2z-Solo Scriptura

Sola Scriptura in the early Church The Problem

"He, therefore, will not be a Christian who shall deny this doctrine which is confessed by Christians; denying it, moreover, on grounds which are adopted by a man who is not a Christian. Take away, indeed, from the heretics the wisdom which they share with the heathen, and let them support their inquiries from the Scriptures alone: they will then be unable to keep their ground." Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh,3

Recently a few Evangelical Christians have attempted to find the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura within the writings of the Church Fathers[1]. These writers do not understand the coordinate role of Tradition and its relationship with Scripture in the ancient Church. Catholic[2], Orthodox[3], Coptic[4] and many Protestant[5] patristic scholars agree that the rule of faith in the early Church consisted of Scripture, Tradition and Church[2]. Not a single Church Father interpreted Sacred Scripture in isolation from the traditional faith of the Church; rather, the Fathers applied Tradition as a rule to interpret Scripture. The only ancient teachers who interpreted Scripture apart from Tradition were the early heretics.

Before the NT was collated and canonized, there were those who would only admit the OT Scripture and reject the oral Christian tradition. St. Ignatius writes:

"And I exhort you to do nothing out of strife, but according to the doctrine of Christ. When I heard some saying, If I do not find it in the ancient Scriptures, I will not believe the Gospel; on my saying to them, It is written, they answered me, That remains to be proved. But to me Jesus Christ is in the place of all that is ancient: His cross, and death, and resurrection, and the faith which is by Him, are undefiled monuments of antiquity." Epistle to the Philadephians 8:2 St. Ignatius contrasts the authority of this Scriptures-only mentality with the Christian tradition. According to St.

Ignatius, one interprets the OT Scripture within the framework of the Christian Gospel.

.

Some Gnostics not only attempted to falsify the canon of Scripture(such as Marcion) but appealed exclusively to the same and rejected tradition. Eusebius preserves this citation which describes the behavior of those who follow Theodotus, a Unitarian:

"They have treated the Divine Scriptures recklessly and without fear. They have set aside the rule of the ancient faith; and Christ they have not known. They do not endeavor to learn what the Divine Scriptures declare, but strive laboriously after any form of syllogism which may be devised to sustain their impiety. And if any one brings before them a passage of Divine Scripture, they see whether a conjunctive or disjunctive form of syllogism can be made from it." Eusebius Church History, V:28:13

These Unitarians relied on Scripturealone and rejected the tradition of the Church. Tertullian of Carthage discovered the futility of interpreting Scripture outside of the framework of the Church and her Tradition.Tertullian writes:

"Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. But even if a discussion from the Scriptures should not turn out in such a way as to place both sides on a par, (yet) the natural order of things would require that this point should be first proposed, which is now the only one which we must discuss: ’With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong. From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule, by which men become Christians?" For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there will likewise be the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions." Tertullian Prescription Against the Heretics, 19

Likewise, St. Athanasius makes the same claim regarding the Arians. According to St. Athanasius the Arians read Scripture according to their own private lights and rejected the traditions of the Church. This is a recurring theme in the writings of the Church Fathers. According to Athanasius, the Arians’ rejection of the Church tradition resulted in their divisions and heresy:

"The blessed Apostle approves of the Corinthians because, he says, ’ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions as I delivered them to you’ (1 Cor. xi. 2); but they, as entertaining such views of their predecessors, will have the daring to say just the reverse to their flocks: ’We praise you not for remembering your fathers, but rather we make much of you, when you hold not their traditions. And let them go on to accuse their own unfortunate birth, and say, ’We are sprung not of religious men but of heretics.’ For such language, as I said before, is consistent in those who barter their Fathers’ fame and their own salvation for Arianism, and fear not the words of the divine proverb, ’There is a generation that curseth their father’ (Prov. xxx. 11; Ex. xxi. 17), and the threat lying in the Law against such. They then, from zeal for the heresy, are of this obstinate temper; you, however, be not troubled at it, nor take their audacity for truth. For they dissent from each other, and, whereas they have revolted from their Fathers, are not of one and the same mind, but float about with various and discordant changes." St. Athanasius De Synodis,14 St. Basil of Ceasarea observes the same fatal flaw in those who rejected the deity of the Holy Spirit - the Pneumatomachianists(the Spirit fighters). St. Basil writes:

"It is against us, they say, that they are preparing their engines and their snares; against us that they are shouting to one another, according to each one’s strength or cunning, to come on. But the object of attack is faith. The one aim of the whole band of opponents and enemies of ’sound doctrine’ is to shake down the foundation of the faith of Christby levelling apostolic tradition with the ground, and utterly destroying it. So like the debtors,--of course bona fide debtors.-they clamour for written proof, and reject as worthless the unwritten tradition of the Fathers." St. Basil Holy Spirit,10:25 Basil could not have provided a more clear passage in contrasting the rule of faith between Catholics and heretics. The Pneumatomachianists, like the Arians and Gnostics, appealed to the Scriptures alone and rejected the tradition of the Church!

