Sola Scriptura for Life and the Church

Welcome back to Anne’s definitive guide to the Solas of the Reformation, cough. And some people have the gall to think that I’m not funny….

Today let’s look at the lynchpin of the whole lot, Sola Scriptura. If you can effectively undermine and destroy this one, you can demolish not only all the other ones, but Christianity itself. If you can shove people’s attention off of the bible and on to themselves, and other people, and other stuff, you ruin the chances for those people to know God and be reconciled to him. It isn’t an accident that this is the one most difficult to deal with for the ordinary person, or the very fancy person if it comes to that.

How can a person know God? Who, for that matter, is God? How can you know who he is? How can you be related to him? Can you, in a fitful twist, call him ‘she’ and replace the communion wine with honey? More also, if you decide to read the bible, for whatever strange reason, how should you do it? And what hold should it have over you?

The fact that many Christians are confused by these and many questions like them indicates, strongly, that this doctrine is pertinent and essential, now more than ever. I could go on battling with my friendly Roman Catholics about the nature of the authority of scripture in the church, and that would be an interesting and fun thing to do, the lines of argument being familiar and well worn. The disagreement is profound and clear. The Roman Catholic Church, claiming for tradition an equally authoritative role in the church as a “second source” of revelation and, for herself, the sole power to declare the right and true interpretation of both scripture and tradition, takes authority over the church that belongs to scripture alone. Theoretically, a Protestant, in affirming this Sola of the Reformation, would say that the church sits under the authority of the scripture, that tradition is measured by the scriptures, and that the scriptures judge and norm all that the church does and says. But where does the threat to the authority of the bible really lie, in this decadent, dystopic age?

I don’t know of very many Roman Catholics who are sneaking into Protestant evangelicalism in hipster glasses and beards, queuing up the band, smiling a bright blindingly white smile and flashing a couple of verses pulled out of context up onto a half a million dollar screen. Who, a person might ask, is this moment, undermining the scriptures? Which pastors are bringing their congregations under the authority of the Word of God, to let it rule and guide them? Where are other authoritative revelations being delivered under the nefarious guise of “preaching the bible”? In other words, looking at the landscape of the church today, the danger isn’t so much out there as it is in here, in our own books and pulpits and best loved small group study guides.

Every so often, Matt and I sit around in front of the computer, hopping from one mega church sermon to another, just for fun, because we live in Binghamton. Last night we watched some stuff from a church that was thickly decked out with a Halloween Theme. First there was a Thriller concert (a guy in a red leather jacket singing Thriller with some other guys dressed like zombies dancing around behind him) and then after that the pastor, or somebody, I mean, I’m assuming he was a pastor, dressed in a dark velvet suit with red trim, came out to, and I feel like this is not the word I’m really looking for, “preach” the sermon. All around him were skulls and cobwebs and spooky lighting. I had great expectations before he opened his mouth. Surely, I thought, he is going to say something really exciting with all this stuff there to set him up. But, well, he wandered around on the stage and gave his personal thoughts and feelings about Satan and it was so desperately boring we eventually gave up and clicked on to the next church.

If the pastor isn’t interested in and curious about the bible, what earthly hope is there for the poor people who bothered to come out and hear him? I know this is the tiresome meme of this blog, or one of them. Read The Bible. Read it. Open it up, crack it open, Read It. Are you a pastor? Here’s a thought, Read The Bible. Are you some other kind of person? Read The Bible.

Why? You ask, why should I bother? Because it is God’s revelation of himself to his creation. He wanted to be known, and he chose to be known this way. If you can manage to believe that God exists, that he created, that he has some investment in his creation, why would you stop short of being interested in his own communication? And yet most of us are. Most of us are deathly bored and uninterested.

Here’s the thing, God is not unable to express himself. He’s not bad at it. He doesn’t stutter and grasp for words. He is comprehensible, and he has chosen to be known through the words of the bible. If you are reading it and having a hard time, it is not his fault. And, heaven help us, if the church corporately decides that the bible is not enough and is not trustworthy, the ordinary person will be led to a darkness of no hope.

The church that spends time and money putting on a Thriller Concert and expense accounting a velvet suit for the pastor, doesn’t think the bible is enough, or even something. That church isn’t offering anything but themselves. They will tell all the people what to do, piling up work and guilt and suggestions and everything, but they will have no basis for doing it, other than themselves and the experiences and opinions of their pastors.

The church is in existence because God made himself known through the words of scripture and the church ceases to exist, spiritually, when it wanders away to know something else. There isn’t some other revelation. There isn’t some new and better thing coming. The Bible Alone holds the words of life. The question is, will the person who claims to believe it has authority, turn to it and live?