Full Text for The Sola Scriptura and Its Modern Antithesis (Text)
..rist's redemption to a perishing world.
W. ARNDT
The Sola Scriptura and Its Modern Antithesis
I
It is indeed correct to say that the outstanding achievement of
Luther's Reformation was the recovery, clarification, and vindica-
tion of the sola gratia (sola fide) . That truly was a pre-eminent
accomplishment, an almost miraculous attainment, as it appears to
everyone who considers how thoroughly Rome had succeeded in
burying this articulus omnium fundamentaIissimus under the
rubbish of its extreme work-righteousness program.1 ) Luther in
a most lucid manner, in learned treatises (De Servo Arbitrio ), in
sermons, intelligible to the simplest layman, and in songs made
known far and wide the Gospel message of God's free and full grace
1) Cf. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (Die Lehre Luthers) . Von
Reinhold Seeberg. Vierter Band, erste Abteilung, pp. 124 fl. Also L ehr -
huch der S ymbolik. Von Wilh. Walther, pp. 363 fl.
6 The Sola Scriptura and Its Modern Antithesis
in Christ Jesus as it had never been proclaimed since the time of
the Apostles, not even by st. Augustine.2)
Nevertheless, the sola gratia was not the only accomplishment
of the Reformation. There was another that is equally necessary
for the salvation of sinners. The sola gratia is a divine doctrine
set forth in Holy Scripture, and only there, never in any man-made
book of religion.3 ) That God-given Holy Scripture of the Prophets
and Apostles, on which the Church of Christ is built,4) not even
Rome with all its trickery and power could destroy.5) But Rome
could so deeply inter it beneath Summae and Sententiae and could
so securely hedge it in by Apocrypha and decretals, decisions of
Popes and councils, and traditions in general that Scripture no
longer meant anything in Christendom as the source and norm of
the Christian faith and life. Rome wanted to do away with the
principium materiale (sola gratia) of the Christian Church; to ac-
complish this, it had to get out of the way its principium formale,
Scripture as the sole pTincipium cognoscendi. Luther restored to
Christendom the sola Scriptu1'a, the Bible as the only source and
rule of faith.
What did the sola ScriptuTa mean to Luther and his co-
workers'? It is, we believe, the last and crowning work of Dr.
Michael Reu that he saCrificed, so to speak, the last ounce of his
strength to witness, not only to international Lutheranism but also
to the entire world, that to Luther and all Gnesio-Lutherans the
sola Scriptum meant verbal inspiration, plenar y inspiration, the
sole authority of Christian doctrine and conduct, and that not
merely for a short time, while Luther was "der junge Luther," but
"until the end of his life," the infallible Book of God, inerrant "even
in those parts that do not concern our salvation," although this ab-
solute inerrancy belonged "only to the original drafts of the Biblical
books." All this Luther and his followers believed and taught with-
out, however, acknowledging a "mechanical or dictated inspiration,"
for "not Luther but other Lutheran theologians of his time were
on the road to the mechanical theory of inspiration."
These statements, largely taken from the chapter titles of Dr.
Reu's great confessional book, point out with sufficient clearness
what the theologians of the Reformation meant by sola Scriptm·a.
The writer does not agree with everything that is stated in Dr. Reu's
book. To him, for example, it does not appear as proved that "the
later dogmaticians either entirely or to a great extent excluded
2) For quick orientation consult Chr. Ernst Luthardts Kompendium
der Dogmatik, 13. Auflage, voellig umgearbeitet und ergaenzt von Robert
Jelke, pp. 219 ff.
3) Cf. 1 Cor. 2: 7 ff.
4) Eph. 2: 20. 5) Matt. 24: 35.
