Why I’m Not an Evangelical: Part II
If you haven’t already, read my previous post so you can have some context regarding my background and why evangelical aesthetics are embarrassing. Now, I’m going to start my discussion of evangelical theology.
Sola Scriptura
The LCMS Christian Cyclopedia states, “We pledge ourselves to the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments as the pure and clear fountain of Israel, which is the only true norm according to which all teachers and. teachings are to be judged and evaluated.” With this in mind, Scripture is the only infallible rule of the faith by which doctrines and individuals can be judged. This, however, does not mean that we only read the Scriptures. It is incredibly valuable to read the Church Fathers, know and cite the creeds, and use reason for the development of theology.
Traditions are useful and important for interpreting the Scriptures. Aesthetically speaking, it’s pretty nice to follow what the Early Church did and reading the Fathers helps us understand previous interpretations of Scripture. If an interpretation is practically uniform in the Early Church — which was far closer to the apostles than we are — it has a high likelihood of being correct. This is arguably how we received the canon since the Church Fathers had different canon lists but practically contained all the same books. The usage of the Apocrypha is another issue, but the NT is pretty much the exact same among the Fathers.
Many theological issues today aren’t new; we can find debates on predestination, eschatology, soteriology, and many other issues throughout the Early Church. Thus, some interpretations of the Scriptures are entirely foreign to the Early Church, which we’ll get to soon enough. Further, it’s incredibly useful to reference creeds and councils because they clarify some of the most important issues in the Church. However, these creeds don’t have authority in-and-of themselves, but rather, derivative authority from their adherence to Scripture. The authors of creeds and those figures in councils spend far more time than us investigating the Scriptures, and thus, will likely have a greater understanding of doctrine. St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
Objection: It would seem that it is unsuitable for the articles of faith to be embodied in a creed. Because Holy Writ is the rule of faith, to which no addition or subtraction can lawfully be made, since it is written (Deut. 4:2): “You shall not add to the word that I speak to you, neither shall you take away from it.” Therefore it was unlawful to make a creed as a rule of faith, after Holy Writ had once been published.
Reply: The truth of faith is contained in Holy Writ, diffusely, under various modes of expression, and sometimes obscurely, so that, in order to gather the truth of faith from Holy Writ, one needs long study and practice, which are unattainable by all those who require to know the truth of faith, many of whom have no time for study, being busy with other affairs. And so it was necessary to gather together a clear summary from the sayings of Holy Writ, to be proposed to the belief of all. This indeed was no addition to Holy Writ, but something gathered from it. (Summa Theologica, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 1, Article 9)
For the record, I’m not necessarily saying that Aquinas would be a protestant, but his understanding of the creeds is that they clarify what is already evident in the Scriptures. Thus, creeds are useful to summarize the teachings of Scripture that one would find with a proper investigation of the text.
The view that Scripture is not only the sole infallible rule of faith but the sole source of useful information is silly and should be discarded. Henceforth I will describe this view as “Solo Scriptura.”
The Consequences of Solo Scriptura
Solo Scriptura is a silly parody of Sola Scriptura. This view really came around with the radical reformers who came after Luther, believing that each man has the authority to interpret Scripture himself and that tradition was practically useless. As expected, this view led to devastating consequences.
The vast majority of “Christian” cults and heresies are immediately attributable to Solo Scriptura. Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostalism, Christian Science, etc. collapse within the context of Church History. The first three deny the Trinity, which was best clarified at the Council of Nicea. According to the Athanasian Creed, if one denies the Trinity, they will perish eternally. Those three groups could be called Neo-Arians, though each group has additional errors that should also be decimated. Of course, the Trinity isn’t something that was arbitrarily and conveniently made up at the Council of Nicea, but rather, is found in the pre-Nicene Church Fathers like St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus, Clement of Rome, and Ignatius of Antioch.
These cults thus have to suggest that these saints, the Apostle’s Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and every theologian post-Nicea were wrong, but their respective founders and “intellectuals” in the 19th Century were right all along. God just let His Church remain apostate for 1500 years until a few Americans figured it all out on their own. Naturally, they can only do this since they reject the use of Church history and uphold Solo Scriptura. There are particularly strong arguments for the Trinity in Scripture — including the Garden of Gethsemane and Christ’s baptism — but it’s far easier and arguably more convincing to ask why this doctrine was dominant for the vast majority of the Church. Why would God let His people remain astray for such a long time on the issue of His own nature?
On a smaller scale, Solo Scriptura has arguably led to some of the more common heterodoxies which I’ll address later. For example, the rejection of baptismal regeneration, the rejection of the real presence of the Eucharist, premillennial dispensationalism, etc. are all based on personal interpretations of the Scriptures that one cannot find in the early Church. I’ll touch on those areas soon enough.
As Catholics have pointed out, Solo Scriptura is a self-refuting idea. Of course, our Roman Catholic friends often mistake Solo Scriptura for Sola Scriptura, but their criticisms work here nonetheless. For example, the Bible doesn’t say what the Bible is, so the development of canon makes no sense to someone who upholds Solo Scriptura. Pretty much any of the modern arguments from the RC and EO churches work against Solo Scriptura — though arguably not on Sola Scriptura. Point is, Solo Scriptura leads is self-refuting and often leads to heresy, so we should avoid it.
Conclusion and What’s Next
Unfortunately, I rarely meet evangelicals who know basic Church History. Occasionally I meet one who has heard of St. Augustine but I almost never encounter an Evangelical who can actually reference Early Church Fathers. This, however, isn’t really the fault of the layman, but rather, the fault of the preaching body. Many people simply don’t care about theology enough to read the Church Fathers, but it’s still important. It’s also quite the hassle for some people to find materials on the history of the Church. On a side note, I’d recommend watching Ryan Reeves on YouTube for discussions of the Early Church.
I wrote this post primarily because I plan to cite the Church Fathers extensively in the following posts. All too often I hear the phrase “I don’t care about what other people thought, I care about what the Bible says.” Well, now that we’ve dealt with the error in that thinking, we can go forward with citations of the Church Fathers when criticizing evangelical theology.
