Sola Scriptura VS Total Inerrancy

Coming from a conservative background, I was taught that Scripture, specifically the King James Version, was totally inerrant; meaning it is without flaw, perfect, and absolutely pure. After all, it is God's Word, how can it be any less? This view of Scripture respects the Holy text about as much as God Himself. Indeed, this view makes Scripture as the outpouring of God a literal part of God.There is no room for flaw within perfection, and if God is perfection Incarnate, how could any part of Him not be so as well? With that reasoning, it is logical that Scripture must be flawless.

As I got older, I began to study my Anabaptist roots. Of course, one of the originators of the movement that eventually spawned the Anabaptists was Martin Luther. He held the view that all doctrine should be found in Scripture; that is, if something isn't in Scripture then we shouldn't make assumptions about it, and that no doctrine should be based on anything that was not directly from Scripture. He called this Sola Scriptoria, Latin for "by Scripture alone". This meant that Luther did not hold to the Catholic teachings that were found in places like the Apocrypha, verbal tradition, or in Jewish histories. Above all, however, he was saying that he disagreed with the Catholic church's power to create doctrine that was equal to Scripture or even sometimes considered above Scripture. He believed that Scripture was not only the first authority, but the final and only authority.

However, these two views are incompatible. No where in Scripture does Scripture itself claim to be inerrant. It states itself to be God-breathed and useful. However, man is God-breathed and useful, but very far from flawless. To claim that Scripture is inerrant deviates from the five hundred year tradition of Sola Scriptoria that Martin Luther set. Ironically, anyone who holds one of these two positions almost invariably holds the other as well. Yet, clearly you cannot say that Scripture is the only authority and then promptly add to it yourself. This is not to say that Scripture is not Divine; nor that God does not protect His Word. It is to say that both the doctrine of Sola Scriptoria and the doctrine of Inerrancy are doctrines of man, not explicit in Scripture.

As noble and well intentioned as both of these doctrines are, they have some failings. Chiefly, they attempt to place absolutes in places God did not do so. Absolutes are dangerous things, and time finds a way of twisting the most noble intentions of liberty in one generation of theologians into chains that confine and cripple the next.

Sola Scriptoria

When Luther stated his doctrine of Sola Scriptoria in his Five Solas, he intended to undo the binds of men's doctrine. However, even with those noble intentions, he was not removing the doctrine of man, but instead replacing the Catholic doctrines with his own. Doctrine is almost exclusively derivative, and by limiting all doctrine to explicitly Scriptural sources he was already breaking his own rule. The doctrine of Sola Scriptoria is not found in Scripture, and as such it fails its own requirements. It is an excellent guideline in limited usage, but in modern theological circles this doctrine has been abused in order to exclude any form of 'human reasoning' from theology. However, any reasoning we do is 'human reasoning' for how can our reasoning be anything but human? Of course, there are those who would say that there is also God's reasoning, but God is by definition omniscient - meaning He knows all. This is axiomatic. If God wasn't all knowing then He wouldn't be God. As such, God doesn't reason by Himself; instead, He knows. We do not use reasoning to understand things we already know, instead we use reasoning to attempt to understand things we do not know. As such, God never needs to reason Himself. He can help us reason, but as such it is again a human reasoning and then by definition 'human reasoning'. Simply put, human reasoning is the attempt by humans to understand things that we do not understand. We cannot simply remove reasoning or we would remove the very thing God commanded us to do. (Isaiah 1:18)

Do you see the madness? You cannot reason away reason. The folly of taking a well intentioned concept, Luther's Sola Scriptoria, and twisting it into a means to remove reason from theology is absurd. The concept of Sola Scriptoria itself is 'human reasoning'.

Now, Scripture is indeed God's Divine Word and useful for teaching, correcting, and training. (2 Timothy 3:16) However, there is a massive difference between using Scripture for these purposes and claiming that only Scripture can be used for such purposes and absolutely nothing else. If a teaching is contrary to Scripture then of course Scripture supersedes men's teaching; but a great many things are not directly mentioned in Scripture. Therefore we must use reasoning to find God's will for our lives. We cannot assume that every moral question that we face will be explicitly mentioned in Scripture. We have to take the nature of the teaching, the implication of the teaching, and the focus of the teaching and use reasoning to find a solution. In fact, that is what we are doing right now. No where in Scripture is the question of Sola Scriptoria addressed, so we are taking the context of Scripture and reasoning our way toward an answer. In believing in Sola Scriptoria in its most rigid, letter-of-the-law way, you are already using human reasoning. It is impossible to use this as our only standard, for it defies the standard it creates by its own existence.

