The Historical and Catholic Doctrine of Sola Scriptura
Sourcing historical writings is only as good as one pays attention to context. The second century context presented three difficulties for the reflection of the early church: (1) the last of the Apostles had passed, (2) Jerusalem was destroyed, and (3) the church had expanded both geographically and administratively.
Hence the great concern of Christian apologists was to show unity of Old and New to the Jews, and unity of philosophy and theology to the Greeks. The biggest doctrinal controversies were over Christ’s messianic identity against Ebionism and His human nature against early Gnostic challenges. As Keith Mathison writes, “one will search in vain to discover a formally outlined doctrine of Scripture such as may be found in modern systematic theology textbooks.”1
Once we have our heads around the relevant historical context, we must also ensure that we do not neglect proper definition. What exactly is one to find in the historical record? If we do not define our terms correctly, then all of the historical reconnaissance in the world will be of no use. The doctrine of sola Scriptura that was held by the magisterial reformers was about source and norm. About the true and false conceptions of the doctrine itself I have written elsewhere.
Apostolic Teaching and the Rule of Faith
The later term “tradition” and early “Apostles’ teaching” should be understood as synonyms. The first controversy that brought this out was with Gnosticism. Since they appealed to secret traditions, Irenaeus (ca. 180) and others were forced to distinguish. He spoke of the regula fidei (rule of faith), which became a summary of faith recited by converts before baptism. The whole point was to oppose the public, objective standard to the secret and subjective. One function of the Scriptures, for Irenaeus, was a permanent, physical safeguard.2 What this amounts to is one basic source of God’s truth in this word.
Any claim to the apostolic teaching requires a method that would be able to make the best case in a very non-centralized church structure. We often forget that most churches had little communication with a wide representation of the rest of the churches. There was no central authority in Rome. There were early appeals to the very influential theological output in the figures who headed churches in several places—Rome being one, certainly, but also including Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Ephesus, Alexandria, Carthage, and Lyon. If one neglects this reality, they will also naturally never ask what that obviously entails about theological method.
Eastern Orthodox scholar Georges Florovsky says of the Fathers, that “exegesis was ‘the main, and probably the only, theological method, and the authority of the Scriptures was sovereign and supreme.”3
J. N. D. Kelly adds,
“almost the entire theological effort of the fathers, whether their aims were polemical or constructive, was expended upon what amounted to the exposition of the Bible. Further, it was everywhere taken for granted that, for any doctrine to win acceptance, it had first to establish its scriptural basis.”4
The Ante-Nicene Fathers on the Place of Scripture
Hippolytus said of the true knowledge of God, that there is “no other source”5 than Scripture. In his Stromata, Clement of Alexandria distinguished between (1) Scripture, (2) tradition, and (3) Church, concluding that the most excellent search for truth ends in “demonstration from the Scriptures themselves.”6 Like Irenaeus, Tertullian also held the open and sufficient teaching of Scripture against the esoteric teaching of the Gnostics.7 Furthermore, the Scriptures “indeed furnish us with our Rule of faith.”8
Once the earliest power grabs began to be made, the open discussion relating the authority of Scripture to the alleged authorities of these bishoprics is very telling. Cyprian charged the Roman bishop Stephen with error over baptism, and that on the basis of Scripture alone: “What obstinacy is that, or what presumption, to prefer human tradition to divine ordinance?”9 The bishop of Caesarea, Firmilian, wrote to Cyprian, “they who are at Rome do not observe those things in all cases which are handed down from the beginning, and vainly pretend the authority of the apostles.”10
Although the Arians feigned reverence for the Scriptures in disallowing any “extra biblical” formulations, Athanasius never committed the opposite error. Instead he said, “the sacred and inspired Scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth”11; and “divine Scripture is sufficient above all things.”12 The admonition of Cyril of Jerusalem was to believe nothing, not even his own words, except “on demonstration of the Holy Scripture.”13 It should be remembered that he was in the teaching office of the Church.
