Biblical traditions

 

For an evangelical, biblical theology, the question of the origin and the development of the biblical traditions, is not crucial unless it is used to undermine the authority of the real text of the Bible or the concept of a basic doctrinal unity of Scripture. A hypothetical reconstruction of a possible ‘original’ text may be useful as far as it may help us understand the given text. But it can never replace the biblical text as the only source of faith and conduct. Hans Kvalbein, “Jesus and the Poor: Two Texts and a Tentative Conclusion,” Themelios 12, no. 3 (1987): 83–84.

Although the unanimous consent of the Fathers is in the main an ecclesiastical fiction, yet there was at least one doctrine in which they were united, namely, that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. It was far from them to claim for their own writings the inspiration which they attributed to Scripture.

Philip E. Hughes, “The Inspiration of the Bible,” in Basics of the Faith: An Evangelical Introduction to Christian Doctrine, ed. Carl F. H. Henry, Best of Christianity Today (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 34–35.

To say that God inspired the Bible is to say that the Holy Spirit supernaturally motivated and superintended the prophetic and apostolic recipients of revelation in the entire process of writing their scriptural books.

Many other books have coauthors, so we need not imagine that Scripture has to be either a human or a divine production. The Holy Scriptures originated, not with the will of its human writers, but with the will of God the Holy Spirit (2 Pt. 1:20–21). Over 3,000 times biblical writers claimed to have received their messages from God. God the Holy Spirit “inspired” (breathed out or originated) the Scriptures through the human writers (2 Tim. 3:16).

God prepared these conscious, active prophetic and apostolic spokesmen (and their secretaries) providentially by their heredity, character, vocabularies, and writing styles. At the appropriate time, in all the processes of writing, they were “moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pt. 1:21).

 This technical meaning of inspiration does not apply to any alleged revelations outside the Bible or to any literature that in a more general sense may be said to be inspiring.

 (Gordon R. Lewis, “What Does It Mean That God Inspired the Bible?,” in The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith, ed. Ted Cabal et al. (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2007), 1812.)

The reason why Moses and the prophets wrote down God’s message, and did not content themselves with delivering it orally, was sometimes to send it to another place (Je. 29:1; 36:1–8; 51:60f; 2 Ch. 21:12); but quite as often to preserve it for the future, as a memorial (Ex. 17:14), or a witness (Dt. 31:24–26), that it might be for the time to come for ever and ever (Is. 30:8).

 The unreliability of oral tradition was well known to the OT writers. An object-lesson here was the loss of the book of the Law during the reigns of Manasseh and Amon: when it was rediscovered by Hilkiah its teaching came as a great shock, for it had been forgotten (2 Ki. 22–23; 2 Ch. 34). The permanent form of God’s message was therefore not its spoken but its written form, hence the rise of the OT Canon. (R. T. Beckwith, “Canon of the Old Testament,” ed. D. R. W. Wood et al., New Bible Dictionary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 165.)

Critical studies cannot change the Bible itself, or God’s relation to it. They can change only our perceptions and our understanding. But these are just what we need to be able to risk if we are to use the gift to serve the master’s intent and not our own skins. 

Where we cannot admit serious questions about our understanding of scripture, where there is no risk, there can be no delight in discovery, no sharing in the joy of the master. To use historical scholarship only to confirm what we already know and believe is like having sex without the commitment and vulnerability that alone make it genuinely human—and it is just as immoral. It is to keep the gift of the Bible intact, but to return it unused, as wicked and useless servants.

Paul W. Meyer, “The Parable of Responsibility: A Sermon,” in The Word in This World: Essays in New Testament Exegesis and Theology, ed. C. Clifton Black, John T. Carroll, and Beverly Roberts Gaventa, First Edition., The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 288.

When the unrivaled Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, retired in A.D. 430, he handed over his duties to his humble successor, Eraclius. At the ceremony, Eraclius stood to preach as the aged Augustine sat on his bishop’s throne behind him. Overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy in Augustine’s presence, Eraclius said, 

“The cricket chirps, the swan is silent.”

The reference to swans appeared again a thousand years later. On July 6, 1415, John Hus (whose name in Czech means “goose”) was burned at the stake for criticizing the Roman Catholic sale of indulgences. Just before his death, he is said to have written, 

“Today, you are burning a goose; however, a hundred years from now, you will be able to hear a swan sing; you will not burn it, you will have to listen to him.” 

(Erwin Weber, “Luther with the Swan,” The Lutheran Journal, vol. 65, no. 2, 1996, p. 10.)

John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 9.

IN the history of mankind ages of torpor and oppression are often ended by a sudden crisis of deliverance, due to the bright genius and burning courage of one man. The man whom God appoints to this high task has, in most instances, to face the fury of a world suddenly awaked from the deep slumber of decided opinions; and by that fury he is always persecuted, and sometimes slain.

 It is astonishing to note how nations and Churches can be smitten for centuries with a paralysis of mental inactivity; how they can suffer custom to lie upon them with a weight “heavy as frost, and deep almost as life”—how they can allow themselves to be crushed under false systems of belief and morals, without so much as once inquiring on what those systems rest.

 We are sometimes driven to think that men in general will endure anything rather than the honest pain of facing great questions for themselves. Of how many an age has it been a true description that

 “the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so!” 

