the Bible from Greek into English. It cost him 12 years of exile and eventually execution. His last words before he was strangled to death were- “Lord, Open the King of England’s Eyes.” Since the Bible was no so widely circulated in England, many nobles began to embrace the writings of Luther as they recognized his doctrines were derived from scripture. As pressure mounted upon Henry VIII, he eventually authorized the Bible in England- an answer to Tyndale’s last prayer.

The same phenomenon happened in France. The scriptures were also translated into French. This allowed John Calvin, while pastoring a church in Geneva to systematically preach through scripture- Calvin preached verse by verse through the Bible. He preached on a New Testament book on Sunday mornings and afternoons (although for a period on the Psalms in the afternoon) and on an Old Testament book on weekday mornings.

A famous example of his verse by verse preaching is seen in his return to Geneva after his banishment three years earlier. Calvin reentered the pulpit and resumed his exposition exactly where he had stopped. He did this because he understood that- God begets and multiples His church only by means of His word….It is by the preaching of the grace of God alone that the church is kept form perishing. (Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms)

He saw the preacher –and especially himself- as merely a dispatched messenger with a divine message. Wherever the gospel is preached, it is as if God himself came into the midst of us. (Calvin, Commentary on the a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 227)

It is certain that if we come to church we shall not hear only a mortal man speaking but we shall feel (even by His secret power) that God is speaking to our souls, that He is the teacher. He so touches us that the human voice enters into us and so profits us that we are refreshed and nourished by it. God calls us to Him as if He had His mouth open and we saw Him there in person. (Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, 42)

Having let loose the Word of God from captivity, its power and authority transformed Europe.

And we are direct recipients of this grace. We have tasted and seen, and recognized what the Reformers recognized that Scripture alone is the authority for our faith and practice. Knowing this should deeply affect the way we live.

Practice

Since it is through God’s word that we come to know God- it should be our greatest delight.

Be Delighted in the Word-

¹⁰³ How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103)

I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;

I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food. (Job 23:12)

We should also be directed by God’s word in all that we do.

Be Directed by the Word- church and individually

We need to be constantly asking- What does the Bible say? Instead of, “How do I feel about that?” For as Jeremiah tells us- our hearts are deceitful. To make matters worse, we are constantly being bombarded by the world and its lies. This is why Paul says in Romans 12…

²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Therefore we need to have our minds full of the Word. Col 3:16 ¹⁶Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly

Being full of the Word will allow us to make God honoring decisions with our lives. Knowing this should drive us to the Word.

Be Driven to the Word-

We should read the Bible daily. And not just read it but- memorize, meditate, and study it as well. Hardly anybody studied the word on their own anymore. There is no higher joy in my life than to commune with God.

We should also make the most of listening to sermons. Sermons are not meant to criticize culture, inspire or entertain and audience. They are proclamations of God’s Word. We should approach listening to them with fear and trembling (Is 66:3).

If the CEO of your company was to call you into his office- you would listen carefully to what he said to you. You wouldn’t be zoning out, thinking about Dinner plans or the Seahawks- how much more should we pay attention to God’s word?

We should be like the Israelites in Nehemiah.

8 And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. ²So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. ³And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law. ⁴And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. ….

⁵And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood. ⁶And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground….

⁸They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

…..For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law….

¹²And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.

Sermon Review and Discussion Questions

What did the Reformers mean by the principle- Sola Scriptura?
What were some of the problems in the church prior to the Reformation?
What scriptures defend the principle of Sola Scriptura?
How should our understanding of this doctrine affect the way we live and approach ministry?
Which quote from or anecdote about the Reformers stood out to you?
Does this doctrine mean we should not quote theologians when defending our doctrinal positions? Explain.
What might be some possible misunderstandings of this doctrine?

Children’s Challenge Questions

What are the 5 Solas?
What were three of the problems in the church prior to the Reformation?
What Bible verses talk about the authority and power of God’s word?
According to the following verses why should we read the Bible?
1. Psalm 119:103
2. Job 23:12
3. Romans 12:2