St. Augustine finds the wayward principle in the Pelagians and Arians. Pelagius expresses himself as follows: "What we read, therefore, let us believe; and what we do not read, let us deem it wicked to add; and let it suffice to have said this of all cases." Nature and Grace,46[39] In other words, Pelagius would only admit what is read within the pages of Holy Writ; hence, like the heretics before him rejected tradition. In the latter part of St. Augustine’s life, St. Augustine was involved in an oral debate with an Arian bishop - Maximinus. Maximinus proclaims at the very start of the exchange:

"I did not come to this city in order to stage a debate with Your Holiness. Rather, I am here, sent by Count Segisvult with a view to peace ... If you produce from the divine scriptures something that we all share, we shall have to listen. But those words which are not found in the scriptures are under no circumstances accepted by us, especially since the Lord warns us, saying, In vain they worship me, teaching human commandments and precepts (Matthew 15:9)" Augustine Debate with Maximinus,1 In other words, Maximinus rejected all traditional monuments such as Nicea and would only accept what was found in Scripture. Coincidentally, Maximinus appealed to1 Timothy 3:16in defense of his Bible-only mentality:

"All divinely inspired scripture is useful for teaching (2 Timothy 3:16). For that reason, not one least letter or one particle of a letter will pass away (Matthew 5:18). The Lord said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away (Matthew 24:35)." Debate with Maximinus,15:16 Elsewhere, Maximinus continues to denigrate the authority of tradition and the deity of Christ:

"Even if one produces from testimonies from the divine scriptures all day long, it will not be truly counted against one as wordiness. But if one uses some literary skill or cleverness of mind and makes up words which the holy scriptures do not contain, they are both idle and superfluous." Debate with Maximinus,13

Time and time again, Maximinus criticizes the traditional monuments such as Trinity and homoousios! Later, Maximinus challengesSt. Augustine to defend the deity of theHoly Spirit’s on the basis of the Scriptures-alone:

"The truth is not obtained by argumentation, but is proved by certain [scriptural] testimonies. For this reason you ought to produce [scriptural] testimonies that the Holy Spirit is God." Debate with Maximinus,15:21

Lastly, we visit the arch-heretic Eutyches. Eutyches affirmed after the Incarnation that Christ possessed only one nature not two - the divine and human nature. The Council of Chalcedon writes:

"He[Eutyches] said that he was ready to receive the decrees of the holy fathers assembled in the Councils of Nice and Ephesus, and promises to subscribe to their definitions. But if in their declarations anything by chance should be found either unsound or false, he says that he will neither reject or approve of it: but search the scripture aloneas beingmore solid than all the decrees of the fathers." Council of Chalcedon, Acts 1:1-26 In Eutyches we find Luther all over again! What could be more different than Gnosticism, Pelagianism, Arianism, Eutychianism and Pneumatomachianism? Yet, we find the formal principle of sola scriptura applied across these early heresies. The early testimony is clear - if one fails to interpret Scripture within the milieu of Tradition and replace it with a private reading of Scripture than one can come up with about anything. If one wishes to find adherents to the principle of sola scriptura, one need look no further than the proponents of the early heresies. The Antidote

"Putting aside all Greek literature, they[St. Basil and St. Gregory] are said to have passed thirteen years together in studying the Scriptures alone, and followed out their sense, not from their private opinions, but by the writings and authority of the Fathers." Rufinus,Church History, 2:9

Notes:

[1] Don Kistler, ed., Sola Scriptura! The Protestant Position on the Bible (Morgan: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), John Armstrong, ed., Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us (Chicago: Moody, 1995)

[2] Congar Yves, Tradition And Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1966), Gallegos J.A., "What did the Early Fathers teach about Scripture, Tradition, and Church Authority" Not by Scripture Alone, Ed. Robert Sungenis (Santa Barbara:Queenship, 1997), Tavard George, Holy Writ or Holy Church: The Crisis of the Protestant Reformation (New York: Harper, 1959) [3]John Meyendorff, Living Tradition (Crestwood: St. Vladimir Seminary, 1978) [4]Fr. Tadros Y. Malaty, Tradition and Orthodoxy (Los Angeles: St George Coptic Church, 1971)

[5] JND Kelly, "Tradition and Scripture" Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), F.W. Dillistone, ed., Scripture and Tradition (London: Lutterworth, 1955), D.H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition & Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) This text may downloaded and viewed for private reading only. This text may not be used by another Web site or published, electronically or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder Joseph A. Gallegos © 2001 All Rights Reserved.