Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Sola Scriptura

The issue of Sola Scriptura is often (and sadly) little understood, or completely misunderstood by many in today's professing church. It's vitally important that we, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, know what we believe and why we believe it!

Like Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura is foundational to a correct, Biblical, and proper understanding of the Christian theistic worldview:

The issue of Scripture and Scripture Alone (or what Protestants have come to call the principle of Sola Scriptura) is a matter that divides professing Christians as to the foundation of their faith and what defines their faith. Back in the days of the Reformation when there were men who felt that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ had been not only corrupted by the Roman Catholic Church, but had virtually disappeared under the mask of human traditions and rituals and things that kept people from actually hearing the good news of Jesus Christ, in order to reform the Church, in order to have the grace of God more clearly proclaimed to people, Protestants realized they had to take a stand not only for ‘Sola Gratia’ (i.e., in Latin, ‘By Grace Alone’ for our salvation), but that had to be proclaimed on the basis of Sola Scriptura (‘Scripture Alone’) because the Roman Catholic Church used its appeal to human tradition in the Church (or what they considered divine tradition in the Church) as a basis for its most distinctive doctrines.

While the entire article linked below is rather lengthy I hope you'll take the time to finish reading Greg Bahnsen's excellent dissertation here