Sola Scriptura | #TheSolae
Creator God, our sovereign Lord
The heavens tell, the stars have shown
Your splendour, might and deity
But truth lies in Your Word alone
Nathan Clark George
After Luther nailed his 95 questions to the door of his church at Wittenburg, several of the people who had a chance to read them saw the truth in them, and began to question the Catholic church on its heavy emphasis on tradition and the extravagance of the clergy.
At first, the church saw it as a minor disturbance, akin to the one led by Jan Hus a little over a century prior. However, the more Luther read and wrestled with Scripture, the more the errors of the church’s theology became evident, and published a few books which sought to give further insight into why the Bible taught that justification is by grace through faith. Eventually, the church became incensed by his efforts, and Pope Leo X issued a decree that if Luther did not recant of everythung he had declared, he would be excommunicated from the church.
Excommunication back then was much worse than receiving a cold shoulder from fellow church goers. As the papacy had a full hold on the state, anyone declared a heretic could be arrested and executed by the civil authorities. The chance Luther was given was to recant his statements against the papacy, or face imminent death. Luther did not recant, and publicly burnt the papal decree and declared the Pope the anti-Christ for condemning what he had searched through the Scripture and found to be the Gospel truth. That act sparked a greater rift between Luther’s adherents and the Catholic church.
It was starting to get out of hand, the church noted, seeing as to how Luther was adamant on not rescinding his stand, and how popular he was getting by the day. He was duly summoned to a gathering of the Catholic church’s most prominent leaders in the town of Worms (pronounced Vurms, German…) slated for early 1521, again to recant his statements made against the papacy and restore stability to the Holy Roman Empire. Failure to do so would lead to his excommunication from the church, which in that day an age was a death warrant.
“My conscience is captive to the Word of God,” he told his accusers. “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand.”
Martin Luther declared his conscience to be bound to God’s Word, and no longer to the church and its coercive traditions and rites. Earlier before the gathering at Worms, he said to a cardinal, who challenged him on the basis of church teaching, “The truth of Scripture comes first. After that is accepted one may determine whether the words of men can be accepted as true.” It was a bold statement to make at the time, and even today, the weight of it still bears heavy on us. Why is Scripture alone to be considered the only source of truth necessary for our life?
For close to a thousand years, Christianity was defined by tradition and acts of routine. Theology (knowledge of God and His plan for humanity) was the reserve of a few. People would have their own theological questions, but did not own a copy of Scripture to find answers on their own. They would go seek answers from the appointed clergy, who would then provide answers based on their own, often flawed and self-serving understanding of the Scriptures. This created a kind of drone mentality in the populace; you know what you believe, but you cannot defend what you believe in. So, if one would be asked why they have to give penance and indulgences, or why they celebrate something as simple as the Lord’s Table, the run-to answer would be, “Because the priest told us so.”
However, Luther used his position as a priest to fully look into Scripture, wring it and intellectually ponder over all he read, possibly coming across verses such as:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16 – 17 (NIV)
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
2 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
By penning sola Scriptura, he affirmed what had been true all along; that God’s Word has sufficient truth that leads to salvation and that is necessary for spiritual life. It is the perfect and only standard of spiritual truth; not a pope (a fallible human figure), traditions (which change and waver over time) or anything else that is set up as a measure of one’s spirituality. For the longest time, traditions had taken root in the hearts of people instead of the unchanging Scripture which backed them up; imperfect human had set their decrees and laws above that which was perfeect and whole. What he called for was for a shift from what had been set as standards by human authority and turn back to what was the original authority on all spiritual matters. Himself, a mere priest, had been able through God’s help to find the truth by simply reading the Scriptures; how much more would someone else’s heart be captivated by this truth?
Sola Scriptura frees the believer from all these things, and in turn allows them, just like the reformers did, to study Scripture on their own and discover the way to salvation. It gives the believer an opportunity to wrestle with the very words of God in their minds and hearts, and make personal convictions based on these truths themselves that they can intellectually defend and make a case for.
The reformers themselves had experienced this power of the Bible alone being the beginning of one’s journey to knowing God and His ultimate plan for humanity, and they did all they could to make sure it reached the masses so that as many people as possible could make that first step. Luther translated the New Testament into German for his countrymen to read and be read to in their native language. In England, a man named William Tyndale, through violent opposition that eventually ended in his death, translated the New Testament as well into the commoner’s language, English. “I defy the Pope and all his laws,” he once said to a priest. “If God spare my life, before very long I will cause a boy who drives a plough to know more Scriptures than you do!”
Sola Scriptura paved the way for the Reformation. But without an understanding of what it really talks about concerning salvation, one can easily revert to following set traditions and human authority as a means of ‘acquiring’ their own salvation. In our next installment of this series, we will delve deeper and get to learn what the reformers advocated for as the means by which we are saved.
Here are some sites I used to aid in writing this article. I hope they will benefit you as well 🙂