Is not Israel in this respect a type of all mankind? Released from the sensual serfdom of Egypt, and led—a free people—into the eager air of the wilderness, did they not murmur, and rebel, for their lost fleshpots, and leeks, and onions, and full-fed ease? Even so do men love the indolent Egypt of intellectual servitude.

“They bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
But still revolt when truth would set them free;
License they mean when they cry liberty,
For who loves that, must first be wise and good.”

The Bible, rightly used, is eminently the book of freedom. All the noblest and most inspiring parts of its history tell of the struggles of a free people against colossal tyrannies. All the most glorious pages of its prophets are like the blasts of trumpets blown to awaken men from immoral acquiescence and apathetic sloth. Its spiritual law is a perfect law of liberty. The very spirit of its gospel is “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

 And yet, so innate and perverse is the propensity of mankind to prefer their familiar fetters to the perils and the pains—the ennobling perils, the glorious pains—of freedom, that they have managed to degrade the very Scripture into an instrument of oppression, and have manufactured out of its misinterpretation the subtlest engines of tyranny.

 But since this is so, since phrases of Scripture have been made so dangerous to mankind, since oftentimes the dead letter of it has been an instrument of murder in the hands of ignorance, a firebrand of bigotry in the grasp of folly, an arrow of death in the quiver of fanaticism—they for whom God has “illuminated the eyes of the understanding,” they who know that the very Scriptures of God, as St. Peter says, may be wrested, by the unlearned and the unstable, to their own perdition are more than ever bound to use the Bible on behalf of that liberty—that civil, that social, that intellectual, that moral, that spiritual liberty—of which it was meant by God to be the shield and sword.

 The letter of the Bible, if it have been used to wound, may also, thank God—like the fabled spear of Achilles—be used to heal.

 By the help of the Bible, in time, we freed the slave, though vested interest quoted Moses and St. Paul to prove the sacredness of slavery. 

By the help of the Bible, in time, we shall make England temperate, though men quote the Epistle to Timothy to defend the system which maddens men and women with ardent spirits into desperate crimes. 

By the help of the Bible, in time, the English nation shook to the dust a system of despotism, though priests quoted the Apostles to prove the duty of passive obedience.

A thousand years of papal usurpation had been built, like a pyramid upon its apex, on the inch of argument seized by Romanism in the text “Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church.” But, in time, by reading the Epistle to the Galatians, a light burst upon the soul of Luther, and he nailed his theses to the cathedral door of Wittenberg, and flung the papal bull into the flames. 

Every nail he used that day was a nail in the coffin of tyrannous priestcraft; every flame he kindled that day was a flame to consume the chaff of false inferences from false assumptions. What he burnt was the right of designing tyrannies to build themselves upon isolated texts. (F. W. Farrar, The Messages of the Books: Being Discourses and Notes on the Books of the New Testament (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), 253.)

Writing in response to the Council of Trent (April 8, 1546), where the Roman Catholics asserted that the Latin Vulgate translation alone was the only authentic text of Scripture, John Calvin avows,

 “By one article they have obtained the means of proving what they please out of Scripture, and escaping from every passage that might be urged against them.” By turning from the biblical languages, we “shut our eyes to the light that we spontaneously may go astray.”

Erasmus’s practical solution centered on a return to the sources of Christian faith and piety: the church fathers and, above all, the New Testament. More controversially, he produced an edition of the Greek New Testament. Erasmus’s friend Thomas Linacre, after first reading the New Testament in Greek, is reported to have remarked, 

“Either this is not the gospel, or we are not Christians.”

Take Matthew 4:17, rendered in the Vulgate as “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say: ‘Do penance [paenitentiam agite], for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ ” Erasmus’s Greek, however, replaced “Do penance” with the single word, metanoiete—“Repent!”

From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Mt. 4:17 The Holy Bible, Translated from the Latin Vulgate 

In 1518, writing to his friend and mentor Johannes Staupitz, Luther explained the impact of this altered reading on his own theological development before he wrote the 95 Theses:

  It happened that I learned—thanks to the work and talent of the most learned men who teach us Greek and Hebrew with such great devotion—that the word poenitentia means metanoia in Greek.… While this thought was still agitating me, behold, suddenly around us the new war trumpets of indulgences and the bugles of pardon started to sound.

It is small wonder that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched” quickly became a common saying 

David C. Fink, “The Man Who Yielded to No One: Erasmus ‘Laid the Egg That Luther Hatched’ Many Said. Why Aren’t We Celebrating His 500th Anniversary?,” Christian History Magazine: Luther Leads the Way (Worcester, PA: Christian History Institute, 2015), 48,49.

The reason why Augustine was able with such ease to expound justification in this morally transformative sense was his reliance on the then-current Latin translation(s) of the Bible, which rendered the key Pauline Greek term δικαιόω (justified) by the Latin iustifico.

 The form of the Latin verb with its -fic ending (from facere, “to make”) was very plausibly understood by Augustine as meaning “to make righteous”—that is, moral transformation. Although Augustine knew Greek at an elementary level, he does not seem to have been sufficiently adept to have appreciated that in Pauline usage, δικαιόω has a forensic sense—the declaratory verdict of a law court rather than the moral transformation of character.

Nick Needham, “The Evolution of Justification: Justification in the Medieval Traditions,” in The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls: Justification in Biblical, Theological, Historical, and Pastoral Perspective, ed. Matthew Barrett (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 593.

Yet at the same time, one cannot help remembering that these interpreters were reflecting on the Latin text of Paul, which precluded them from any primary consideration of the sense of Paul’s justification language in the actual Greek of the New Testament. It seems more than a naked coincidence that a forensic understanding of δικαιόω (justified) is found in the medieval Greek exegete Theophylact of Ochrid... and in Western Renaissance (and later Protestant) scholarship, which took the original Greek as their locus of exegetical and theological reflection.

Matthew Barrett, ed., The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls: Justification in Biblical, Theological, Historical, and Pastoral Perspective (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019).

In this regard, Luther stresses, All teachings must be judged. For this a knowledge of the language is needful above all else. The preacher or teacher can expound the Bible from beginning to end as he pleases, accurately or inaccurately, if there is no one there to judge whether he is doing it right or wrong. But in order to judge, one must have a knowledge of the languages; it cannot be done any other way

Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Profit of Employing the Biblical Languages: Scriptural and Historical Reflections,” Themelios 37, no. 1 (2012): 48.

The Christ-event (Gal. 3:13–14, 16, 22–9). This is the extra-scriptural point of reference that interprets scripture and is itself interpreted by scripture. Scripture is interpreted as pointing towards this event, and scripture thereby interprets the event itself—which is, from Paul’s Christian standpoint, the only reason for being concerned about scriptural interpretation in the first place. The Christ-event is not a pure datum whose meaning is unilaterally imposed on the text. On the contrary, meaning flows simultaneously in both directions. 

Scripture is promise and law, and Christ is the promise’s fulfilment and the law’s end.

Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, Second Edition., The Cornerstones Series (London; New York; New Delhi; Sydney; Oxford: Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016), 475.

The full disclosure of the incarnation marks the end of the organic development. No further redemptive acts occur; nothing greater than the Christ-event can take place. The record of this accomplishment closes the canon. Beyond the inscripturation of the New Testament, the people of God may expect no further revelation (save perhaps at the parousia). 

Word and deed coalesce in the display of the new order advanced by God for sinful man. The heart of this new order is Christ. From beginning to end, from creation to new creation, the principle by which God makes all things new is the person and work of his Son. 

Christ Jesus is the central meaning of all revelation—word and deed. He is the one of whom the law and the prophets bear witness. The Christological meaning and structure of revelation is the goal toward which every interpreter of the Word of God must address his efforts. Christ Jesus in his fullness—by way of anticipation (Old Testament), by way of accomplishment (New Testament), by way of consummation (parousia). Vos heartily endorsed the dictum of Augustine:

The New Testament is in the Old concealed;
The Old Testament is in the New revealed.

James T. Jr. Dennison, “What Is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 189–190.

According to the apostle Paul, Christians are to live by the faith of the gospel (Gal. 2:20). That is, what they believe is to govern how they act in every situation. Not only so, but the way to gain the needed power to live as we ought comes from an apprehension of our standing in Christ, His love for us, our union with Him, and our perfect justification and acceptance with God on the ground of His imputed righteousness. To the extent that Christianity fails to base subjective experience on the objective truths of the gospel it becomes anthropocentric “Man-centred”.(Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms (Belfast; Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 29.)

One thing and one thing alone leads to Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. This is the holy word of God, the gospel of Christ, as Jesus himself says in John 8:36: “So if the Son makes you free you will be free indeed.” And he says in Matthew 4:4: “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

For Luther the word of God is not simply the Bible. The word is also far more than a source of information. He sees the word as powerful and creative, similar to Genesis 1 where the world comes into existence through God’s speech. Finally, the word refers to Christ and the preaching of Christ’s death and resurrection in a manner that creates faith in listeners

The word of God cannot be received or honored by any works but must be grasped by faith alone. Therefore, it is clear that the soul needs only the word of God for life and righteousness; it is justified by faith alone and not by any works. If the soul were able to be justified by any other means it would not need the word of God, and then it also would not need faith. It should be underlined that this faith cannot exist in connection with works.

In making this claim, Luther is swimming against the stream of the entire medieval tradition. In the late middle ages there were basically two options with regard to salvation, the teaching of Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham. 

In simplified form, Aquinas taught that the divine gift of faith needed to be completed by works of love. God’s grace made these works possible, but it was necessary for the human will to cooperate freely with grace in the performance of works. Ultimately, faith was “empty” until filled by love. Ockham put a greater stress on human involvement in the process of salvation. He said that we had

 “to do what was in us” (facere quod in se est) in order to qualify for grace in the first place.

 Further, our free wills then had to cooperate with grace to do the works necessary to be justified. Luther is saying that faith alone makes us right with God. (Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. William R. Russell and Timothy F. Lull, Third Edition. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012),  405–406.)

What can possibly be said more simply and clearly about the conversion of the ungodly or about the manner of regeneration? Let them bring forward a single commentary on the Sentences out of such a vast array of writers that has indicated how regeneration takes place. The Sentences of Peter Lombard was the basic theological textbook of the Middle Ages, on which many scholastic theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and Gabriel Biel, wrote commentaries.

 When they speak about the disposition [habitus] of love, they imagine that people merit [the Holy Spirit] through works—just as the present-day Anabaptists teach—and do not teach that it is received through the Word. However, God cannot be dealt with and cannot be grasped in any other way than through the Word.

