Sola Scriptura (Part 1)

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is

Mike Abendroth, and today we have a unique show. Today is part one where Andy Olson from Echo Zoe blog interviews me about Sola Scriptura.

You can access Andy's blog, Echo Zoe. Type in Andy Olson, Mike Abendroth, Sola Scriptura, and you can get there and listen to a variety of different interviews.

I think you'll especially like the one with Phil Johnson on Sola Fide. And so today is part one,

Andy Olson from Echo Zoe, I have life in Greek, interviewing me that was played on his podcast some time ago.

So today will be part one about Sola Scriptura, and then we'll listen next week to part two,

Andy Olson interviewing Mike Abendroth on Echo Zoe. Welcome, Mike. Thanks so much for taking some time this

Wednesday afternoon to come on and talk with Echo Zoe Radio and discuss Sola Scriptura with us.

Andy, I'm super glad to be on and appreciate your ministry. Well, thank you.

So today we're gonna talk about Sola Scriptura. I've been putting together kind of a slow paced, non -contiguous series on the five

Solas of the Reformation. We spoke to Dr. James White about a year ago was the first one

I did. We talked about Sola Gratia and Sovereign Grace and how those two doctrines come together.

And then a few months back, I talked to Phil Johnson about Sola Fide. So we're in the third of our installment, and we're talking about Sola Scriptura today.

And maybe we'll just jump in and get started. Yeah, that'll be great, sadly for you and your audience.

So Andy, you go from James White to the venerable Phil Johnson, and then now down to the bottom of the barrel.

But the good news is we all believe in the same Lord and we all believe in the same scripture.

So I think at least that puts me on a level. Well, I think you put yourself down a little too much there. We're all men, we're all saved by grace.

Well, it is not a false humility especially compared to those two guys, but I'm glad to be on and love to talk to you.

So we'll start off with kind of the history of Sola Scriptura and where this doctrine came about and what it was a reaction to.

Sure, well, at the heart of Sola Scriptura, we've got the problem of what kind of authority do we have as Christians?

Where do we derive our authority? What's the source of religious truth for God's people?

That's really the issue. And so we have to ask ourself the question, does it come from scripture alone or does it come from scripture plus something else?

Now that something could be many things or just one thing. It could be something inside of us.

It could be something outside of us. And so that is the real issue. Do we have the religious truth for the people of God found in scripture?

And so with all the Solas, you've got the reflects the reaction to Rome where they would have, for instance, instead of Sola Fide, faith alone, it would be faith plus sacraments.

Sola Gratia, it would be grace, but a different definition of grace plus other things.

And so similarly here, scripture alone, is that everything we need for life and for truth?

Is scripture sufficient itself for the authority of God's people or do you need tradition and other things?

And so that's really what it boils down to. And when people ask for Sola Scriptura definition, scripture alone, is it in fact talking about the

Bible as the only infallible and inerrant authority for the Christian faith?

Is it only that, not just one, but is it only? And so that's what we're really looking at today in the background as probably you and most of the listeners know would be in response to the

Roman Catholic Church during the time of the Reformation. And so the Roman Catholic Church would deny

Sola Scriptura. Where else would they look for authority? Well, the two places that they would look is they would look to church tradition and the magisterium.

And so for instance, if we have the Pope speaking ex cathedra sitting on the chair of authority, then that would give us something that we would have to obey as well.

We have to follow. They would not believe the foundational doctrine would be from the

Bible alone. We call Sola Scriptura the formal principle of Protestantism as Sola Fide is the material principle.

Here we have the formal principle and this formal principle has to do with source. And so really, if you get

Sola Scriptura wrong, you get everything else wrong. This is foundational because if we get this inaccurately, if we diagnose this inaccurately, then everything else just fades away.

So Rome would come along and they would say, well, tradition and the magisterium would teach us that it is not faith alone because they're going to look at scripture a certain way and have the

Pope and the councils and tradition say something else. And so to me, as far as I'm concerned,

Andy, if you get rid of Sola Scriptura, you get rid of everything else. So they have tradition as well as the teaching magisterium.

