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)
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)
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 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)
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.