The Post-Nicene Fathers on the Place of Scripture
Basil (330-379) spoke of “both” the “written teaching” and those “‘of a mystery’ by the tradition of the apostles.”14 The aforementioned Orthodox scholar Florovsky rejects the “Tradition II” meaning often attributed to Basil, instead maintaining that musterion was commonly used, by Basil no less, to refer either sacramentally or dogmatically to a content made clear, rather than to an esoteric deposit to an elite.15 To put it another way, the unwritten rule spoken of by Basil was not different in substance than the “rule of faith” spoken of in the previous centuries. Far from being “two sources” he was ultimately highlighting the difference between what we would now call exegetical and systematic theology. Basil also wrote,
“let God-inspired Scripture decide between us; and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the Word of God, in favor of that side will be cast the vote of truth.”16
Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) said, “we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and measure of every tenet; we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings.”17 In a polemical writing, Against Eunomius, Gregory is clear that the Scriptures are the sole, ultimate Rule, “that men might no longer have their own opinions according to their own notions … [and] even a slight divergence from the words delivered to us [are] an extreme blasphemy and impiety.”18
Now John Chrysostom (347-407) seems more clearly to point to a dual source. Two statements in particular indicate a view that the Scriptures stood in the stead of the Apostles, but in a sermon on 2 Thessalonians 2:15 he drew the inference: “Therefore let us think the tradition of the Church also worthy of credit.” Mathison comments on this that, “it is possible that John may have meant no more than Basil,”19 that is, the distinction between the text itself (exegesis) and its objective meaning (dogma).
People will place Augustine on both sides of this question. For example, he wrote,
“Let those things be removed from our midst which we quote against each other not from divine canonical books but from elsewhere … [that the church be not] proved by human documents but by divine oracles.”20
But then he also spoke of what was “handed down by apostolic authority,”21 though in the same book, he more clearly parallels an “apostolic tradition” to what is “mentioned in their writings.”22 Augustine explains that the Creed is the same substance as the Scriptures, only “gathered and reduced into one” (On the Creed: A Sermon to Catechumens, 1). In short, he was using the rule of faith and tradition in the same way that Basil did, and in the same way that Irenaeus did before them. It was our own distinction between the textual and the systematic.
Why then the ambiguity in Augustine? Part of the answer is surely that he wrote so much, and since very few of these writings focused on any kind of doctrine of Scripture, such statements are really positioned toward other questions. For instance, concerning the dual sources in his book On Baptism, that Augustine was pitting this apostolic tradition on baptism as a potential source for Cyprian’s practice in Carthage, against the Donatists. Thus the tradition would be held out as an authoritative source against the Donatist interpretation of Scripture. It simply doesn’t follow that Augustine was making any evaluation of the weight of this tradition against Scripture.
Mathison adds to this that both Basil and Augustine almost always spoke in this way in the midst of debates on “liturgical and ritual issues.”23 This is no defeater, but it is a weighty piece of evidence nonetheless. In spite of his sound distinction between the practical versus metaphysical priority of the Church in Augustine’s “infamous statement,” Oberman nonetheless carries forth the notion that the Tradition II model stems from Augustine.
Pelikan observed that it was because “Augustine has determined the form and the content of the church doctrine for most of western Christian history.”24 But this is to mistake an impression about profound and comprehensive systematics for a competing source to exegesis.
To apply the same critical thinking to another place, Augustine stated, “For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”25 Three notes should be observed. Augustine’s (1) Anti-Manichaean writings were not only polemical, but specifically poked at the Manichees’ outsider status. Moreover, (2) Oberman distinguishes between a “practical priority” and a “metaphysical priority,”26 such that Augustine’s being “moved” by Catholic testimony is not about ultimate norm, but rather about the power of subjective persuasion. (3) Florovsky adds that Augustine was addressing the question of the new, or simple, believer, when pressed with some difficulty.27 Lacking the philosophical tools of a master, one must initially be taken in by the tutelage of the Church’s teaching ministry. At the end of the day, his statements on Scripture’s ultimate authority are clearer: “Do not show my works the same deference as the canonical Scriptures.”28
The Medieval Record
The Comonitory of Vincent of Lerins (ca. 450) was written to set a rule for distinguishing between orthodoxy and heresy. He sets forth two ways: (1) “Divine Law,” meaning Scripture; and (2) “the tradition of the Catholic Church.” Vincent assumes that the Scriptures are wholly sufficient in themselves, yet due to their depth and our resultant disputes, a referee of sorts is needed.
He defined the “catholicity” of this rule as (1) universality, (2) antiquity, and (3) consent. That is, a doctrine’s coherence with the whole faith, its being historically attested, and then received by the whole church. There is nothing “Roman” about it. Oberman distinguishes, in Vincent, between material and formal sufficiency. The Scriptures are materially sufficient. The Church is required, formally, to persevere this against heretics.29
From the record of this period one derives a second meaning to Tradition II. Since the Apostles did not record all of the words and works of Jesus (cf. Jn. 21:25), it began to be conceived that an Oral Tradition was passed on from those Apostles down through the earliest Church. A natural set of questions arises: Why would such a tradition not be written from that earliest period? And if it was, what is the evidence for that?
