I’m gonna respectfully disagree with you here:
>>> “All churches grounded primarily in Scripture have very similar theologies. “
though it depends on what is ‘similar’ enough.
The Reformers, sola scriptura, disagreed enough to reject each other’s theology and have different “Confessions” or credal documents.
I don’t believe Luther - Zwingli - Calvin - Arminius are similar theologies. First they differ on the sacraments and, in the case of Calvin, salvation, with Calvinism’s salvation by election not at all similar to salvation by grace through faith.
I would agree that Calvin follows an arc started by Luther, but at some point in the line it leaves it’s origin enough to be deemed no longer ‘similar.’
Further out we have the 19th Century invention, via sola scriptura again, of Dispensationalism by Darby and the Brethren Movement, and sola scriptura non-trinitarians such as Oneness Pentecostals and some strands of Unitarianism.
Luther thought that sola scriptura meant everyone would see *his* interpretation of scripture as the obviously correct one, this authority of scripture. But, in practice, it becomes everyone’s interpretation on their own authority.
thanks for your post.
Hi, D, sorry so long in responding. Many fires to put out.
Anyway, we’ve been over this enough before, so I won’t be long. I just wanted to acknowledge that I had read your response and found it mildly amusing. I just shake my head at how hard it is to get some folks to understand exactly what Sola Scriptura is. We spend so much time chasing down dead ends, spilling untold gallons of cyber-ink on what amounts to a futility. If Solomon had an FR account, would he use it? I wonder.
The amusement I found was in your reference to dispensationalism as a product of SS. There are, of course, the usual technical problems defining which form of dispensationalism you think is heretical, because Paul does in fact mention dispensation (“economy”) four times, and if the “system” confined itself to the stewardship of the Gospel as those four uses imply, then you could argue virtually all believers are “dispensationalists.”
But I know you mean the more advanced system put forward in early form by Darby, popularized by CI Scofield, and made very popular by a number of modern proponents, such as Ryrie, Walvoord, etc.
BTW, I met Walvoord in person while I was at Moody Bible Institute, and challenged him directly on his view of the reinstatement of temple sacrifices during the millennial period. Why? Because I could not find it in Scripture, and as a hypothesis it ran against other Scripture proclaiming that the sacrifice of Christ was once for all complete and could never be repeated, whether by renewed animal sacrifice or in any other form. Poor Mr. Walvoord thought he was among friendlies, so he was caught quite off-guard.
And my own father had a similar experience, if somewhat harder on him. He was one of those who routinely used a Scofield Bible, so I was raised on a combination of Scripture and Scofield’s notes. I remember one series of sermons where the preacher, every Sunday night for what seemed like forever, would walk us through his highly colorful and detailed scrolling chart of the all the images and meanings of the book of Revelation.
But my dad was an intellectually honest man, one of those rare good men you hear of in stories. He was teaching Sunday school, a class on Thessalonians, and when he came to the part about the man of sin, he just couldn’t get through the passage without realizing it did not suggest the now famous pre-trib rapture. For his inability to extract that contrived thing from this passage, he was fired from teaching in that church in any capacity.
I don’t recall that we used Scofield for much after that. Our interest was knowing what God said. Not to eliminate the use of wise men gone before us, but to measure their words, as the Bereans did, against our own direct exposure to the words of God.
So no, dispensationalism is very difficult to assign to Sola Scriptura. More like Selecta Scriptura, plus the writings of Darby, Scofield, Ryrie, et al, ad nauseam. Indeed, some have argued it was in part the result of an extrabiblical revelation produced by a teenage girl of Scotland named Margaret McDonald, though I have seen convincing refutations of this theory, which point further back in time, to the writings of various Catholic apologists who were anxious to recast Revelation as entirely future, because it would dull the Reformers’ contention that the Pope was Antichrist. The Jesuit Lacunza is mentioned in this regard, among others. I have also seen refutations of this theory, and at this point, just being honest with you, I have not resolved the matter to a high degree of confidence that I have the right understanding of exactly how dispensationalism came to be.
But I didn’t need all that to make an early decision on the matter. It really happened one day in the cafeteria at Moody. I was speaking with one of my classmates who was sharing with me his love of dispensational theory, which had led him to the conclusion that there was only one book in the Bible that fully and absolutely applied to the modern Christian, Ephesians, and we just didn’t need the rest. My Sola Scriptura alarm went off like mad and I knew that any speculative system which prevented a Christian from reading most of his Bible had to be an invention of the evil one.
So you see, to me, to think of all that as the product of Sola Scriptura just leaves the definition of SS in such a shambles as to be useless for purposes of a coherent discussion. One might just as easily say that the general rise in literacy is responsible for pornographic novels being written. And of course there is a grain of truth in that. The market for such a product does become wider. But really, not because people can read, but because people are sinners, and whether you give them a Bible or an alphabet, they will do perverse things with it because that is the human condition apart from God’s grace.
One final note on that pastor of my youth and his scrolling chart sermons. I developed a friendship with him and found he was also into pyramids, Egyptology, and other assorted nefarious things, including Rosicrucianism. So far from being Biblical, I could say his sources for his teaching were legion.
I do not accuse all Ryrie-style dispensationalists of being closet occultists, but it just emphasizes again that the principle of Sola Scriptura is completely missing from those who are willing to build on false foundations made of unproven and unbiblical presuppositions, and then try to force Scripture into conformance with their “system,” rather than the other way around.
This was the Pharisees’ problem, and why Jesus was so irate with them, and why he said these things are to be hid from the wise and revealed unto babes. This is His work, and He will hold them to account who mislead the innocent and the naïve. Yet he says of His own sheep, that they will hear His voice, and follow Him. There is great comfort in that promise.
This was supposed to be short, and look what happened. Sigh.
Nice talking with you.
Respectfully Yours,
SR