Yeah, the teaching magisterium of the church, yes. And then you have scripture as well.

Now, sometimes you get into Eastern Orthodox or what sometimes people call Oriental Orthodox churches and they'll have other things like tradition and the episcopacy, which are, you know, they're very close to Roman Catholicism with that triad, a

Bible tradition, and then leadership in the church, whether you want to call it episcopacy or you want to call it magisterium.

It just depends on, you know, which cat you're trying to skin. You know, you think about what

Luther said when it comes to this issue in the Roman Catholic Church and the sufficiency of scripture.

Luther said, a simple layman armed with scripture is greater than the mightiest

Pope without it. And so you have this man that God uses,

Martin Luther, and he wanted to say, well, the issue with the Roman Catholic Church, we can reform the church and then later we'll have to run from the church, but the problems in the

Roman Catholic Church can be solved by going back to the authority of the Bible. The Bible is sufficient to unscramble any incorrect doctrinal egg, including the

Roman Catholic Church. And so that's what Luther was after. And I love that the simple layman armed with scripture is greater than the mightiest

Pope without it. And so once you get rid of the Bible, then it's whatever anybody says.

But as long as you have the Bible, then you can diagnose the church, its leadership and tradition as well and find out,

A, does it match up? And B, if it doesn't match up, where does it contradict? Yeah, I mentioned to you before we started that as I was preparing for our interview today,

I was going through some materials by John MacArthur and R .C.

Sproul and whatnot. And I found this excellent book that Ligonier sells called

Sola Scriptura. It's a collection of essays by seven different authors. And I had a great quote in here addressing this idea of the three -legged stool of the

Roman Catholic Church. In the first chapter, Robert Godfrey says, in fact, if you listen carefully, you'll notice that the real authority for Rome is neither scripture nor tradition but the church.

What is scripture and what does it teach? Only the church can tell you. What is tradition and what does it teach? Only the church can tell you.

As the Roman theologian John X said, the scriptures are not authentic except by the authority of the church.

As Pope Pius IX said at the time of the First Vatican Council in 1870, I am tradition.

The overwhelming arrogance of such statement is staggering, but it confirms our claim that for Rome, the only real authority is the church,

Sola Ecclesia. Well, you know what, Andy, you stole my line because that chapter in the book is probably the best chapter.

And you can pull it up online or your listeners can pull it up online with Robert Godfrey and Sola Scriptura.

That is a great chapter and he really lays it out well. And I wanted to steal that quote on the

Pope because that was really a classic quote. So good job for studying that. Well, thank you.

So we've got this idea of tradition and the church along with scripture. I thought it might be important to talk about the

Protestant view on tradition. What is the Protestant church? How do we regard tradition in regards to spiritual truth?

What role does tradition play for us? Well, I almost want to break into a Todd Friel moment now and start singing it from Fiddler on the

Roof. It's heavy about tradition, but I won't do that. I could call you sir, though.

I think he calls people sir when he's about ready to blast them. Well, if you just think about it largely at the grand scope of things, we all have traditions in our life and we even have traditions in the local church, whether that's making announcements before the church service or having some potluck pot providence afterwards.

Certain order of service tradition isn't in and of itself bad.

And so just because somebody has a tradition, it doesn't mean it's wrong. When you look at the word tradition in scripture and you'll see the

Roman Catholics go to some of the epistles to say, well, look and see where the word tradition is used.

Generally speaking, when the word tradition is used, it's talking about what the apostles have taught and then it's been taught down from one generation and one church to the next.

And so what they do is they make the error of saying, see the word traditions in the

Bible, therefore we have the Bible and traditions and they equate, they don't equate the two.

They don't equate apostolic word and ministry with their tradition that is passed on. And so there's nothing wrong with tradition.

We have them in our marriages and our culture and our society. The Indian culture has different traditions in the church than we do.

But what we're after is when do you hear God speak authoritatively?

And I guess I could put it this way, who's on first? So what ranks under what?

So for instance, let's look at it from a different perspective. Some kind of Westminster confession or the 1689

London Baptist or the Savoy or the 39 articles of the Anglican church.

Those are good summaries of the Christian faith but they must not overrule scripture.

And so we have a tradition of the 1689 and it has many good things in it. I agree with almost everything in it, maybe just a slight hair here or there that I wouldn't.

And so it's a traditional creed but it never supplants scripture.

It never even equates to scripture. You have, think about it this way, Andy. If we have a sufficient scripture then why do we need anything else?

And I think that's a good place for Protestants to go. If we have a God who is all knowing and he must equip his saints 2 ,000 years ago, 3 ,000 years ago, 1 ,000 years ago, he must equip them in the

East and in the West and in the North and the South. He must equip men and women. He must equip his churches.

How does he do that? And I think it's just the wonder of the Lord or how great he is that he can, within 66 books, canonical books, have everything we need pertaining to life and godliness.

Everything you need to know about God is found in scripture. Everything you need to know about man is found there.

Everything about salvation, Christ, eternal life, we have everything. And as I read 2

Timothy 3, verse 16, Paul is writing, matter of fact, about that very thing.

And that's the heart of sola scriptura, the sufficiency of the scriptures. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for one, teaching, two, reproof, three, for correction, and for number four, training in righteousness.

How to live a comprehensively righteous life. But then we forget the next one, I think, too often, and gender -neutral

Bibles don't help us, that the man of God. Now, if you knew the Old Testament well and you were reading this and you were

Timothy, that the man of God, here we have a pastoral epistle, how to do ministry in the local church, a pastor, an apostle to an elder, that the man of God, when the man of God is stated there, this is a preacher, this is a prophet.

Ezekiel, the man of God, Jeremiah, the man of God. Timothy, you're a man of God and you have been given the scriptures.

Of course, it applies to lay people, too, that you have sufficiency in the scripture, but here, Timothy, you have a very difficult task, and that is to shepherd the flock that Christ has purchased.

What do you have in your toolkit? What do you have to do this with? One thing, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And so, if we have everything in the tool chest of scripture equipping us for every good work that we have for evangelism, for edification, for everything, then

I don't need a tradition. I don't need the magisterium. I don't need the pope.

I don't need anything else that will try to sully the reputation of the sufficiency of scripture.

So, now, I better take a deep breath. I'll have a sip of my tea and you can talk on your own show. You caught me a little off guard there.

You thought you were listening to no -compromise radio ministries for a second. For a moment, I did. You weren't having to ask any questions.

That's the way I like it. I just ask a question and I'll let you do the talking. See, you just run with that.

We have the scriptures, the word of God, they have full authority, and they are clear, and they are sufficient.

And so, everything we need to know pertaining to life and to the Christian life, we have.

What else does sufficiency entail? It means there's no deficiencies in scripture.

We don't have a deficiency in scripture that needs to be filled with tradition, a papal pronouncement, or some new doctrine, or something else.

And so, vacuums must be filled If you have something that is deficient, the vacuum of tradition will fill it.

But since the scriptures are not deficient, they are sufficient, we therefore need no traditions to enlighten us to things like purgatory, or praying for the dead, or the intercession of Mary, etc.

Sure. Now, when we talk about sufficiency, we're talking about spiritual truth, and the gospel, justification, sanctification.

But we're not necessarily talking about nuclear physics, for instance. Well, if nuclear physics is applying to salvation, or how to live a

Christian life, then I guess it would, but I don't think it really does. We're not talking about sufficiency on how to go hunting for your family's food, or how to get a good deal down a price chopper.

But when it comes to salvation, when it comes to living this Christian life, we have the sufficiency of scripture.

When it comes to the Christian faith, when it comes to salvation, when it comes to holiness, we have everything we need.

So let's talk a little bit about the scripture itself. The Catholic Church will say that they are almost, they almost put themselves above the scripture, because they'll say that they were the ones that canonized scripture in the first place.

So, let's get into the nature of the canon. Are there any books that were not canonized, that should have been, where there are books that were canonized, but shouldn't have been?

