Sola scriptura and corrections?

  • Thread starter Thread starter brianjmc1
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

brianjmc1

Guest
I have studied both sides of the argument. I know it’s been talked about over and over again. My question is simple, but the answer might not be…

How do my brothers and sisters in Christ(Protestant), who self interpret the scripture, know when they are interpreting wrong? Do you go to your Pastor? Do you compare with others in your church? This is assuming that you believe you can interpret scpiture wrong, that might not be the case for all?
I am not trying to prove them false, its more of curiosity. For myself, I have the Church to instruct me and guide me and verify my interpretation…
Thanks!
Brian
 
When I was in a Baptist church, a group of people disagreed with the Sabbath. They tought we should observe the sabbath… They left and formed their own group. A couple of years later a controversy occured around the speaking in tongues and gift of the spirits… They finally split and formed their own baptist church. Still a few years later a strong dispute arose around the Lord’s return… Some were premillenial pretribulationist, and a smaller group was premillenial postribulationist… The later left and formed their own group. Today in my home town there are six baptist churches, that all originated from one and split and formed their own churches. Each convinced of Sola Scriptura…
 
Last edited:
Happy to discuss, but first, what do you think the doctrine of “Sola Scriptura” means? Said another way - how do you think it is to be applied?
 
brianjmc1 said:
How do my brothers and sisters in Christ(Protestant), who self interpret the scripture, know when they are interpreting wrong?
Click to expand...
In the Bible… It’s quite Clear:

God’s Holy Spirit is the One and Only INTERPRETER of Holy Scriptures…

There cannot be any pure personal interpretations
which should ever be peddled as Solid as a Rock…

Sola Scriptura? . Glosses over the time of Actual Events
as well as the time when Only Oral Accounts
were leading people to actual Salvation…

No one had Written Accounts of The New Testament …

And when around c.400 AD the NT became Canon…
Centuries before Gutenberg,
Who even had it…? and who could even read… ?
1000’s of Languages existing…
And we’re speaking of - all around the entire world… !

They/We - are all Saved via putting their/our FAITH in Jesus:
In some form or manner - even via assenting to our Consciences .

_

_
 
This is not much different that the issue the Methodist Church is going through at the moment.
Two factions want to split over the perceived truth of an issue.
Should we be shocked that a faction is splitting into factions?
There is no anchor.
At the end of the day our faith is not in a book, it is in Christ.
Who is Christ? The Head of The Body. Christ is incarnate in human flesh, living among human beings and establishing a real community of people, The Church. If you don’t have The Church you don’t have the fullness of Scripture, because it is inseparable from the Church.

The Scriptures can only exist in the continuous community they breathed forth in.
 
Last edited:
Reformed pastor here.

I would say this :
  • it may depend according to the particular flavour of Protestantism one belongs to, but in mine, Tradition is in no way out of the picture. It simply isn’t the decisive instance (Scripture is). So in a lot of cases (most of them) it still provides an interpretative framework.
  • We (the European Reformed tradition) are big on exegesis, and by that I mean a historico-critical approach of the text. So if you want to prove a point, this is what you do, and you’d better make a convincing case. Historical context, linguistics, history of the text and his manuscripts, the search for the oldest formulation of this or that verse, all play the role of an arbitrator in scriptural debate.
It doesn’t prevent wide departures from Tradition, though, and this is one of the reasons why I am feeling increasingly ill at ease in a more and more liberal church, and looking toward Rome.
 
My definition(Sola Scriptura), which can be wrong…

The bible alone is the ONLY authority to reveal Gods plan to his people of the teachings of Jesus Christ. A follower interprets scripture for him\herself with the help of the Holy Spirit and does not rely on anyone else, history, non biblical writings, Tradition, etc…

Is this correct?
 
brianjmc1 said:
Is this correct?
Click to expand...
I think only a small minority of Protestant churches would subscribe to that understanding of sola scriptura.

Most Protestant churches - Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, etc. - do not encourage their communicants to read the Bible in isolation without guidance or support.

And of course, Protestant theologians do utilise historical research, extra-biblical texts, ecumenical creeds, denominational confessions (this being an approximation of tradition) and etc. in order to clarify doctrines and interpret the Bible.

The majority of the German Bible Society - which publishes the critical text of the Greek NT used for Catholic Bible translations - is Protestant.

Doctrinal disputes within Protestant churches are resolved at the synodal (various equivalent terms) level within their communities.
 
The doctrine of Sola Scriptura inevitably produces division, because there’s no designated authority within the doctrine to rule on controversies, no place where the buck stops so to speak. Scripture is expected to speak for itself but Scripture often appears to be vague, ambiguous, or even seemingly contradictory on many points. It was never intended to serve as some sort of systematic catechism. Each person therefore becomes their own pope, interpreting as they see fit, or agreeing with someone else’s interpretation. And often one interpretation is as plausible as the next, even if the two are completely at odds with each other.