 Accordingly, justification takes place through the Word, just as St. Paul notes [Rom. 1:16]: the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” Likewise [Rom. 10:17], “Faith comes from what is heard.” At this point we could even take up the argument that faith justifies, because if justification takes place only through the Word and the Word is grasped only by faith, it follows that faith justifies. 

Moreover, the ancient and modern Ravers 

A literal translation of the term Schwärmer, those who swarm like bees, or rave and rage, a term for those who claimed the gift of an inner revelation apart from Scripture. 

taught this: that God converts human beings without any created means and tools, that is, through his Spirit apart from the external proclamation and hearing of God’s Word, and that he draws them apart from these means to saving knowledge of Christ.

 Against these two parties the pure teachers of the Augsburg Confession have taught and contended that human beings were so corrupted through the fall of our first parents that in spiritual matters concerning our conversion and the salvation of our soul they are by nature blind, and that when God’s Word is preached they do not and cannot understand it. 

Instead, they regard it as foolishness and cannot use it to bring themselves nearer to God. On the contrary, they are and remain God’s enemy until by his grace alone, without any contribution of their own, they are converted, made believers, reborn, and renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word as it is preached and heard [1 Cor. 2:4, 12–13] (Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 131,544)

Arminius affirmed the semi-Pelagian principle that God’s grace seeks a willing response from all men and grants further grace “to those who do what is in them,” as taught by medieval nominalist theologian Gabriel Biel. In such a view, the freedom of the will includes the “power of resisting the Holy Spirit” and nullifying his saving call.

Since such a view of the human will grants it the power to stop God’s will, Martin Luther said that theologians who teach it are “attributing divinity to free choice.” After God has done all that he can, man remains in control of the outcome. This contradicts the teaching of our Lord, who said, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me,” and, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:37, 44). John Owen accused the Arminians of making an “idol” out of free will by granting it supremacy over the Holy Spirit.

Regeneration is a mighty work of deliverance by the triune God, not a mere choice or decision that a human being makes (Titus 3:3,4,5,6).

Therefore, we must reject Pelagianism and its proposal that people can deliver themselves from sin because of the power of their free will. Sadly, this error has infected some branches of evangelicalism. (Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Man and Christ, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 349–407.)

Specifically, it is the historical-critical method’s extratextual approach to Christology that begins its radical departure from orthodoxy. Instead of doing Christology within the worldview of Scripture like the Reformers, modern critics do Christology apart from the Bible’s own terms and under an Enlightenment worldview that not only is alien to the Scriptures but also is opposed to it as God’s word written.  

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another.

 Sapere Aude! [dare to know] “Have courage to use your own understanding!”—that is the motto of enlightenment.

Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ, ed. John S. Feinberg, Foundations of Evangelical Theology Series (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 47,63 

in the final analysis the moral superiority of Christianity does not rest on our imperfection as Christians but on Christ’s unique perfection as our exemplar. It is not based on our fallible moral character but on his impeccable character (John 8:46; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 John 3:3). In this context, there is clearly a moral superiority of Christianity over all other religions.

Norman L. Geisler, “Pluralism, Religious,” Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 599.

What is particularly pertinent here about this rationalism is its pronounced moralistic tendency. Rationalism and pietism, then, despite real differences between them, had a common effect. Together they fostered moralism and mysticism—the combination that Luther struggled against. Their resulting influence was a stress on human effort and moral accomplishment that brought about a shift in the center of gravity of interest in Paul.

This shift consists in moving away from the forensic aspects of his teaching to its ethical or transformative aspects. In other words, what took place was a shift away from the Reformation’s focus on the free, unmerited forgiveness of sins and the graciously imputed righteousness of Christ. Instead, as already noted above, the emphasis now falls on those passages where Paul speaks about the Holy Spirit and his work in the Christian. The activity of the believer and, correspondingly, the imperatives of the Christian life are increasingly accented. These are now judged to be what is central, even basic, for Paul.

This view of spirit in Paul is thoroughly anthropological. It is not too difficult to see, then, how it serves the overall outlook of Liberalism, as it may be fairly put, that salvation is by ethics. Salvation is the moral betterment capable of being achieved by the dominance of the human spirit, by self-discipline and self-improvement through the influence of the higher ethical impulse in human beings.

Richard B. Gaffin Jr., In the Fullness of Time: An Introduction to the Biblical Theology of Acts and Paul (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 207.

Variously attributed (to Charles Hodge, for one) is the statement “I don’t so much fear the ghost of Pelagius as the ghost of Semi-Pelagius”! In view is the notion that became dominant in late-medieval Roman Catholicism and underlies its doctrine of justification: 

“to the one who does what is in himself God does not deny grace” (e.g., Gabriel Biel)—a variant of “God helps those who help themselves.”

In opposition, the Reformation tradition, based on its biblical understanding of the radical depravity of human sinfulness, holds that in the sinner’s relationship to God, ability is not the measure of responsibility. Rather, in their total inability sinners are unable to meet their responsibility before God. Where this inability as total is not acknowledged (usually in the interests of maintaining some measure of free will despite the fall), the “alone” in the Reformation’s sola gratia is not understood and effectively denied.

Richard B. Gaffin Jr., In the Fullness of Time: An Introduction to the Biblical Theology of Acts and Paul (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 198–199.

Not only in 2 Cor. 3:1ff. but in the entire letter, this thematic of condemnation and righteousness, death and life is pointedly focused on the question of human (mis-)understanding. Only where the Spirit of God is present are we granted this freedom to see ourselves and God rightly, that is, to see ourselves as fallen and condemned and God as our justifier and savior. 