Just because a great leader like Luther advocated a position like Sola Scriptoria does not mean it is right. To assume that doctrine is true because a great leader authored it would simply be following men instead of God, which we are explicitly forbidden from doing in the very Scriptures that we follow. (Matthew 15:9, I Corinthians 3) I am not saying that Luther was a heretic, far from it. Luther was a Godly man but yet he was still a man. As such he was not perfect, but had to do the best he could in the time he lived. The same can be said for us. We have not been commanded to defend Luther, but instead we are to follow God. It is what Luther desired, and it is what we should desire as well.

The weight of Scripture is not what concerns me. I believe as Luther did that Scripture is divine. It has the ultimate say. However, there are places that Scripture is silent. In those places, reason must be used. Issues like abortion, slavery, and the supremacy of one economic ideal -capitalism, communism, or socialism- over the others are issues that are not explicitly mentioned in Scripture. Yet, we cannot simply wash our hands of these things and claim that we have no dog in the fight. In many situations both sides of an issue have Scripture to back their belief, yet we must use our reasoning to come to a conclusion. The issue of slavery in the United States was one such issue that both sides believed they were in the moral right. Both sides had Scripture to back their beliefs, yet the two ideologies were incompatible. We now side with one over the other and are appalled at the though of anyone trying to use Scripture to defend such a vile practice, yet Scripture can be used to defend slavery. It is only when we go beyond the Sola that we see the meaning in the Scriptoria.

I think the issue with Sola Scriptoria is not in the Scriptoria portion, but the Sola. I would advocate a less assonant form of theological leaning: Alpha Scriptoria. Scripture has the primary say in our theology; nothing comes before it. However, sometimes we must reason beyond the explicit into the implicit. As such, Scripture is not the sole, but rather the dominant and prominent, guideline for theology.

Total Inerrancy

As I stated earlier, I was raised with the unwavering conviction that Scripture is inerrant. Yet, Scripture does not state this anywhere. To believe this, we have to take a viewpoint that is more nuanced. Frankly, I cannot say that any translation is inerrant, not even the sometimes almost worshiped King James Version. Why? Because this belief is not driven by God, but by men who wish to create for God something that God does not feel He needs to defend.

To make my point, let me ask you a simple question. What is the Devil's name? You know that the angels have names, like Gabriel and Michael. So what is the Devil's name? If you answered Lucifer, I'm happy to inform you that you're wrong. Why? Well, take a look at this verse from Isaiah chapter fourteen verse twelve.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! (Isaiah 14:12 KJV)

Hmm... It appears that the Devil's name is Lucifer after all. Well let's take a look at a few other English translations and see if they agree.

“How you are fallen from heaven,
    O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
    you who laid the nations low! (Isaiah 14:12 ESV)

“How you have fallen from heaven,
O star of the morning, son of the dawn!
You have been cut down to the earth,
You who have weakened the nations! (Isaiah 14:12 NASB)

Shining morning star,
how you have fallen from the heavens!
You destroyer of nations,
you have been cut down to the ground. (Isaiah 14;12 HCSB)

“How you have fallen from heaven, O shining one, son of the morning! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have made the nations weak! (Isaiah 14:12 NLV)

Uh, oh. They don't. In fact, no other translation in German or Latin gives the Devil the name Lucifer either. In English only very early translations like the Geneva and Wycliffe translations would include the name Lucifer. Why is that? Let's take a look at the Latin Vulgate Translation () of the same verse and see what it says.

Quomodo cecidisti de caelo lucifer qui mane oriebaris corruisti in terram qui vulnerabas gentes. (Isaiah 14:12 Vulgate)

Here we see the problem. The fifth word in is lucifer, which is the latin word for morning star. It literally is the word for morning star, the same term used for Jesus in elsewhere. (II Peter 2:19) When Jerome translated the Hebrew Old Testament word   ‏מזרות into Latin in 382 AD he used the literal Latin word for morning star, lucifer, which is what the Hebrew word means. Note, lucifer is never used as a name until the English translation turns it into a name by capitalizing the Latin word rather than translating it into English. Later translations corrected this error, but for hundreds of years, the English speaking population believed that the Bible said the Devil's name was Lucifer. This belief continues today, as most of the population would assume that the Devil's name is mentioned in Scripture.