But the Church received and preached the gospel before a word of the New Testament was written, and her teachings reflect that continuous understanding traceable all the way to the beginnings. The doctrine of Sola Scriptura effectively dismisses and bypasses all that knowledge, regrettably. The understanding of the faith becomes a sort of best-guess affair-may the “better” exegete win.
 
Last edited:
What you are describing is Solo Scriptura. Here is a link that might help you understand the difference between Solo Scriptura and Sola Scriptura.
 
As Fr Josiah Trenham, orthodox priest with phd in reformed theology said: there are different ways of understanding it.

This is my take as protestant:

Sola scriptura does not means solo scriptura.

Scripture alone is not only scripture

Scripture first I would say. It is not that we dismiss tradition but the tradition needs to be agreeing with what scripture says.

We could go down to the road how you know your interpretation is the right one. But I dont wanna change the topic of the post.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all the replies!!!

then getting back to my original question…

How do you know if your interpretation is wrong? Who is the umpire to tell you, that you are correct or you are false. If there is ONLY one truth, yet countless different opinions of scripture meanings(Catholic, Orthodox, Coptics, Main Line Protestant, Pentecostal, non-denominational, Jehovah Witness, Mormons, etc…) then how does one truly know? Is it determined by the majority or the individual church?
 
What you describe is sometimes referred to as “Prima Scriptura”. But that really changes nothing because, in the end, Scriptura is appealed to as the final arbiter either way.
 
If one cannot come to trust the historical and visible Church that Christ established for this very purpose of receiving, preserving, and accurately proclaiming the true faith, then there simply is no way to know. No one except the Church makes the bold and honest claim that they are that infallible interpreter, while everyone who picks up a bible and claims to know what it means to say on one issue or another nonetheless are acting as if they possess that gift of infallibility themselves.
 
Last edited:
Let me say something about this. The bible was written in a human language with gramar, syntaxis, etc. Also it has context not just in the text but the historical and cultural context. Thus interpret it is an exegetical issue. Not that everybody can say his mind but that everybody cant to the meaning cause it was not written in a non human language where we need some interpreters to make us humans understand.
 
fhansen said:
If one cannot come to trust the historical and visible Church that Christ established for this very purpose of receiving, preserving, and accurately proclaiming the true faith, then there simply is no way to know. No one except the Church makes the bold and honest claim that they are that infallible interpreter, while everyone who picks up a bible and claims to know what it means to say on one issue or another nonetheless are acting as if they possess that gift of infallibility themselves.
Click to expand...
And not even The Church gives definitive interpretations of every passage of the bible. Why is that? Because the word alone does not define the faith. The faith is personal, not an individualist way but in a relational personal way.

If every jot and tittle were meant to bring certitude, there would be no need for Christ. God could have simply thrown a book at us.

Does that make sense?
If you want to know what year JFK was born, you can look it up in a book and have certitude.
If you want to know the atomic weight of oxygen, you look it up in a book and have certitude.
If you want to know Jesus Christ, you have a limitless expanse of personal relationship, not a set of facts.
And Christ came to establish a community, and The Community is still here.
 
Last edited:
Ok, I’m not sure I understand this though. Relying on Scripture alone, Protestants cannot agree among themselves whether or not baptism is necessary for regeneration, whether or not infant baptism is efficacious, whether or not man’s will plays any role whatsoever in his salvation, whether or not Jesus is really present in the Eucharist, whether or not our day of rest and worship should be the seventh or the first, even whether or not Jesus is God if you look to JWs who are Sola Scriptura adherents, offspring of the Reformation and and whose Scripture-based arguments are not at all implausible.

The truth is not strictly about exegesis; expert exegetes disagree with each other all the time. God wouldn’t leave us that destitute. No one needed to be a biblical scholar in order to understand the faith in the past, when the majority of Christians have been illiterate down through the centuries to begin with.
 
Last edited:
goout said:
If every jot and tittle were meant to bring certitude, there would be no need for Christ. God could have simply thrown a book at us.
Click to expand...
Right, which is why the Church tells us that we’re not strictly “people of the Book”. And this is also the reason why we need the Church, whose Tradition-her lived experience on these matters- often fills in the gaps where Scripture is vague.
 
brianjmc1 said:
How do my brothers and sisters in Christ(Protestant), who self interpret the scripture, know when they are interpreting wrong?
Click to expand...
Adherents of Sola Scriptura, who understand it in the context of the Reformation and not some later misinterpretation of the doctrine, do not believe in private interpretation of scripture. This is a common misunderstanding of what Sola Scriptura is.

To answer your question though, yes, if a person does not understand the passage they are examining it would be prudent to go to the Church to obtain clarification on the hermeneutics of that passage. Some of the tools we would use are to read the greater passage so that we can examine context within the book being discussed, examine other clear passages of scripture that discuss the same issue, understand the syntactical and grammatical text of the passage, look at the historical context, and perhaps examine what other Church fathers have said on the subject.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top