Sola Scriptura

Caleb gives a good (if somewhat long) reflection on why he doesn’t abide by Sola Scriptura. His reasons are similar to mine, I must admit. To my mind the whole system just fails to be supportive and leaves one in the giant quagmire of denominationalism that Protestants are so fond of.

Caleb goes after it quite technically, first pausing to reflect on what precisely counts as Scripture. The resulting canon we posses (according to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura) is arbitrary. Sola Scriptura does not define the canon (nor do I see a way it could). And some of the books mentioned within Scripture are either lost, or not part of the canon.

His second point is a wonderful syllogism:

• All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture.
• Interpretations are by definition external and separate from that which they interpret.
• Sola Scriptura maintains that any claim external to Scripture itself is necessarily uninspired and therefore fallible.
• Therefore, all appeals to Scripture are fallible.

As he writes the major failure of the Protestant Sola Scriptura experiment is the failure to deal with the epistemology. I am no Luther historian, though I would be very interested to see how far he practically took this exercise. I know he himself did not want a radical break from classical Christian teaching. His thesis were given on the basis that his criticisms showed the practices of the day to be un-biblical according to his interpretation. I have read enough of Luther to know that he still exegeted allegorically and still had philosophical/metaphysical influences on his theology and writing. To take Sola Scriptura as far as fundamentalists have is against the spirit of Luther and the Reformation.

I see the only legitimate way to exegete is according to the way the greater church has done throughout her history. A process dependent on what the Church has taught (tradition), what we can understand about the life and times of the written Scripture (reason), and the life of the members of the Church (experience). Bringing these three together is the great difficulty of being honest to the text, to the Church, and to one another. Nor does there have to be one singular answer for all members – as if all members were one part.