Not only that, but we have literally different versions of some Biblical books. The book of Jeremiah that Jesus may have read differed greatly from the one you and I read in our English Bibles. We have two full  and differing versions of this particular book that have survived to the modern day: the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. We have no definitive way of knowing which is the more accurate to the original, even our oldest copies that were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls have bits and pieces of both forms of the book. In the New Testament, authors quote both the Masoretic texts and the Septuagint texts, yet they do not seem to be concerned with their differences. They make no issue over the fact that the texts differ because they worship God, not texts. Wether or not those books were translated with absolute inerrancy or not, they had complete faith that the truth of God was not twisted. The same is true in our time. Even if some translator errors occur, like the infamous Wicked Bible, the truth of God is not confined to exact translation. God's truth transcends any concept of human translation purity.

We cannot say that God's Word is totally inerrant in its translation. We have proof otherwise. However, we can say without a doubt that God's Word is inerrant in its message of salvation through Christ. It is not the KJV, NIV, or ESV that will save souls. It is Christ. This message rings forth clearly throughout Scripture, whether you are reading the Latin Vulgate or Luther's German translation. Man's work is not inerrant, even when translating something as holy as Scripture. However, God is perfect, and we can trust Him to lead us in His way, no matter which language we read His Word in.

CONCLUSION

Faith in Christ is not about having an iron grip on our doctrines, refusing to let go of the things we were taught for fear of losing our salvation. Instead, we are to grow in Christ, realizing that this may mean growing past the things that we were taught by men, but never growing past the need for Christ that lead us to grow in the first place. We do not fear that by learning more we will find God inadequate. Instead we can grow past that which we were taught knowing that God knew these things all along and is waiting for us to come to more understanding like a patient Father waiting for His children to learn more so that He can teach them even more than before. God is not fearful that we will somehow learn more than He can anticipate; instead like the loving Father He is, He enjoys watching His children grow more and more with each generation. It is only logical that we use the steppingstones left by our forbearers and build upon them. That does not invalidate the faith of those great men; instead, it builds upon their faith to expand God's kingdom.

Bible-Believing vs Christ-Following

There is a vast difference of opinion in Christian circles as to what we as Christians are allowed, commanded, or forbidden to do. But there is a major difference between being a Christian, or little Christ, and being someone who uses the Bible to defend what they believe. You can find verses to support almost any topic that God permitted, or at least didn't directly punish people for doing.

For example, if you want to find a verse in the Bible to support owning slaves, its not hard to find: Leviticus 25:44-46 gives Israel expressed permission to buy slaves. You can also find permission to beat them almost to death in Exodus 21:20-21

There are verses supporting divorce, Deuteronomy 24:1-4 ; killing your children for disobedience, Deuteronomy 21:18-21; the rape of the women of captured countries, Zechariah 14:1-2; wife-stealing from your own people, Judges 21:19-24; genocide, I Samuel 15:3 ; killing children because their fathers are wicked, Isaiah 14:21; beheading your own people as warning to the rest of the nation, Numbers 25:3-4; and even human sacrifice, 2 Kings 23:16-20. In fact, there is precious little that you cannot support with a random verse, even the great King David was not only ok with infanticide but blessed those who did it in Psalm 137:9.

Are we as Christians called to follow these Old Testament verses and examples? Can we just take verses and people from the Old Testament, that God approved, and use them to support what we are doing?

The answer, of course, is absolutely not. We are now Christ-followers or Christians and we are commanded to follow the direct commands of Jesus Christ. Jesus who was our example, our direct and perfect example of what God wants us to be. Whenever we are in doubt about what God wants for us we should turn to Christ first and foremost. If Jesus gave us a command about it, that takes number one priority. If Jesus gave us an example in His life, we should follow that instead of random Old Testament humans. It is important to remember that in the Old Testament we are dealing with fallen sinners like ourselves, who cannot be perfect examples; however, in Christ we have the perfect example.

What were Jesus' commands? Quite simple ones really; Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. We are even commanded to love our enemies. We are commanded to lay down our lives. We are commanded to turn the other cheek when attacked, with no exceptions for attacks on country or faith.
We are commanded to deny ourselves and take up our cross, not our weapon. And as my good friend Jamie likes to say, "Crosses are for dying." We seem to forget that in our world.

So as Christians it is important to remember that even Scripture considers the Old Testament, or old covenant done, as we are shown in Hebrews 8:13. Jesus didn't invalidate the Old Testament, but instead finished and fulfilled it, as He Himself states in Matthew 5:17. We are now in the covenant of Christ, meaning that the old has passed away and we are now in the era of Christ, not in the era of the Old Testament. And what does the era of Christ dictate? Love: pure and simple love. It dictates love that costs, love that can get us killed, love that does not strike back, and love that does not spew forth violence.