The “freedom” of which Paul speaks is unconditioned. It is no inherent or natural possession of the human being that we must actualize. It is not a potential that we must realize by our effort. It is a liberation from a heart turned in on itself.

 It is a liberation from a self-imposed legalism. Freedom is the gift of response to God’s goodness, a gift that is unqualified and unconditioned. Paul’s message to the Corinthians—that human thinking and perception lie in bondage—was no less scandalous to them than it is to our (post)modern contemporaries.

Mark A. Seifrid, The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Second Letter to the Corinthians, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.; England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos, 2014), 176–177.

When man became a sinner he made of himself instead of God the ultimate or final reference point

Cornelius Van Til and William Edgar, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 2003), 45.

He doth not make us holy only by persuading us so to be. He doth not only require us to be holy, propose unto us motives unto holiness, give us convictions of its necessity, and thereby excite us unto the pursuit and attainment of it, though this he doth also by the word and ministration thereof. 

It is too high an impudence for any one to pretend an owning of the gospel, and yet to deny a work of the Holy Ghost in our sanctification; and, therefore, both the old and new Pelagians did and do avow a work of his herein. But what is it that really they ascribe unto him? 

Merely the exciting our own abilities, aiding and assisting us in and unto the exercise of our own native power; which, when all is done, leaves the work to be our own and not his, and to us must the glory and praise of it be ascribed. But we have already sufficiently proved that the things thus promised of God and so effected are really wrought by the exceeding greatness of the power of the Spirit of God; (John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 387.)

Luther believed that the study of doctrine can not be divorced from the art of argumentation. He believed foes without and within the Christian church beseige the Gospel and that he needed to set it forth in opposition to competing claims.

Luther felt that each sola faces an enemy: Scripture alone, against Scripture subordinated to a false understanding of tradition; faith alone, against faith achieved by human righteousness; and grace alone, against a theology that humans could merit salvation.

Timothy George, “‘Contemplate Christ’: Luther’s Theology Emerged from His Own Struggles,” Christian History Magazine: Luther Leads the Way (Worcester, PA: Christian History Institute, 2015), 24.

Luther and Catholicism both agreed that salvation was by faith. The distinctive of Luther was the claim that it was by faith alone. In medieval Catholicism God graciously imparted righteousness to the believer through faith. Justification then became a process which involved both divine grace and human effort. For Luther salvation was by faith alone—it is not a co-operation between God and man. Themelios 30, no. 2 (2005): 5–20.

Luther considered justification by faith “the summary of all Christian doctrine” and “the article by which the church stands or falls.” In the Schmalkaldic Articles (1537), which could be considered his theological “last will and testament,” he wrote: “Nothing in this article can be given up or compromised, even if heaven and earth and things temporal should be destroyed.”

According to the medieval understanding of justification, which was derived from Augustine, a person gradually receives divine grace, which eventually heals sin’s wounds.

[ I, indeed, labored in defense of the free choice of the human will; but the grace of God conquered, and finally I was able to understand, with full clarity, the meaning of the Apostle:

 “For who singles thee out? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received it, why dost thou boast as if thou hadst not received it?” Cyprian, the martyr, too, wishing to show this, embraced all this under the heading: “We should glory in nothing since we have nothing in which to glory.”

Augustine of Hippo, The Retractations, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, trans. Mary Inez Bogan, vol. 60, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968), 120.]

 But Luther abandoned this medical image of impartation for the legal language of imputation: God accepts Christ’s righteousness, which is alien to our nature, as our own. Though God does not actually remove our sins, God no longer counts them against us.

 We are at the same time righteous and sinful (“simul justus et peccator,” as Luther put it).

Luther called this a “sweet exchange” between Christ and the sinner: “Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified; learn to pray to him despairing of yourself, saying ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness and I am thy sin. Thou hast taken on thyself what thou wast not, and hast given to me what I am not.’ ”

Medieval theologians considered faith one of the three theological virtues, along with hope and love. They emphasized faith’s cognitive content—intellectual assent to doctrine—and saw that assent as a virtue formed by love.

But to Luther such faith was not sufficient for salvation. (Even demons have it, Paul wrote.) Truly justifying faith—“fiducia,” Luther named it—is something more. It means taking hold of Christ, hearing and claiming God’s promises as we have understood them, and apprehending our acceptance by God in Jesus Christ. 

[ Justification is received with faith, that is, in the form of faith. Faith is the work and gift of God. God justifies a man by giving him faith. Christ is the righteousness of men and to this extent this righteousness is outside of us. But Christ is my righteousness only if I appropriate him and make him my own. Faith is the only way in which Christ can give himself to me. Only the Christ who is appropriated in faith, that is, the Christ who lives in my heart through faith is my righteousness. Christ is not only the “object” of faith but is himself present in faith. Through faith Christ is present with and in a man. Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 231.] 

Timothy George, “‘Contemplate Christ’: Luther’s Theology Emerged from His Own Struggles,” Christian History Magazine: Luther Leads the Way (Worcester, PA: Christian History Institute, 2015), 23,24.

in the beginning of my episcopate, when, moreover, I both perceived and asserted that the beginning of faith is God’s gift.

Augustine of Hippo, “A Treatise on the Gift of Perseverance,” in Saint Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis, vol. 5, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 547.

