The End of Sola Scriptura?

On October 31, Protestants around the world will mark the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation. That was when, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

Luther’s actions resulted in what has been called the five great solas of the Reformation: Sola Scriptura (Bible alone); Sola Fide (faith alone); Sola Gratia (grace alone); Solus Christus (Christ alone): and Soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone).

Of the five, Sola Scriptura is the one causing the most problems today says Dave Schmelzer, director of the Blue Ocean Faith, a network of 11 evangelical churches in the U.S.

Schmelzer, who lives in California, was once a self-described atheist before becoming a Christian, getting a seminary degree and planting a church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For Schmelzer, Sola Scriptura was a powerful way to address the problems in the church of Luther’s day.

“The problem he was trying to solve was who had the authority to say what God’s will was,” he says.  

Luther solved one problem, but created a new one. Since his action coincided with the invention of the printing press, many people could now read the Bible and interpret it for themselves; no need to rely on a Pope.

But all those new readers ended up interpreting it differently—what was the clear meaning of a passage to one wasn’t so clear to others.This led to division and discord, and to over 9,000 Protestant denominations today.

It also led to heated battles in some churches over the centuries about issues such as slavery, divorce, inter-racial marriage, dancing, music, use of alcohol, whether women can be leaders and others.

In all these cases, people could easily find verses that supported their views, whether that was to keep slaves, excommunicate people who got divorced, not use musical instruments in worship, or keep women out of positions of leadership.

But, as we know with these issues, new insight and revelations came along and suddenly what was certain in the Bible wasn't so certain anymore.

Or, as Schmelzer says, “the Bible clearly supported slavery, until it didn’t.”

Changes like these is why Sola Scriptura is “showing cracks,” he says.

But it’s not just how some Christians have tended to view the Bible as an instruction manual, a verse-by-verse prescription for how to live, believe and behave—and who to accept or reject—that concerns him.

The bigger issue for him is that seeing the Bible this way is “a poor substitute for actually knowing God.”

The Bible, he notes, “can’t actually give life . . . for all its amazingness, [it] is just a book, after all, not God.”

Schmelzer notes that Jesus viewed the religious leaders of the day—those who quoted the scriptures against him—among his opponents.

But if Schmelzer is right, what will replace the Bible as the final authority for those who hold the Sola Scriptura view?

His answer is another of the Reformation’s great solas: Solus Jesus, or Christ alone.

And why does he think that’s a better way?

He offers a few reasons: It proclaims that Jesus is alive and eager to speak to believers today; it accepts there are other ways Jesus can speak to his followers; and it takes the pressure off Christians from having to figure out who to include and who to exclude from the church, based on this verse or that.

Schmelzer doesn’t want to throw out the Bible. It’s still important. But for him it’s just one of the ways God speaks—and it isn’t the bottom line.

“Combined with hearing from Jesus by way of the Holy Spirit, and with the rich transparent relationships with other people following Jesus, it sounds like we’ll be on a good road” with this approach, he says.

I asked Schmelzer if he is getting any pushback for his views.

“Some call me a heretic, and see this as a very threatening thing,” he says. But others, he says, find it liberating.

Today the big battle in many churches is whether LGBTQ Christians can be welcomed into the community of the faithful. I asked Schmelzer if letting go ofSola Scriptura would be a help in dealing with this issue.

For him, the answer is yes; if Sola Scriptura is no longer holds, then Christians don’t have to worry about verses that exclude people, like those that oppose homosexuality. They can listen to a new voice from God about being open and inclusive.

Or, as Schmelzer says, “treating LBGTQ persons differently from anyone else” is “not something Jesus would do.”

Dave Schmelzer articulates his approach to this, and other questions about faith and society, in his new book Blue Ocean Faith: The Vibrant Connection to Jesus that Opens up Insanely Great Possibilities in a Secularizing World.