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