In working our way through the development of this T2 idea, we ought to also ask how the concept of papal infallibility at that time might have related to the question. Papal infallibility can be traced back to the Franciscan-Dominican controversy at the University of Paris in 1254, concerning the “apostolic poverty” as the rule. In subsequent decades, one Peter Olivi began to argue for papal infallibility because Pope Nicholas III ruled in 1279 for the Franciscan position.30 Inconsistent with canon lawyer and theologians’ doctrine that the pope’s rules were never irreformable, the doctrine of Olivi was seen as a threat to the sovereignty of each future pope.
In 1324, the Sachsenhausen Appeal concluded against Pope John XXII that his prior ruling was infallible and irreformable, against his later ruling against the Franciscans. The logic of this was that another set of keys given to Peter was a “key of knowledge,” in which when defining faith and morals, the pope speaks with infallibility. But “when” to know “when”? An immediate papal Bull denounced it as heresy.31
One church historian summarized the irony of the doctrine’s birth. Here, in the 1324 Sachsenhausen Appeal,
“for the first time, a doctrine of infallibility based on the Petrine power of the keys was overtly propounded. But the doctrine was fathered by anti-papal rebels not by curial theologians. And, far from embracing the doctrine, the pope indignantly denounced it as a pernicious novelty.”32
Of course it was not declared official Roman Catholic doctrine until Vatican I in 1870.
Although Thomas Aquinas did not include a separate section on a doctrine of Scripture in the Summa Theologiae, he did say this at the outset:
“Yet holy teaching employs such authorities [e.g., human reason, philosophy] only in order to provide as it were extraneous arguments from probability. Its own proper authorities are those of canonical Scripture, and these it applied with convincing force … For our faith rests on the revelation made to the Prophets and Apostles who wrote the canonical books, not on a revelation, if such there be, made to any other teacher.”
John Duns Scotus defines theology as exclusively treating of (1) what Scripture clearly states or (2) by valid inference from it (Ordinatio, preface). This is a precursor to the same pairing in Westminster Confession of Faith (I.6).
McGrath summarized the medieval theologians this way: “Scripture was the materially sufficient source of Christian doctrine.”33 Oberman’s thoughts are helpful on the prevalent “misleading” overgeneralization of Traditions I and II. More realistic is that there was diversity in the later Middle Ages, but that overall, tradition was seen as “The history of obedient interpretation.”34 Mathison adds that, “both Tradition I and Tradition II had their medieval adherents, although Tradition II doesn’t seriously begin to emerge until the twelfth century.”35
In Oberman’s view, the new and more concrete theory was the product of canon lawyers from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, while McGrath countered that what was really in view was a final court of appeals for opposing interpretations.36 The latter analysis seems to bear out in the record.
The canon jurist Gratian complied the Concordia discordantium canonum, or Decretum Gratiani, in the 12th century. His distinction between the “doctrinal authority of Scripture” and the “judicial authority of the pope,” suggests a building logic of how Tradition II viewed “tradition.” What this idea of “judicial authority” tells us is that even this class of lawyers were better philosophers than most who argue on both sides today. As Mathison remarked, “The pope’s authority, according to the canonists, was as an interpreter of scriptural revelation, not as a source of extra-scriptural revelation.”37
While McGrath may be more correct than Oberman on the origin of Tradition II among the canonists, the latter notes an important shift among the theologians of the same era:
“When finally the two propositions, ‘Holy Scripture implicitly says,’ and ‘Holy Scripture silently says,’ are equated, the exegetical concept of Tradition I has fully developed into what we have called Tradition II.”38
“Ironically, like the historically unprecedented doctrine of papal infallibility, Tradition II originally finds its strongest support in the radical Franciscan enemies of the pope in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth century.”39
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1. Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001), 20.
2. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 23.
3. Georges Florovsky quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 23.
4. Kelly, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 47.
5. Hippolytus, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 27.
6. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, VII.16
7. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 25.
8. Tertullian, Against Praxeus, 11.
9. Cyprian, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 28.
10. Firmilian, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 29.
11. Athanasius, Against the Heathen, I.3.
12. Athanasius, De Synodis, I.1.6.
13. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, IV.17.
14. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 66.
15. Florovsky, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 33-34.
16. Basil the Great, Letters, 189:3.
17. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 36.
18. Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, II.1.
19. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 39.
20. Augustine, The Unity of the Church, 3.
21. Augustine, On Baptism, IV.24.
22. Augustine, On Baptism, V.23.
23. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 41.
24. Pelikan, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 42.
25. Augustine, Against the Epistle of Manicheaus, 5
26. Oberman, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 41.
27. Florovsky, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 41.
28. Augustine, On the Trinity, III.2.
29. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 44.
30. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 59.
31. Matison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 60-61.
32. Tierney, quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 61.
33. McGrath, Reformation Thought, 135.
34. Oberman quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 73.
35. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 50.
36. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 74-75.
37. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 75.
38. Oberman quoted in Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 76.
39. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 79.
