Sola Scriptura, Part 7

Continued form last week [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6]

PROTESTANT INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES THAT DON'T WORK

Even from the very earliest days of the Reformation, Protestants have been forced to deal with the fact that, given the Bible and the reason of the individual alone, people could not agree upon the meaning of many of the most basic questions of doctrine. Within Martin Luther's own life dozens of competing groups had arisen, all claiming to "just believe the Bible," but none agreeing on what the Bible said.

Though Luther had courageously stood before the Diet of Worms and said that unless he were persuaded by Scripture, or by plain reason, he would not retract anything that he had been teaching; later, when Anabaptists, who disagreed with the Lutherans on a number of points, simply asked for the same indulgence, the Lutherans butchered them by the thousands — so much for the rhetoric about the "right of an individual to read the Scriptures for himself."

Despite the obvious problems that the rapid splintering of Protestantism presented to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, not willing to concede defeat to the Pope, Protestants instead concluded that the real problem must be that those with whom they disagree, in other words every other sect but their own, must not be reading the Bible correctly. Thus a number of approaches have been set forth as solutions to this problem. Of course there has yet to be the approach that could reverse the endless multiplications of schisms, and yet Protestants still search for the elusive methodological "key" that will solve their problem.

Let us examine the most popular approaches that have been tried thus far, each of which are still set forth by one group or another:

APPROACH # 1, Just take the Bible literally — the meaning is clear.
This approach was no doubt the first approach used by the Reformers, though very early on they came to realize that by itself this was an insufficient solution to the problems presented by the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Although this one was a failure from the start, this approach still is the most common one to be found among the less educated Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and Charismatics — "The Bible says what it means and means what it says," is an oft heard phrase.

But when it comes to Scriptural texts that Protestants generally do not agree with, such as when Christ gave the Apostles the power to forgive sins (John 20:23), or when He said of the Eucharist "this is my body.... this is my blood" (Matthew 26:26,28), or when Paul taught that women should cover their heads in Church (I Corinthians 11:1-16), then all of a sudden the Bible doesn't say what it means any more — "Why, those verses aren't literal..."

APPROACH # 2, The Holy Spirit provides the correct understanding.
When presented with the numerous groups that arose under the banner of the Reformation that could not agree on their interpretations of the Scriptures, no doubt the second solution to the problem was the assertion that the Holy Spirit would guide the pious Protestant to interpret the Scriptures rightly. Of course everyone who disagreed with you could not possibly be guided by the same Spirit. The result was that each Protestant group de-Christianized all those that differed from them. Now if this approach were a valid one, that would only leave history with one group of Protestants that had rightly interpreted the Scriptures. But which of the thousands of denominations could it be? Of course the answer depends on which Protestant you are speaking to. One thing we can be sure of — he or she probably thinks his or her group is it.

Today, however, (depending on what stripe of Protestant you come into contact with) you are more likely to run into Protestants who have relativized the Truth to some degree or another than to find those who still maintain that their sect or splinter group is the "only one" which is "right." As denominations stacked upon denominations it became a correspondingly greater stretch for any of them to say, with a straight face, that only they had rightly understood the Scriptures, though there still are some who do. It has become increasingly common for each Protestant group to minimize the differences between denominations and simply conclude that in the name of "love" those differences "do not matter." Perhaps each group has "a piece of the Truth," but none has the whole Truth (so the reasoning goes). Thus the pan-heresy of Ecumenism had its birth. Now many "Christians" will not even stop their ecumenical efforts at allowing only Christian groups to have a piece of the Truth. Many "Christians" now also believe that all religions have "pieces of the Truth." The obvious conclusion that modern Protestants have made is that to find all the Truth each group will have to shed their "differences," pitch their "piece of Truth" into the pot, and presto-chango —the whole Truth will be found at last!

APPROACH # 3, Let the clear passages interpret the unclear.
This must have seemed the perfect solution to the problem of how to interpret the Bible by itself — let the easily understood passages "interpret" those which are not clear. The logic of this approach is simple, though one passage may state a truth obscurely, surely the same truth would be clearly stated elsewhere in Scripture. Simply use these "clear passages" as the key and you will have unlocked the meaning of the "obscure passage." As the Tubingen Lutheran scholars argued in their first exchange of letters with Patriarch Jeremias II:

Therefore, no better way could ever be found to interpret the Scriptures, other than that Scripture be interpreted by Scripture, that is to say, through itself. For the entire Scripture has been dictated by the one and the same Spirit, who best understands his own will and is best able to state His own meaning. 10

As promising as this method seemed, it soon proved an insufficient solution to the problem of Protestant chaos and divisions. The point at which this approach disintegrates is in determining which passages are "clear" and which are "obscure." Baptists, who believe that it is impossible for a Christian to lose his salvation once he is "saved," see a number of passages which they maintain quite clearly teach their doctrine of "Eternal Security" — for example, "For the gifts and callings of God are without repentance" (Romans 11:29), and "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand" (John 10:27-28). But when Baptists come across verses which seem to teach that salvation can be lost, such as "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression" (Ezekiel 33:12), then they use the passages that are "clear" to explain away the passages that are "unclear." Methodists, who believe that believers may lose their salvation if they turn their backs on God, find no such obscurity in such passages, and on the contrary, view the above mentioned Baptist "proof-texts" in the light of the passages that they see as "clear." And so Methodists and Baptists throw verses of the Bible back and forth at each other, each wondering why the other cant "see" what seems very "clear" to them.

Continued in Part 8 - APPROACH # 4, Historical-Critical Exegesis


10. Mastrantonis, 115.