Scriptural Authority: A Christian (Protestant) Perspective

Abstract

In curbing the authority of the ecclesiastical Magisterium the Reformation movement brought the authority of the Holy Scripture to the forefront as the normative foundation of Christian theology. One of its basic axioms is the sola scriptum principle, meaning that all one needs to know in order to live in a salvific relation to God can be acquired scripture alone. This constitutes the formal, epistemological principle of Protestant theology up to today, and complements the material principles solus Christus, sola gratia, and sola fide. Whereas these material principles refer to the manifestation of salvation in Christ (alone), to the eternal ground of salvation through the grace of God (alone), and to the gift of salvation by faith (alone), the formal principle oi sola scriptura calls upon the Christian to realize that these three principles of material truth are made known to us (only) by the formal principle by Holy The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture. 1 On the one hand, the Reformers taught that Holy Scripture not only offers testimony to the Word of God but also is itself of divine origin since the authors wrote under the immediate influence of God. In view of this, GWis ultimately the principal author, while the writing humans are only instrumental scribes. It follows from that that the Bible possesses divine authority. On the other hand the Reformers distinguished between the Bible as the Word of God and the Word of God in the Bible. Furthermore they made a distinction between the written word of the biblical books and the Logos, the eternal word of God, which speaks through the words of the Bible and addresses the reader here and now, existentially. As a testimony to and a medium o/the Word of God the Holy Scripture for Luther is Christ's spiritual body, 2 and thus the authority of the biblical scriptures is a derived and secondary authority. This authority does not rest simply on the sacred text as such but rather on the proclamation of God's grace-filled Lordship over nature