Calling the Carnal

In John 2:1-12 we see Jesus first miracle. He turned water into wine. Specifically, he was at a party and they ran out of booze. Jesus took the water in the tubs for purification, a Jewish religious custom, at turned it into wine; literally from holy water to party water. Alcohol at a party is one of the most carnal things I can think of, much more if you took something churchy - say water for a religious custom- and used it to get that alcohol. Yet, that is what God did.

My father was an alcoholic; in fact, he spend months drunk without ever sobering up. He worked on a farm and literally kept himself drunk for unbelievable amounts of time.  He first attended church because of a Thanksgiving day feast being held. Basically, he showed up for free food, as most people who don't have money due to addiction will do. From this starting point, he eventually came to be the man I know, respect, and love. He is now a deacon in the same church that once fed him and his family free of charge.

Carnal things, like turning water into wine or feeding drunkards, may not seem to be the way that we like or would think would draw people, but it is a method Jesus used. He fed crowds, he gave out booze, he was even accused of being a winebibber and a glutton. There is no reason to condemn a method of evangelism that Jesus Himself used; in fact, the method Jesus started His ministry with.

However, the problem with Paul Washer's statement isn't just in ignoring Scripture. It is in assuming that some people are Carnal and some are Spiritual. Everyone one is Carnal. Everyone. God is who makes people Spiritual people. It is only His regenerative work that creates Spiritual people in His image.

The flaw is that Paul Washer believes God made some people Spiritual and some Carnal from birth. He believes if God made you Spiritual, you will be spiritual; and if He made you Carnal, you will be carnal. All Reformed preachers believe this, and that means they believe if a person is Carnal, there is nothing they can do to come to God. This is again not a Scriptural concept. The Apostle Paul (not Washer) clearly states that the Corinthian Church is Carnal, yet he also states that they are Saints. We are to deny our carnality and grow into Spiritually minded Christians, but none, not one, starts out that way.

Basically, this view advocates shoving spiritual "steak" down the throat of every Christian. If they can't handle it, Washer tells us they must not even be Christians. That is the opposite of the truth. Just because a person is a 'newborn' Christian and needs spiritual "milk" doesn't disqualify them from being part of the church or being saved.

There was a group in Jesus time that believed very similar things: the Pharisees. They believed that you had to have complex theories, advanced knowledge, and an exact statement of belief to be saved. Jesus condemned this outright. Ironically, they are the only people Jesus condemned to their faces. Jesus had much less of a problem with Carnal people then he did with people who condemned the Carnal people.

We need to remember that we are not Spiritual in ourselves. God gives us what we have. We have NO RIGHT to condemn people who are at a different place then we are. We can instead do what Jesus actually did: Love them. That's what Jesus did for the Carnal. He loved them. He drank with them. He even provided them with booze.

Is Our God a Violent God?

How do we reconcile Jesus' commands of love and non-violence with the image we have in the Old Testament of war and death? We see that God commands people to commit murder, 1 enact genocide, 2 and He even personally killed thousands of people Himself. 3 He send angels to destroy armies 4 and generally obliterates those who defy Him. 5  Is this a do as I say, not as I do type of situation?

Actually, it is.

God is literally doing something that He tells us not to. He is indeed destroying those who defy Him in the Old Testament. There is a massive death toll in the Old Testament that can be directly attributed to God's divine command, or even His direct action. Yet, Jesus tells us we are not to do so. Jesus, the very God that smote people for thousands of years came down from Heaven to tell us we were not to fight back, we are to love our enemies, and to lay down our lives instead of taking lives.

How can God justify that? How can he tell us not to do something then do it Himself? Well, simple really. Jesus, as God in the flesh, came to show us how to live as submissive servants of God. He showed us what God's desire for man is; that is, how a perfect man should live. A perfect man, a man of God, is a man like Jesus. 6 We are directly commanded to not resist evil or to hate or kill our enemies, ever for any reason. (see this post for details on that subject) 

But back to God's violence. Is it hypocritical for God to command us not to take revenge, yet He avenges Himself? Is it wrong for him to command us to do good to those who seek to kill us, yet He kills those who defy Him? Not at all. We are not God. We are not in God's position. Just as a judge has the right to pronounce sentencing upon criminals and a police officer may exceed the speed limit as needed, God is the ultimate Judge and Law Enforcer. We, his citizens and children, are not. Parents may do things, a great many things, that they forbid their little children from doing. It would be foolish to allow a three year old child to drive, set bedtimes, or operate any machinery. It's not hypocrisy for them to forbid it, it is love and wisdom. 