The Sola Scriptw-a and Its Modern Antithesis 7
such co-operation," i. e., between the holy writers and the Holy
Spirit, regarding inspiration as purely mechanical or dictational.6 )
Dr. Reu himself suggests this when in Note 187 he writes among
other things: "It is true, it was wrong when Luthardt wrote con-
cerning the teaching of the dogmaticians of the seventeenth cen-
tury: 'Das Verhaeltnis des Heiligen Geistes zur Schrift ist [by these
dogmaticians] nicht durch die eigene geistige Aktivitaet der bibli-
schen Schriftsteller, sondern nur aeusserlich durch die Hand der
Schreibenden vermittelt gedacht.' . . . They really advocated more
and emphasized the fact that the holy writers, instead of being
dead, unknowing and unwilling tools in the hands of the Holy
Spirit, were knowing and willing instruments . . .. If Church Fa-
thers, or some dogmaticians of our own Church, called the human
authors notarii, calami, amanuenses, instrumenta, this is by no
means to be considered wrong in every respect. It is wrong only if
one, by the use of these terms, degrades them to merely mechanical
instruments or machines who wrote without participation of their
soul life. It is correct and an expression of a Biblical truth if these
terms are used merely to designate human instrumentality without
any definition of the latter." 7l
The writer regards this as a remarkable proof of Dr. Reu's
honesty and sincerity. Dr. Reu evidently held that there were
later dogmaticians who believed in a mechanical inspiration by
mere dictation; yet he is fair to them and so frankly publishes what
later theologians said in opposition to a "mechanical inspiration."
To this end also he quotes Quenstedt's remark in explanation of
hy of Rq!1gioTI . Garnett does not even
bother with the Bible; he ignores it; but he says some very in-
teresting modernistic things, - among these that "there are limits
of God to control human behavior and the physical world" (p. 295),
which means a finite God, who in reality is not God at all; that "sin
is spiritual inertia, the lack of attention to moral values" (p. 311);
and that God has revealed Himself with "peculiar force and clarity"
"in the life and teaching of a succession of religious leaders who
gradually developed more and more fully the ideal of a universal
good" (p. 320). Garnett admits that God's self-revelation has cul-
minated in the person of Jesus Christ, who "thus becomes the cen-
19) Cf. p. 302 f. Knudson'~ book is somewhat obsolete (1925), as
modernistic books go, but it is still worth studying, since the author
enunciates principles that are bound to endure for all times because
they please the Old Adam.
20) Modernists, of course, are not all alike; each endeavors to
present the old unbelief from a different viewpoint, and that is why
their books are published and read. Some of them have been influenced
by the Barthian movement and, by a sort of religious eclecticism, weave
Barthian and other theological principles into new patterns. We recom-
mend to the reader for orientation such books as Types of Modern
Theology, by H. R. Mackintosh; Present Theological Tendencies, by E. E.
Aubrey; and similar helpful characterizations of modern liberal trends.
But by this time he may be so utterly confused that it might be well
for him to reorient himself to the Christian faith by the study of such
works as Revelation and Inspiration, by B. B. Warfield; Scripture Cannot
be Broken, by Theodore Engelder, and similar orthodox works.
The Sola Scriptura and Its Modern Antithesis 13
tral figure of society" (p. 320); but the Christ of Garnett is not the
,-'trist of St. Pat' ." ,e divine-' n Savior, who by Y's
".,.;ariolJ.s atonement became the world's Redeemer, Garnett's ChL._t
is Harnack's Christ, a purely human Christ.
This year there Wal; published a symposium under the title
Protestantism, whose editor was W. K. Anderson and whose pub-
lisher is the Commission on Courses of Study of the Methodist
Church (Nashville, Tenn.). The book (among other things) con-
tains twelve essays on subjects related to Protestantism: one by
J. T. McNeil ("Was the Reformation Needed?"), another by A. R.
Wentz ("Luther and His Tradition"), a third by Georgia Harkness
("Calvin and His Tradition"), and so forth. The writer was chiefly
interested in two contributions, entitled "Interpretations," one b)'
A. C. Knudson ("Cardinal Principles of the Reformation") and an-
other by W. G. Chanter ("Protestantism and the Bible"). In "Car-
dinal Principles of Protestantism" Knudson writes (among other
things) : "The cardinal principle of Protestantism which I place
tl~'··c the list i:- LL ---:;Jreme authcripture.
as for a tided as the lciple of F
ism, as I:;V.no'ltion on whi;~h whole strU'+.!.J.L~ tJ its teaching
rests. Tne Bible was held to be the O\ book