Sola Scriptura

     The return of biblical authority. The Protestant commitment to the ”Bible alone” arose in the midst of a wider theological conflict with the Roman Catholic Church over the question of the final authority in the church, a dispute that had already charted a two-hundred-year history by the sixteenth century. What brought Luther to enter this fray was his search for a gracious God, a quest that led him to the Bible. In his subsequent conflict with Rome, Luther sought to undercut the Catholic position, which endowed the pope and church councils with ultimate authority and thereby effectively set the church above the Bible.

     …He [Luther] was convinced that true knowledge of God arises only out of God’s self-disclosure in the Word and through the Spirit. Luther likewise attacked the Roman Catholic claims that tradition ought to be placed alongside of Scripture and that only the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching office can interpret the Bible properly. In response to what he saw as the erroneous foundation on which Roman Catholic theology was constructed, Luther introduced the principle of sola scriptura, the claim that Scripture alone is the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice.

(Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguelez, Dennis L. Okholm, Eds., Evangelicals Scripture: Tradition, Authority, and Hermeneutics, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004; Stanley J. Grenz, Nurturing the Soul, Informing the Ming: The Genesis of the Evangelical Principle, 24)