Sola scriptura

[10][11][12][13][14] Augustine of Hippo is frequently cited by Protestants as a Church Father who espoused the doctrine of sola scriptura.

It is also noteworthy that Augustine attributes his view to Jerome.I admit to your Charity that it is from those books alone of the Scriptures, which are now called canonical, that I have learned to pay them such honor and respect as to believe most firmly that not one of their authors has erred in writing anything at all.

And I think that you, my brother, feel the same way; moreover, I say, I do not believe that you want your books to be read as if they were those of Prophets or Apostles, about whose writings, free of all error, it is unlawful to doubt.

[22] Peter Abelard believed that human reason was a means of understanding the scriptures, instead of submitting to everything the Catholic Church defines.

[25] Martin Luther, 16th-century friar and figurehead of the Protestant Reformation, stated that "a simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it".

The intention of the Reformation was thus to correct what he asserted to be the errors of the Catholic Church, by appealing to the uniqueness of the Bible's textual authority.

[34] Because of this, Lutherans confess in the Formula of Concord, "we receive and embrace with our whole heart the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel".

[35] The apocryphal books were not written by the prophets, by inspiration; they contain errors,[36] were never included in the Palestinian Canon that Jesus used,[37] and therefore are not a part of scripture.

[47] Lutheranism teaches that the Bible presents all doctrines and commands of the Christian faith clearly;[48][49] that God's word is freely accessible to every reader or hearer of ordinary intelligence, without requiring any special education.

[50] It teaches that, consequently, no one needs to wait for any clergy, and pope, scholar, or ecumenical council to explain the real meaning of any part of the Bible.

[53] Scripture does not compel a mere intellectual assent to its doctrine, resting on logical argumentation, but rather it creates the living agreement of faith.

[57] Sola scriptura in the Reformed faith possesses the same characteristics to those of Lutheranism: inspiration, authority, clarity, efficacy, and sufficiency.

Article 3 of the Belgic Confession, a Reformed confessional of faith, teaches the divine inspiration of Scripture, "We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of man, but that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, as the apostle Peter saith (2 Peter 1:21).

"[58]: 2 Article 7 teaches the sole infallibility or unique authority of Scripture, "Neither do we consider of equal value any writing of men, however holy these men may have been, with those divine Scriptures; nor ought we to consider custom, or the great multitude, or antiquity, or succession of times and persons, or councils, decrees or statutes, as of equal value with the truth of God".

Examples of this include the general revelation in creation, traditions, charismatic gifts, mystical insight, angelic visitations, conscience, common sense, the views of experts, the spirit of the times or something else.

Church councils, preachers, biblical commentators, private revelation, or even a message allegedly from an angel or an apostle are not an original authority alongside the Bible in the sola scriptura approach.

The Catholic Church holds that the Gospel was transmitted by the apostles by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit; as well as by those apostles and apostolic men who under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit committed the message of salvation to writing.

[63] "This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it.

As explained by Athanasius of Alexandria, "Let us look at the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the very beginning, which the Logos gave (edoken), the Apostles preached (ekeryxan), and the Fathers preserved (ephylaxan).

The proper interpretation of the Scriptures was seen as part of the faith of the Church and seen indeed as the manner in which biblical authority was upheld (see Book of Acts 15:28–29).

[68][69] The Catholic Church teaches that Christ entrusted the preaching of the Gospel to the apostles, who handed it on orally and in writing, and according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.

For example, the 1978 Evangelical declaration Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, states: "We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that this tradition is given "by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received – whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it at the prompting of the Holy Spirit".

Keenan, however, says that John T. Noonan Jr. demonstrated that, "despite claims to the contrary, manualists were co-operators in the necessary historical development of the moral tradition".

In his 2001 The Shape of Sola Scriptura, [75] the Reformed Christian writer Keith A. Mathison mentions several recent examples of such critics.

[77] In the 2008 book Catholicism and Science, the authors Peter M. J. Hess and Paul Allen wrote that sola scriptura is "inherently divisive", citing the Marburg Colloquy where Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli debated the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist on scriptural grounds but were unable to reach agreement on sacramental union.

[78] The Roman Catholic Encyclopedia of Theology notes that, since the 27 books that make up the New Testament canon of scripture are not based on a scriptural list that authenticates them to be inspired, their legitimacy would be impossible to distinguish with certainty without appealing to another infallible source, such as the magisterium of the Catholic Church, which assembled and authenticated this list at Synod of Rome and the Synod of Carthage, both of which took place in the fourth century.

[86] Regarding the Church's view on the belief held by many that the Holy Bible, as presently constituted (in any translation, or even from the extant Hebrew and Greek manuscripts), is inerrant or infallible, etc, or the doctrine of sola scriptura, the Church has said the following: "The Latter-day Saints have a great reverence and love for the Bible.

"[87] John Ruchrath von Wesel, d. 1481, attacked the hierarchy and indulgences and was charged on his trial with calling in question almost all the distinctive Roman Catholic tenets.

The elect are saved wholly through the grace of God—sola Dei gratia salvantur electi.These three German theologians, Goch, Wesel and Wessel, were quietly searching after the marks of the true Church and the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone.