Vanhoozer on Sola Scriptura and Protestant Catholicity

We might worry that the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura (Scripture alone as supreme authority) might lead to an endless variety of interpretations (hermeneutical anarchy) with little ability to adjudicate between them and temptation to endless schism. Witness all the protestant denominations and fights.

 

Vanhoozer (Hearers and Doers) argues that a truly Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura will be catholic (Greek kata + holos = “with respect to the whole”) in the sense that it will attend to the doctrine of the whole church over time (p166). “Protestant pastors should be making catholic disciples”. (p198)

 

Calvin for example argues that we cannot have God as our Father without having the church as our Mother. “Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives” (Institutes 4.1.4). We must not separate what God has joined together, and Calvin says that the authority of the church is not “outside God’s Word; but we insist that it is attached to the Word, and do not allow it to be separated from it.” (4.8.13) We must have canonicity and catholicity. The Protestant formal principle of sola Scriptura is in harmony with the catholic material substance, the Nicene consensus on doctrine. (p200f)

 

Protestants do not teach the priesthood (or indeed popehood) of each and every individual believer for himself in isolation with his Bible, but the priesthood of all believers together. Sola Scriptura is not alone and it is one among a number of principles of community interpretation of the Bible. Bible reading is a communal project because God is addressing and forming his chosen people by his Word. As Luther said, “God’s word cannot be without God’s people and, conversely, God’s people cannot be without God’s word.” (On the Councils and the Church (1559) in Basic Theological Writings, ed. Lull, Fortress, 1989, 547).

 

Sola Scriptura should not lead to everyone being his own prideful chief priest interpreting the Bible on his own and for himself, reading as is right in his own eyes, but to us (the catholic church) reading the Bible together humbly because we know that only Scripture alone is infallible supreme. My reading may err. The Bible can reform us.  

 

The Bible is the primary and supreme authority, but that does not exclude the secondary authorities of tradition and the teaching office of the church. Sola Scripture means to rule out rivals not ministers. Tradition and the church serve the reading and living of Scripture.

 

Sola Scriptura is not solo Scriptura.

 

We should also affirm a notion of sola ecclesia (the church alone) as the ordered Royal people of the book: the reading of the communion of the saints.

 

Luther and Calvin thought that the catholic church was not catholic enough in the sense that it absolutized the authority of Rome and the Pope to the neglect of other voices in the church. The Reformed claimed to be more catholic than Rome. The Reformation is a call to “a deeper and wider catholicity” (p200) Calvin said in his Letter to Cardinal Sadoleto (1539): “Our agreement with antiquity is far closer than yours… all we have attempted has been to renew the ancient form of the Church.”

 

The gospel should be determined more by Romans than by Rome (p200).  

 

Sola Scriptura calls upon us to be attentive to all those who down through the ages have been attentive to the Scriptures. Tradition is the fruit of the Spirit’s work as the church has read the Bible faithfully.

 

Reflecting on God’s use of Philip to teach the Ethiopian eunuch, Vanhoozer argues that God gives us teachers and tradition to help us interpret the Bible. God has authorised tradition and when he saw it he said, “This at last is norm of my norm and light of my light; she shall be called postapostolic testimony, because she has been taken out of apostolic testimony.” (p181)

 

The church is “the pillar and ground of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Calvin says, “By these words Paul means that the church is the faithful keeper of God’s truth that it may not perish from the world.” (Institutes 4.1.10)

 

God is Light and he has authorised lesser lights. “Tradition is the lesser light: the moon to Scripture’s sun…. Tradition has a derivative, secondary, ministerial authority insofar as its creeds and confessions reflect the light that shines forth from the biblical text.” (p184)

 

Vahoozer says: “In sum: Sola Scriptura is not a blank check individuals can cash in to fund their own idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible, but a call to attend to the broader pattern on Protestant authority and to listen to the Spirit speaking in the history of the church’s interpretation of Scripture.” (p183)

 

“To catechize a disciple, to teach them the basic tenets of the faith, is therefore to catholicize them: to integrate them into the faith of the whole church…. Remember: catechizing = catholicizing.” (p190)

 

“The kind of Protestantism that needs to live on is not the tragic caricature that encourages individual autonomy or corporate pride but the catholic original that encourages the church to hold fast to the gospel, and to one another, in Christ.” (p201) “The only good Protestant is a catholic Protestant – one who learns from, and bears fruit for, the whole church.” (p201f)

 

The church is “glocal”, global and local (p194).

 

“The local church, a people with canon sense and catholic sensibility, is the true end of the Protestant Reformation.” (p202)

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Hearers and Doers: A Pastor's Guide to Making Disciples through Scripture and Doctrine (Lexham Press, 2019)