Luther, in Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1521), said that Thomas Aquinas was to be “pitied … for attempting to draw his opinions in matters of faith from Aristotle.” Luther suspected that scholastic theologians introduced philosophical assumptions from Aristotle’s Ethics into their treatments of the doctrine of justification. In his Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517), Luther asserted: 

“We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds.… Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace.”

David M. Whitford, ed., T&T Clark Companion to Reformation Theology, T&T Clark Companion (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2012), 363.

theologia crucis: theology of the cross; a term used by Luther and descriptive of his insight into the nature of revelation and therefore of theology as a whole. God has chosen to reveal himself, not as human reason describes him in its rational theology of glory (theologia gloriae), but in the weakness and the scandal of the cross.

 True knowledge of God is therefore a knowledge of God that rests upon the hiddenness of God in his revelation, a knowledge that humbles worldly reason and wisdom. Like Luther’s distinction between God hidden and God revealed (Deus absconditus / Deus revelatus), this concept of a theologia crucis militates against the marriage of theology and philosophy contemplated by the medieval scholastics.

Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 360.

In short, tradition had no legitimate place of authority in the worship of Jehovah. Everything was to be tested by the Word of God as recorded in the Scriptures. That’s why Jesus’ rebuke to the scribes and Pharisees was so harsh. Their very faith in rabbinical tradition was in and of itself a serious transgression of the covenant and commandments of God (cf. Matt. 15:3).

 Jesus answered, “And why do you refuse to obey God’s command so that you can follow your own teachings? Matthew 15:3 EXPNT

John MacArthur, “Chapter Five: The Sufficiency of the Written Word,” in Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible, ed. Don Kistler (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), 74.

There are important teachings in the tradition that are not only additional to, but different from and contradictory to, the teaching of sacred Scripture. These include the very doctrines that were the centerpiece of the Reformation struggle: 

the nature of justification; the importance of the principle of sola fide; the number of the sacraments; the sufficiency of the work of Christ; the effect of baptism; the presence of Christ at the Supper; the priesthood of all believers; the celibacy of the priesthood; the character and role of Mary; and much more. 

[the Assertion of the seven sacraments, a refutation of Luther’s views written by no less a person than King Henry VIII of England. The pope reluctantly rewarded Henry for his efforts with the title ‘Defender of the Faith’, which his successors bear to this day, although the content of that faith is no longer quite what was originally intended!

Gerald Bray, The Faith We Confess: An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (London: The Latimer Trust, 2009), 5.]

The more that Scripture is exegeted on its own terms, the more it will become clear that in these areas sacred tradition does not merely add to sacred Scripture, it contradicts it. That being the case, can tradition really be “sacred”?

Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Chapter Six: Scripture and Tradition,” in Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible, ed. Don Kistler (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), 108–109.

If there ever was a general consent of the Church Catholic on any question, it exists on this. East and West, from the earliest to the latest times, concurred in assigning to Scripture a pre-eminence which consisted in its being—as no other collection of writings is—the Word of God. 

E. A. Litton, Introduction to Dogmatic Theology: On the Basis of the XXXIX. Articles of the Church of England (London: Elliot Stock, 1882), 20.

A common misunderstanding is that the Reformers believed in the infallible authority of Scripture while the Roman Catholic church believed only in the infallible authority of the church and her tradition. This is a distortion of the controversy. At the time of the Reformation, both sides acknowledged the infallible authority of the Bible. The question was this: “Is the Bible the only infallible source of special revelation?”

R.C. Sproul, Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 42.

If we are to understand what Protestants think, we will first have to know why they believe what they believe. In fact, if we try to put ourselves in the place of early reformers such as Martin Luther, we must certainly have some appreciation for their reasons for championing the doctrine of sola Scriptura (or “Scripture alone”). 

When one considers the corruption in the Roman Church at that time, the degenerate teachings it promoted, and the distorted understanding of Tradition that it used to defend itself—along with the fact that the West was several centuries removed from any significant contact with its former Orthodox heritage—it is difficult to imagine within those limitations how one such as Luther might have responded with significantly better results. 

How could Luther have appealed to Tradition to fight these abuses, when Tradition (as all in the Roman West had been led to believe) was embodied in the very papacy that was responsible for those abuses? To Luther, it was Tradition that had erred. And if he were to reform the Church, he would have to do so with the sure undergirding of the Scriptures.

John Whiteford, Sola Scriptura: An Orthodox Analysis of the Cornerstone of Reformation Theology (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 1996), 7–8.

As for the false Church, it ascribes more power and authority to itself and its ordinances than to the Word of God, and will not submit itself to the yoke of Christ. Neither does it administer the sacraments as appointed by Christ in His Word, but adds to and takes from them, as it thinks proper; it relies more upon men than upon Christ; and persecutes those who live holily according to the Word of God and rebuke it for its errors, covetousness, and idolatry. Historic Creeds and Confessions, electronic ed. (Oak Harbor: Lexham Press, 1997).

Roman Catholic controversialists (Erasmus, François de Sales, Charron, Camus, Valeriano Magni, and others) who, in their attempts to exalt the authority of the church, emphasized the insufficiency of Scripture. The alleged insufficiencies and weakness of Scripture “were apologetical arguments before they became the conclusions of criticism.”

