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Does sola Scriptura mean that we only trust our individual interpretation of the Bible? Does it mean that we are free of doctrines, theologies, traditional understandings, or wisdom passed down from our forebearers? Does it mean that we can look at Scripture and boldly proclaim that we found something new – some smacking fresh way of reading Scriptures that was, beforehand, never seen by the 1 zillion believers who read the same passage in their Bible?

Nope.

It means that Scriptures are the sole source of God’s divine revelation to us. The words found in the Bible point us to his glorious presence and shape our response to him and others. They are the foundation and lone substance of the church and its faithful historic doctrines. Those words, alone, transform our hearts. They, alone, have the power to illuminate the soul, activate our minds, establish our testimony, and bring us into eternal life.

“[The Bible] is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.” (Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article I)

The active agent that causes life and transformation to spring from the words of the Bible is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, alone, moves us into humility and submission. It is upon God’s indwelling presence that we are dependent day and night. God’s presence was the most sought-after commodity in the Old Testament, was the promise of Jesus when he ascended to the Father, and is his presence fully arrived at Pentecost in the person of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit lives in all who are disciples of Jesus through repentance and belief, striving to follow his lead.

So, do we only need the Bible, and the Holy Spirit? Away with the church and its leaders? Away with theological teaching? Away with 2,000 years of scholarship in the Bible, forged by 2,000 years of sacrificial, smart, and studious believers? Is it true that we have evolved to a point where we know the Word of God better than any prior generation – so trash it all?

God forbid!

Theologian Heiko Oberman, writing in the 1900s, came up with two views of Scripture in church history – he called them “T1 and T2.”  You can read more about these approaches by clicking --> here<-- In our current age of individualism, we have added “T 0.” I have endeavored to represent the three views in the graphic that comes with this article (see above – keep reading for it that picture to make more sense).

Uno

T1 is sola Scriptura. The Word of God is the only source of truth. In fact, it is the very substance of truth. It stands above everything we perceive. This view of the Scripture was that of the early church - the first centuries after Jesus ascended to heaven. Faithful early church fathers took the Old Testament, the writings of the apostles, and applied the rule of faith to lead the church into an understanding of God’s holy self-revelation.

T1 means sola Scriptura, not “solo Scriptura.” In other words, while the Bible is authoritative, the teachings of the church help the interpreter understand what he is reading. They are like guardrails. Carl Trueman, in a recent Crossway podcast and book, illustrated this point. He said that a faithful preacher will have (1) toiled in his interpretive work of the biblical passage, and (2) would have also consulted commentaries to check his work. Commentaries are like guardrails. Theologians throughout the ages also play a role in that safety-railing system. Collectively, these ensure that the preacher or individual reader has not accidentally fallen into an interpretation that is a historically recorded heresy in disguise.  

The commentary, alone, is not authoritative. It is a guide. Irenaeus of Lyons, alone, is not authoritative. His writings are a guide. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and Gregory the Great are all great fellas, but they are not authoritative. They are only a helper to the one striving for understanding.

Dos

When the Roman Catholic Church began to evolve into something beyond T1, it did so by finding a second source of truth. T2 acknowledges two sources of truth. They are (1) the biblical text and (2) the traditions and teachings of the church. These two stand independent of each other, often overlapping, and sometimes in conflict. The Protestant Reformation sought to retrieve the value of T1. This clash of theology was on display when  Martin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms. He argued from the sufficiency of God’s Word alone, while his institutional opponents argued for and from church tradition.

Nada

We live in an age of imperial individualism. Like Burger King represents, it is the place where we are all king. We rule. We get to have it our way. We don’t need a church, a pastor, an elder, or a dead theologian to tell us how to think.

This modern Western mindset has led to T0. No theology. Just a book and the Spirit and our own mind. The problem with this path is this: we are making individualized subjective judgments about God’s Word. We may not completely understand context, literary types, allusions, illustrations, cultural references, or common social norms that a Second Century theologian would have taken for granted. We form a chain of three links – two of which are strong (the Bible and God’s Spirit) and one which is wholly untamed and fallen (our emotional, enculturated, and presuppositionally prone mind). That is the weak link. That is where true strength fails.

In T0, we are on a sure platform with no guardrails. We can live and function on that space, yet we are prone to falling off from time to time. And falling away from the historical understanding of Scripture is a dangerous place to be. Every heretical thought has second and third order effects in a person’s overall castle of beliefs. It tends to build that castle upon a sure foundation, but without solid plum lines – causing the structure to lean at an unstable angle.

The “Leaning Castle of Self.”

We are to follow the call of Scripture by belonging to a church that leans into a T1 understanding of the Bible. We need to faithfully engage each other in order to sharpen our meandering thoughts and vivid imaginations. We even need dead (and dying) theologians to help us along the way. We need faithful guardrails.

Don’t operate without them.

You can learn more about the topic of theological retrieval by reading Gavin Ortlund’s book, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals.