God's Word Alone---The Authority of Scripture

Matthew Barrett

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780310515738
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

Scholar and pastor Matthew Barrett retraces the historical and biblical roots of the doctrine that Scripture alone is the final and decisive authority for God's people. God's Word Alone is a decisive defense of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant Word of God.

Revitalizing one of the five great declarations of the Reformation— sola Scriptura — Barrett:

• Analyzes what the idea of sola Scriptura is and what it entails, clarifying why the doctrine is truth and why it's so essential to Christianity.
• Surveys the development of this theme in the Reformation and traces the crisis that followed resulting in a shift away from the authority of Scripture.
• Shows that we need to recover a robust doctrine of Scripture's authority in the face of today's challenges and why a solid doctrinal foundation built on God's Word is the best hope for the future of the church.

This book is an exploration of the past in order to better understand our present and the importance of reviving this indispensable doctrine for the Christian faith and church today.

—THE FIVE SOLAS—

Historians and theologians have long recognized that at the heart of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation were five declarations, often referred to as the "solas." These five statements summarize much of what the Reformation was about, and they distinguish Protestantism from other expressions of the Christian faith: that they place ultimate and final authority in the Scriptures, acknowledge the work of Christ alone as sufficient for redemption, recognize that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, and seek to do all things for God's glory.

The Five Solas Series is more than a simple rehashing of these statements, but instead expounds upon the biblical reasoning behind them, leading to a more profound theological vision of our lives and callings as Christians and churches.

PART 1

God’s Word under Fire, Yesterday and Today

CHAPTER 1

The Road to Reformation: Biblical Authority in the Sixteenth Century

While I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer . . . the Word so greatly weakened the Papacy that never a Prince or Emperor inflicted such damage upon it. I did nothing. The Word did it all.

—Martin Luther

The foundation of our religion is the written word, the Scriptures of God.

—Huldrych Zwingli

The Reformation of the sixteenth century was founded upon the authority of the Bible, yet it set the world aflame.

—J. Gresham Machen

There they sat. Relics. Lots of them. There was a cut of fabric from the swaddling cloth of baby Jesus, thirteen pieces from his crib, a strand of straw from the manger, a piece of gold from a wise man, three pieces of myrrh, a morsel of bread from the Last Supper, a thorn from the crown Jesus wore when crucified, and, to top it all off, a genuine piece of stone that Jesus stood on to ascend to the Father’s right hand. And in good Catholic fashion, the blessed Mary was not left out. There sat three pieces of cloth from her cloak, “four from her girdle,” four hairs from her head, and, better yet, seven pieces from “the veil that was sprinkled with the blood of Christ.”¹ These relics and countless others (nineteen-thousand bones from the saints!) stood ready to be viewed by pious pilgrims. The relics were the proud collection of Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, Martin Luther’s prince. And they sat in the Castle Church at Wittenberg, prepared for showing on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1516.²

In the midst of all this fanfare was also one essential ingredient—the procurement of indulgences. Veneration of the relics was accompanied by the issuance of an indulgence, a certificate guaranteeing the buyer that time in purgatory would be reduced and remitted by up to 1,902,202 years and 270 days.³ An indulgence was the full or partial remission of temporal punishment for sins. It was drawn from the Treasury of Merit, a storehouse of grace which was accumulated by the meritorious work of Christ and by the superabundant merit of the saints.⁴

The Coin in the Coffer Rings

Indulgences were the bingo games of the sixteenth century. In a complicated set of political affairs involving Albert of Brandenburg, Pope Leo X utilized the selling of indulgences to fund the completion of St. Peter’s Basilica, but not just any indulgence would do.⁵ Pope Leo issued a plenary indulgence, one that would apparently return the sinner to the state of innocence first received at baptism.⁶

There was no one so experienced as the Dominican Johann Tetzel in marketing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What exactly did the sinner receive in buying this indulgence? According to unscrupulous sellers like Tetzel, the impression was given that the indulgence would result in the total forgiveness of all sins.⁷ Not even the sin of raping the mother of God could outweigh the efficacy of these indulgences!⁸ Even the horrors of years in purgatory could now be removed. And if this was not good enough, one also had the opportunity to buy an indulgence slip for one’s loved ones in purgatory (and one need not be penitent himself for such an indulgence to be effective).⁹ With the appropriate amount of money, repentance was now for sale, and any sin could be covered.

Going from town to town with all the pomp of Rome, Tetzel flamboyantly laid a heavy guilt trip on his hearers: “Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends, beseeching you and saying, ‘Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance. . . . Will you let us lie here in flames? Will you delay our promised glory?’ ” And then came Tetzel’s catchy jingle: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” With just a quarter of a florin, you could liberate your loved one from the flames of purgatory and into the “fatherland of paradise.”¹⁰

By the end of 1517, Martin Luther had had enough. One year prior, Luther had preached against the corruption of indulgences.¹¹ This time, he would put his objections in writing for academic debate. Luther drew up ninety-five theses exposing the abuse of indulgences, denying the power and authority of the pope over purgatory, and testing whether the pope truly had the welfare of the sinner in mind.¹² When they were finished, his theses were posted to the Castle Church door on October 31, 1517.

Despite his disagreements with the pope, Luther was just trying to be a good Catholic, reforming the Church from the clear abuses he had witnessed. At this point, Luther wasn’t trying to position the authority of Scripture over the pope—at least not explicitly. Nevertheless, the seeds of confrontation had been planted. Luther was arguing that the pope did not have power over purgatory for the remission of sin or its penalty—clearly questioning the pope’s authority on this matter.¹³

“The Scriptures Cannot Err”

Though Luther’s theses were written in Latin for academic debate, others translated them and spread them throughout Germany. Soon everyone was talking about Luther’s theses.

Interpreting Luther’s theses as an affront to papal authority, Tetzel called for Luther to be burned at the stake as a heretic.¹⁴ Then, in a second set of theses, Tetzel defended papal authority and infallibility.¹⁵ Luther’s Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses would confirm Tetzel’s suspicions, arguing that the pope’s primacy and supremacy were not ordained by God at the genesis of the church but had evolved over time.¹⁶

Luther also traded fighting words with Sylvester Prierias, a Dominican theologian appointed by Leo X to respond to Luther’s theses. It became clear to Prierias that authority was the issue at stake in all of Luther’s arguments. Prierias wrote in his Dialogue concerning the Power of the Pope, “He who does not accept the doctrine of the Church of Rome and pontiff of Rome as an infallible rule of faith, from which the Holy Scriptures, too, draw their strength and authority, is a heretic.”¹⁷ Luther responded by pointing out that Prierias cited no Scripture to prove his case and wrote to Prierias, “Like an insidious devil you pervert the Scriptures.”¹⁸ Luther exposed the contradictions and corruptions of the papacy by pointing to the examples of Julius II and his “ghastly shedding of blood,” as well as the “outrageous tyranny of Boniface VIII.” Luther then asked Prierias, “If the Church consists representatively in the cardinals, what do you make of a general council of the whole Church?”¹⁹

It’s important to remember that papal infallibility would not be declared official dogma until the First Vatican Council in 1870.²⁰ However, Prierias’s response to Luther shows how many already believed the pope was infallible and inerrant whenever he spoke ex cathedra (“from the seat” as the vicar of Christ on earth).²¹ As Martin Brecht explains, not only were the Roman church and pope considered infallible, but “the authority of the church stood explicitly above that of the Scriptures,” even authorizing the Scriptures.²² On this point too Luther disagreed with Prierias, not only appealing to Scripture’s authority but also to Augustine’s letter to Jerome where Augustine elevates Scripture’s authority, emphasizing that the Bible alone is inspired by God and without error.²³ The “radicalism” of Luther’s reply to Prierias “lies not in its invective but in its affirmation that the pope might err and a council might err and that only Scripture is the final authority.”²⁴

Following his dispute with Prierias, Luther faced off against the Dominican cardinal Cajetan, perhaps the most impressive theologian of the Roman Curia. They met in October of 1518 in Augsburg, and an argument between the two lasted for several days.²⁵ Luther was commanded to recant, which he would not do. When Cajetan confronted Luther with Pope Clement VI’s bull Unigenitus (1343)—a bull that, according to Cajetan, affirmed that “the merits of Christ are a treasure of indulgences”—Luther rejected it along with Pope Clement’s authority. “I am not so audacious,” said Luther, “that for the sake of a single obscure and ambiguous decretal of a human pope I would recede from so many and such clear testimonies of divine Scripture. For, as one of the canon lawyers has said, ‘in a matter of faith not only is a council above a pope but any one of the faithful, if armed with better authority and reason.’ ” When Cajetan responded that Scripture must be interpreted by the pope who is above not only councils but Scripture itself, Luther replied, “His Holiness abuses Scripture. I deny that he is above Scripture.”²⁶ Harold Grimm summarizes the conflict this way: “The more Cajetan insisted upon the infallibility of the papacy the more Luther relied upon the authority of Scripture.”²⁷

Luther’s greatest challenge would come the following year at the Leipzig debate with the Catholic disputant Johannes von Eck.²⁸ Though the debate would formally be an engagement between Eck and Andreas Karlstadt, Luther anticipated that he would have an opportunity to participat...