Content area
Full Text
THE ISSUE OF AUTHORITY
One of the major differences between Catholics and Protestants concerns the question of authority. Where can the final authority for Christians on matters of faith and morals be found? The answer of most Protestants is clear: in the Bible alone. For example, the Baptist Confession of 1677 stated, "The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience." Or as the sixth Article of Religion of the Church of England states:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.
And as an amusing little anti-Catholic tract published by Chick Publications puts it, the new Christian believer should look for "a church where.. the Bible is the final authority."
Such reliance on Scripture is often referred to as the doctrine of sola Scriptura, Latin for "by Scripture alone." But sola Scriptura is not taught by the New Testament, and is in fact contrary to what is actually taught by both the New Testament and the earliest Fathers concerning the rule of our faith.
Before we look at the New Testament teaching on the question of authority, we might note in passing that sola Scriptura is historically impossible: From the day of Pentecost onwards, the Church began to exist, to teach, to worship, to evangelize, and yet at that date the books of the New Testament did not exist, and indeed only came into existence over the next half century and more, the last books probably being written in the last decade of the first century. Moreover, there was considerable controversy at first about which books were actually inspired by God and thus to be included as canonical Scripture. Obviously, therefore, if the Church existed and was preaching the Gospel before the New Testament came into being, how could she have drawn her doctrine from that source?
Turning to the New Testament text, we find that nowhere does it claim to be the rule of belief or the final theological authority for Christians. Indeed, one...