The irony of the Roman Catholic “pyrrhonical,” or skeptical, argumentation is that deists frequently exploited its arsenal not only in their attacks against the Protestants’ perspectives on Scripture but against the Christian faith in general. For example, the free-thinkers John Toland and Anthony Collins cited the arguments of Simon to demonstrate that the Bible contained “errors.” The deist Matthew Tindal, in a tour de force, proceeded to argue that if the Scriptures are errant, God cannot hold us accountable to them. To what standard can God in justice hold us accountable if the teachings of the Bible and the churches are uncertain? 

Astute contemporaries perceived that deists were borrowing Roman Catholic pyrrhonical arguments. William Bentley, a shrewd critic of Anthony Collins, pinpointed this borrowing clearly. Collins had portrayed several Roman Catholic scholars (including Simon) as intent upon demonstrating the corruption of the texts of Scripture in order to force Protestants to accept the authority of the church.

John D. Woodbridge, “Some Misconceptions of the Impact of the ‘Enlightenment’ on the Doctrine of Scripture,” in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 254.

They have all the revelation they need in the scriptural law and prophets, the road map of God’s way and manual of God’s realm, laying out with abundant clarity God’s concern for the poor. Repentance by the rich man’s brothers or anyone else begins with adherence to God’s just and merciful word. Fair enough, but surely a personal post resurrection witness would speed the repentance process along? Not necessarily, in Abraham’s view: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Lk.16:31).

If one can’t read the patent words of Scripture, it is doubtful one will have better luck with rightly reading otherworldly visions. Indeed, Scripture provides fundamental and critical checks on fanciful flights of spiritual imagination, not in an “imperious way” like an “academic magisterium,” but through the inspired (inspirited) guidance of the Holy Spirit. cf. 2 Tim 3:15–17,

Moreover, the risen Jesus will reiterate the present parable’s conclusion concerning the revelatory primacy of holy writ: “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!… Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Lk.24:25, 27; cf. Lk.24:44–47). 

F. Scott Spencer, Luke, ed. Joel B. Green, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019), 415–416. 

the new Gentile church was kept in contact with the Judaic church, to which it owed the Gospel and was thus kept firmly rooted in the Old Testament Scriptures—a great blessing, for the history of the church has shown how readily alien and corrosive influences beset the Gospel, once contact with the Old Testament is lost. To surrender the Old Testament is the first step toward misunderstanding, perverting, and so losing the Gospel of the New Testament.(Robert L. Reymond, Paul, Missionary Theologian (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2000), 151.)

The Christian church and the Bible were therefore inseparable from the outset; the church never existed without a Bible nor was there ever a time when it did not recognize the authority of Scripture. (Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 4 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 34.)

And all of us should also take note of this miracle of the Holy Spirit, namely, that the Spirit wanted to give the world all the books of Holy Scripture, of both the Old and the New Testaments, solely through Abraham’s people and seed, and that we Gentiles did not compose a single book, just as prophets and apostles were not chosen from among the Gentiles, as St. Paul says in Rom. 3:2, the Jews enjoy a great advantage, since they “are entrusted with the oracles of God,” and according to Ps. 147:19, “He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and ordinances to Israel.” And Christ himself says in John 4:22, “We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews,” and Rom. 9:4–5 says, “To them belong the covenants, the giving of the law, the patriarchs, and Christ.”

Therefore we Gentiles must not value the writings of our fathers as highly as Holy Scripture, but as worth a little less; for they are the children and heirs, while we are the guests and strangers who have come to the children’s table by grace and without any promise. We should, indeed, humbly thank God and, like the Gentile woman, have no higher wish than to be the little dogs that gather the crumbs falling from their masters’ table [Matt. 15:27].

 As it is, we proceed arrogantly and put our fathers and ourselves on a level with the apostles, never thinking that God could break us to pieces more easily, since he did not spare the natural branches and Abraham’s seed or heirs for their unbelief, Rom. 11:21. 

And yet, that accursed abomination in Rome usurps the authority to change Scripture arbitrarily solely to suit himself, without any regard for apostles and prophets. That is why St. Augustine is right when he writes to St. Jerome 

“Dear brother, I hope that you do not expect your books to be regarded as equal to those of the apostles and prophets. God forbid that you should desire such a thing.”

Paul W. Robinson, “On the Councils and the Church,” in Church and Sacraments, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand et al., vol. 3, The Annotated Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1539), 364–365.  

What I am arguing, then, is this: Since prophecy is without error, there are not prophets today. Both apostles and prophets have ceased. The foundation has been laid once-for-all in the teaching of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20). God has spoken to us in the last days finally and definitively in his Son (Heb. 1:2). 

The faith has been handed down once-for-all time to the saints (Jude 3). The completion of revelation in the NT era makes sense since the climatic fulfillment of redemptive history was accomplished in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We don’t have any new revelation because the final and definitive revelation has been given in Jesus Christ. 

The next event in redemptive history is the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. No more apostles or prophets will arise. The work of laying the foundation, which culminated in the canon of the scripture, is finished. No further word of God is needed or sought. What we need is the illuminating work of the Spirit and prayer to understand the word that has been vouchsafed to us.

Thomas R. Schreiner, “It All Depends upon Prophecy: A Brief Case for Nuanced Cessationism,” Themelios 44, no. 1 (2019): 34.

