The Role of Confessions & Sola Scriptura

The inspiration for this article is the controversy over the recent article by Sam Waldron at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, entitled “Do We Still Believe in Sola Scriptura?”. Waldron’s article centers around three statements he saw in the writings of Reformed authors over the last few years that he found problematic. To better understand the issues at hand, I asked Steve Meister on Twitter to summarize his position on the issue, and he sent me a link to the podcast he did with his fellow pastor, Robert Briggs, which I appreciated. In the spirit of full disclosure, while I do believe in Reformed soteriology and I find much to admire in the 1689 2nd London Baptist Confession, I am not and do not claim to be a confessional Reformed Baptist. As a current member of an SBC church, my beliefs are within the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

Among other things, Meister and Briggs make much ado about Waldron’s citation from Mathew Barrett’s book, Simply Trinity, believing that Waldron left out an important qualification of the statement of Barrett’s that he found troubling, but even the expanded material that Meister and Briggs discuss doesn’t, in my opinion, rescue Barrett’s words from their essential problem - defining heresy as disagreement with the church’s historic creeds and confessions instead of with the Scriptures themselves, apart from which those creeds and confessions have no authority.

I also found some other problematic statements by Barrett in a 2013 article for The Gospel Coalition – “While the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed are not to be considered infallible sources divine revelation, nevertheless, their consistency with Scripture means that the church spoke authoritatively against heresy” (Barrett, 2013). As well as – “The reformers may have rejected Rome’s understanding of tradition and upheld the supremacy and final authority of Scripture over tradition. But we would be mistaken to think the reformers did not value tradition or see it as a subordinate authority in some sense” (Barrett, 2013). What person or body at Nicea or Chalcedon had the ability to speak authoritatively on behalf of the whole church? While I do agree with the overall point of Barrett’s article that the Reformers valued church tradition and I recognize it is not the point he was arguing, it does concern me because I do not understand how someone speaks like this without elevating the councils and those in attendance with an authority superior to the God-breathed Scriptures, which is essentially the Roman Catholic argument for the teaching office of the Magisterium.

Arius was wrong because what he taught did not agree with Scripture, not because the Council of Nicea decided his teaching did not agree with Scripture. That distinction may seem trivial to some, but in reality it is of foundational importance. Any authority afforded to the Nicene Creed, must come from the continued belief of the church in every successive generation that it is consistent with the teaching of Scripture. Now, to be absolutely clear, I do not believe that the foundational issues of Christian doctrine should be in a constant state of change. God has blessed the church with intelligent and faithful, though not infallible, Spirt-filled teachers throughout the course of church history and, due to the perspicuity of Scripture, they have understood well the truths that they proclaim. However, the council cannot be ascribed any authority that it does not derive from Scripture itself. Scripture must always be the ultimate standard by which anything is deemed to be heresy, and when arguing against a teaching as heresy, we should argue those matters from the Scriptures directly instead of from the creeds and confessions.

Meister, Briggs, Barrett, and others charge that the view that I describe above is not Sola Scriptura as understood by the Reformers, but rather Solo Scriptura or Nuda Scriptura. However, I don’t think such a charge really carries any weight given statements made by the Reformers such as Martin Luther when he said, “Now if anyone of the saintly fathers can show that his interpretation is based on Scripture, and if Scripture proves that this is the way it should be interpreted, then the interpretation is right. If this is not the case, I must not believe him” (LW 30:166; WA 14:31) No one today is claiming to be Luther or any of the other Reformers, however, the argument fails to take into account the possibility that a figure similar to Luther could arise in the church today. In addition, the level of condemnation lodged against theological idiosyncrasies that do not on their face violate scriptural statements embraces the very argument against Luther that would have seen him executed at the Diet of Worms just as Jan Hus was before him at the Council of Constance. Thankfully, the stakes are not the same today due to the development of a rich tradition of tolerance and religious liberty, but the argument of denoting heresy by differing from the historic confessions is very much the same.

The current controversy highlights the issue that I have had with strict confessionalism for the entirety of my Christian life, namely that some consider departure from or questioning a confession tantamount to departing from and questioning the authority of the Scriptures themselves. Historic confessions are a reflection of how the church understood the teachings of Scripture at various periods in time. As such, while they can be highly valuable, we must recognize that the fact that they were not infallible does limit their usefulness to us, and when arguing a teaching or doctrine is heretical, it must be primarily on the basis of Scripture, which is God-breathed and infallible, not historic creeds and confessions.