In the same way, God forbidding us from enacting violence, and instead commanding us to love at all times and at all costs is not hypocrisy. It is instead wisdom. He sees the heart; He knows the situation. We do not. He is the Father and we are His children. He has the full right to enact His Judgement while commanding us to not do so.

So do Jesus' commands of love and non-resistance ignore the Old Testament? No. We see that Jesus Himself will come to judge the world in the end. He will bear His sword eventually. However, we are commanded not to do that ourselves. We are commanded instead to be salt and light; to give life, not to take it.

In the end, some people would claim that the Anabaptist view of complete non-resistance is ignoring part of God's nature. However, the Anabaptist view of nonresistance is what we know God commanded us to follow; not inherently meaning God cannot do otherwise. We know God has the right to judge and to take life; after all, He is the very Author of it. He can take away because He both gave it and can also give back. We are commanded explicitly to love our enemies, personal and political, all the same. Jesus told us explicitly that His Kingdom was not of this world, which is why His people did not fight, and that holds true today. We are called to be loving examples of God. He will take care of the rest.

Sovereignty and Choices

A friend of mine asked me today if Anabaptists really believe that God didn't 'approve' of the brutal or messy parts of the Old Testament. It's a fair question. I personally believe, as many before me as did as well, that these brutal occurrences were not God's first choice for humanity, even in the kingdom of Israel. We have plenty of examples.

Abel's murder. 

Tamar's rape. 

Israel's entire kingship. 

Prophet's murdered. 

Idol worship in His very own temple.

But doesn't this diminish God's sovereignty? Are we not saying God is then not in control? 

A fair question and a good one. First, what does God have to say?

In the case of Abel, God was clearly displeased that Cain murdered his brother. God punished Cain for this sin. It is clear that God did not approve of this, yet it happened.

In Israel, we see that God did not intend for them to ever have a king other then God Himself. However, Israel rebelled and God consented to give them a king and even bless the line of David. David was never supposed to be king; God had intended for them to keep only Himself as their king, but God still allowed it to happen. Even in this entire existence that was not in accordance with God's original will - this second best option, if you will - God still worked with and through King David.

Why? Isn't God all powerful? Isn't he able to force His will? Of course He is. There is no question as to wether or not God can. The fact of the matter is that He won't. He will not force His will upon us. Because of this, things will happen - like the kingdom of Israel becoming a kingdom, and the various acts of violence that would be entangled therein- that are not God's original plan for the nation. A whole chain of causality happens that affects thousands of years and millions of lives because God allowed human choice. God is not limited by human choices because He cannot act against them; rather because He chooses to truly let us have freewill and all that that entails. 

But does Jesus ever talk about this? Indeed He does. He mentions it specifically in two places in Scripture.  (Luke 13:34 & Matt 23:37 ) Jesus, as Almighty God, tells us plainly that Jerusalem was disobedient to God's Will of its own freewill and that this was allowed. Not only that, but this affected all of history. Jesus makes it clear that this grieves His heart, but that He allows Jerusalem to kill prophets and deny Him because He gave them choice and they chose to do so. 

Frankly, that we can choose to defy God's will and that doing so will cause things to change. These decisions are irreversible, not because God is limited by nature, but because He chooses to limit Himself by choice. This chain of disobedience can cause things to happen that God does not condone or even want to have happen, but He allows them because He has the ultimate Sovereign Power: the ability to grant us, mere humans made of dirt, the awesome power of true choice - Freewill.

Some may protest, saying that God might allow these things, but in the context of the kingdom of Israel God's Will was still His primary Will; meaning that God truly approved of all that Israel was and did, so far as commands, laws, and wars. However, we find again that Jesus disapproved of some of Israel's legal system that He, as God, had given them. When they ask Him about divorce, He makes it abundantly clear that it was not His Will that they even consider divorce, but He allowed it in their law anyway. He directly and clearly states that this was not His original intent and goes so far as to say that divorce in virtually all cases is sin, but it was allowed only due to the fallen nature of Israel.

So if Israel is so full of flaws and failures, where can we turn for an accurate look at what God wants?

Jesus

He is our perfect example. He commands us to be like Himself, and like His Father. We are called to be merciful, to love our enemies, to do good and not evil, and to be holy as He is holy. Jesus was the perfect example that we are commanded to follow; and He didn't leave any of His commands of love and self-denial in vague terms. He clearly states that His Kingdom is not of this world, that His people do not fight, and that we are to carry our crosses and follow Him. He lived in a time that being a political revolutionary would have been approved by the clergy, but He told us to be subservient to our enemies, making no distinction between political enemies or personal ones. He said this in the most literal, simple terms possible, and we believe He meant them literally.