So sola Scriptura simply means that Scripture is sufficient. The fact that Jesus did and taught many things not recorded in Scripture (John 20:30; 21:25) is wholly irrelevant to the principle of sola Scriptura. The fact that most of the apostles’ actual sermons in the early churches were not written down and preserved for us does not diminish the truth of biblical sufficiency one bit. 

What is certain is that all that is necessary is in Scripture—and we are forbidden “to exceed what is written” (1 Cor. 4:6). As other chapters in this volume demonstrate, Scripture clearly claims for itself this sufficiency—and nowhere more clearly than in 2 Timothy 3:15–17. A brief summary of that passage is perhaps appropriate here. 

In short, verse 15 affirms that Scripture is sufficient for salvation: “The sacred writings … are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Verse 16 affirms the absolute authority of Scripture, which is “God-breathed” (Greek, theopneustos) and profitable for our instruction. 2 Timothy 3:17 states that Scripture is able to equip the man of God “for every good work.” So the assertion that the Bible itself does not teach sola Scriptura is simply wrong.

John MacArthur, “Chapter Five: The Sufficiency of the Written Word,” in Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible, ed. Don Kistler (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), 80–81.

Thus says the Lord: “Let the wise not boast in his wisdom, and let the strong not boast in his strength, and let the wealthy not boast in his riches. Rather let the one who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows that I am the Lord, the one who deals in mercy and judgment and righteousness upon the earth Jer. 9:23–24 lxx 

knows me. Jer.9:24 This lies at the foundation of everything: of all trust in God (for One unknown cannot be trusted at all); of all pleasing (Eph. 1:17; Col. 1:9, 10; 1 John 5:20). The want of it led to Gentile corruption (Rom. 1:28); to Israel’s fall (Isa. 1:3; Luke 19:42, 44); and all future blessing is wrapt up in it: for Israel (Jer.31:34; Isa. 54:13); and for creation (Isa. 11:9). This is why we have the written Word (2 Tim. 3:15), and the living “Word” (John 1:18). The Companion Bible: 1031. 

 If anybody does not remain in the teaching of Christ (Teaching either by, or about, Christ)  but goes beyond it,(Teaching pure speculation as apostolic doctrine) he does not have God with him: only those who remain in what he taught can have the Father and the Son with them. 2 Jn. 9 

The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), 2 Jn 9.Page 2020

Because these false teachers were adding something to the “simple gospel” that Paul had preached (a gospel that was, in his mind, the fulfillment of the scripture) these teachers were, in essence, adding their own teachings (human wisdom) to the scripture itself (1 Cor. 4:6) Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998).

 To the law and to the testimony: If they speak not according to this word, It is because there is no light in them Isa. 8:20 

Here we learn the absolute importance of basing every doctrine, every belief, on the written word of God. No error is more fundamental, nor more disastrous, than depending upon some external source of authority, whether extra-Biblical writings, or an organization claiming to dispense God’s truth. The only source of authority is the written word of God. 

This word is declared in many ways to be perspicuous—that is, understandable (Dt. 30:11; Ps.102:18, Pr.8:9) to the ordinary person, who, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, together with careful study, may be trusted to come to just and sound conclusions as to the meaning of Scripture. 

Otherwise how could spiritual truth be made known to “babes and suckling's” (Ps 8:2. Mt 11:25), and how could ordinary listeners be commended for checking up on the accuracy and truthfulness of an apostle (Ac. 17:11), and be charged with the responsibility of judging the message of an apostle, to determine that it was the true gospel (Ga 1:8)? 

Note that the great doctrinal epistles are specifically addressed to the “saints,” that is, the ordinary believers, not to the pastors, bishops, theologians, or authorities of the church (Ro. 1:6, 8; 1 Co. 1:2; Ep. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2). 

We shall be judged on the basis of our belief or disbelief in the written word of God (Jn.5:24-47. 12:48); in that day we will not be able to excuse our wrong belief, if such it should prove to be, by an appeal claiming “But I believed what my church, pastor, organization, etc., taught me” (Ezk. 14:10. Mt. 7:21-23; Mk. 12:24, 27. Ro. 14:12). Is. 29:11-13. Mt.15:3-6, 9. Mk. 7:7-9. Jn. 12:48. Ro. 2:16, 18. 2 Co. 10:12. 11:4. Col. 2:8.

Jerome H. Smith, The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge: The Most Complete Listing of Cross References Available Anywhere- Every Verse, Every Theme, Every Important Word (Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992), 753.

All mankind is but grass, and “the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isa.40:8). The Lord is not impressed with grand structures of human intellect and labor, but says, “To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Isa.66:2).   

 And the LORD said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” Exodus 34:27 The Scriptures therefore were to be the one standard by which everyone who claimed to speak for God was tested: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isa. 8:20, KJV).

Through the Scriptures, God has invited us into the very arena which he himself inhabits. With Paul, we are caught up in the “heavenly places. Eph.2:6”  Never again can we isolate or abstract a part of God’s Word from its biblical-theological and organic context in the history of redemption. 

The people of God are hungry and thirsty for Christ Jesus. The poor lambs of Christ yearn for the streams of living water that flow by the throne of God. The vessels of grace long to be lifted to the right hand of the glory on high. 

Biblical-theological preaching will bring our people to the arms of Jesus. It will direct their gaze toward the crystal sea mirroring the lapis lazuli throne. It will draw them to find their life hidden with Christ in God.

James T. Jr. Dennison, “What Is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 191.