How do we reconcile the canon, and how do we stand against this claim by the

Church of Rome that says that, well, we decided what it was, and so we decide what is needed in addition to it?

Yeah, when it comes to the canon, it's very interesting. Canon just means, you know, a yardstick.

It's a plumb line. The Protestants, of course, would have 66 books in the canon. And then you have the

Roman Catholic canon with the apographa, or as we say here in New England, the apographer we have.

And it just depends on how you count Bell the Dragon Slayer and Tobit, etc., to get the right number.

But these books, certainly some of the books, I was even telling my son last night, 1 and 2

Maccabees, there are historical truths in some of these books. One of the ways I like to look at the canon of scripture is this.

Let's just think about the time of Christ and how he looked at the canon. Now, the canon at the time of Christ was, of course, the

Old Testament, 39 books for the English canon, I believe 22 books in the

Hebrew canon with the same material. And what did Jesus say, and what did he not say?

So he affirmed Jonah. He could have said, by the way, that whole story was an allegory and it was made up and no big fish really swallowed a man.

But no, he affirmed it. He affirmed Sodom and Gomorrah. He didn't say that was a figurative story to make you shudder at the sin of hospitality.

He didn't say anything like that. He affirmed it. He affirmed Adam and Eve. The way to think of scripture,

I like to, in my mind, say to myself, how did Christ consider scripture? And he could have easily made changes and said, you know what?

That canon is wrong. And you need to add books or subtract books. He's the son of man.

He's God incarnate. He could have easily taken care of that. But he didn't do anything except preach from it and affirm it as thus saith the

Lord. You see that refrain throughout the scripture, the self -authenticating, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the

Lord, thus saith the Lord. And so I like it when I study Christ to see what he did with the

Old Testament scriptures. And then by implication, I can do the same with the New. And you watch the way the

New Testament deals with the Apographa. The Apographa is not quoted in the New Testament.

You can see things quoted from Moses regularly, David regularly, prophets regularly.

Just study the allusions of the Old Testament found in the New, quotations of the

Old Testament found in the New. They are multiple. But you can't find any quotation in the

New Testament when it comes to Apographa. And so that's one of the ways I like to look at it.

You think about how God providentially puts together scripture. If I were

God, I would be more like the Mormon God. Here are the tablets. They cannot be altered.

They cannot be messed with. They cannot be damaged.

Here are the tablets. But that's not how God gave us scripture. That's not how he gave it to us at all.

I see the providential hand of God working through history, making sure the canon is just right, excluding books that aren't supposed to be there, having all the churches for instance in the

New Testament affirm certain books and receive them. They didn't determine what was in the canon.

They acknowledge which ones were apostolic and therefore in the canon. And I just see the providence of God wonderfully and marvelously putting together the canon of scripture so that the churches, east and western churches, would recognize it.

And I think that's a testimony to God's sovereign hand. If there is a God who speaks, he can make sure we have exactly what we need in the canon.

And so the question I think Catholics should ask themselves would be why are those books included?

And does it have anything to do with we need certain doctrines in our church so therefore we've got to go find books that teach those doctrines and include them so we have some authority over people to tell them what to do regarding prayers for the dead or purgatory for instance and then getting indulgences for them.

No, I'm not dramatically familiar with the Apocrypha but it's my understanding that the

Apocrypha was added after the Reformation began. Is that true? And is that significant to the discussion?

Well yeah, I think it's significant for 1500 years I guess we didn't have a complete canon.

Instead of having the book of Revelation in the late 90s, middle 90s as the last book of the

New Testament canon and therefore the canon of scripture itself we had a deficiency in the canon until Rome came along and it's around 1547 is my guess if I had to guess a date when

Rome acknowledged the Apocrypha as canonical. Which is about 30 years after Martin Luther kicked off the

Reformation. Yeah, and isn't it interesting when it comes to these unbiblical and extra -biblical doctrines and books, by the way

I'd encourage your listeners to get the Apocrypha you can get it all online now and just read through it and you will definitely see this isn't the test and these things do not have the sound, they don't have the ring or the tone of canonicity.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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