Historical
Survey of the Tradition and Scripture Question
Tradition was by necessity an early guide for
interpreting the Bible, for as early as the second century CE, when gnostics
and Montanists were referring to Scripture in support of their positions, the
church came to see that appeals to Scripture were not in themselves sufficient
evidence for the ideas being disseminated. It was only through the faith of the
church that the Scriptures could be accurately read, and thus the church
fathers came to emphasize tradition when reading the Bible.
Jerome drives this point home, with the urgency of
someone in the throes of doctrinal disputes.
Marcion and Basilides and other heretics … do not
possess the gospel of God, since they have no Holy Spirit, without which the
gospel preached becomes human. We do not think that gospel consists of the
words of Scripture but in its meaning, not on the surface but in the marrow,
not in the leaves of sermons but in the root of meaning. In this case Scripture
is really useful for the hearers when it is not spoken without Christ, nor is
presented without the Fathers, and those who are preaching do not introduce it
without the Spirit.… It is a great danger to speak in the church, lest by a
perverse interpretation of the gospel of Christ, a gospel of man is made. (Jerome,
Commentary on Galatians 1.1.2 [PL 26:386])
The idea that authoritative guidance for how one
believes and worships should come only from Scripture is a relatively recent
one, first being articulated in 1518 by a colleague of Martin Luther’s at the
University of Wittenberg, Andreas Carlstadt (1486–1541). In Luther’s Resolutions Concerning the 95 Theses, a
book completed in May of 1518 and published that August, Luther portrayed
himself as faithful to the church’s authentic traditions. But in the same month
that these Resolutions appeared,
August 1518, Carlstadt’s book was released, in which he claimed that only
Scripture was authoritative, not the patristic writings, rulings of popes, or
decrees of synods. Carlstadt reordered the chain of authority for Christians’
guidance. Whereas traditionally the church is regarded as the body that
collected, canonized, and interprets Scripture, Carlstadt initiated a tendency
to place Scripture above the church.
Two years later, Luther wrote in a foreword to his
colleague Philipp Melanchthon’s (1497–1560) explanatory notes on the Letter to
the Romans, “You say ‘scripture alone
must be read without commentaries.’ You say this correctly about the
commentaries of Origen, Jerome, and Thomas. They wrote commentaries in which
they handed down their own ideas rather than Pauline or Christian ones. Let no
one call your annotations a commentary [in that sense] but only an index for
reading Scripture and knowing Christ, on account that up to this point no one
has offered a commentary which surpasses it.” The picture of an individual
interpreting Scripture according to his or her own idiosyncratic whims is not
what Luther had in mind when applying the principle of sola Scriptura. He used reason, creeds from the church, and even
writings of the church fathers to help him explain Scripture. So he viewed
Scripture as a text to be interpreted with others: “Reading Scripture is a fellowship
activity in which the voices of those who have read before us need to be heard
attentively.”
But
Luther did not mean what many today think sola
Scriptura means. He was adamant that common people, untrained in the
biblical languages or theological study, could not interpret the Bible for
themselves. Thus, the Bible that he published in the vernacular language of
Saxony contained commentary to guide the readers’ interpretation. Commentary
similarly accompanied the text of Calvin’s French translation of the Bible, as
well as the Geneva Bible. (Mark Reasoner, Five Models of Scripture [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2021],
193–195)
