Sola Scriptura & the Need to be Taught the Bible

One of the foundational theological convictions of my life and ministry is the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura, the biblical doctrine that Scripture is the only infallible authority of Christian faith and practice, and as such serves as the highest authority over the church and all her teachers and leaders. This conviction is a foundational one for our church as a whole, in fact. The Scriptures alone hold the seat of magisterial authority over the church of God, for the simple reason that the Scriptures, both in whole and in all its parts, constitute the infallible, inerrant, personal, and authoritative Word of God.

Nevertheless, a lot of well-meaning Christians who agree with this principle go on to apply it in a rather unhelpful (and unbiblical) manner. These Christians make it seem like they believe teachers of the Bible are somehow not necessary. They don’t like to read Christian books. They’re not really interested in “what man says” about the Bible or about what a passage in the Bible means. They don’t like to attend groups and studies that are focused around a book written by mere human being, because they believe that only studies that study the Bible directly are worth their time. They hold theological traditions in suspicion. They only care about “what God says.” They are of the ‘no creed but the Bible’ crowd. And some of them tend to appreciate and sometimes even attend churches like ours, where the authority of Scripture is celebrated and regularly emphasized.

Perhaps you are one of them.

We should say up front that of these Christians usually have honorable intentions. They acknowledge the authority of the Bible and want the Bible to have its rightful place as the final and ultimate authority of their faith and over the church. And in this desire, I am right there with them. However, I think their resistance against human teachers is actually an illogical and unbiblical position.

No Creed but the Bible is Illogical

It is an illogical position, first of all, because no one reads the Bible without the help of others. Ironically in my experience, those who are most opposed to the so-called “teachings of men” about the Bible, usually have been heavily influenced by at least one Bible teacher in the past, who taught them to only care about what the Bible says about things. The fact is that all who believe the Bible have at some point been taught the Bible by someone else who believed the Bible, who were themselves taught by others, who themselves were taught by others, and so on.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that that “no creed but the Bible” is itself a creed that didn’t come directly from the Bible. There are no Bible verses that suggest Christians should read and interpret the Bible in isolation from all other people, which means the idea came from an authority outside of the Bible. The conviction that one should read and study the Bible without the help of others is itself a creedal tradition that has been passed down from one generation to another and has been taught in one form or another by many Bible teachers over the years, interestingly enough.

Carl Trueman offers some really important thoughts on this point, when he says:

“Christians are not divided between those who have creeds and confessions and those who do not; rather, they are divided between those who have public creeds and confessions which are written down and exist as public documents, subject to public scrutiny, evaluation, and critique; and those who have private creeds and confessions which are often improvised, unwritten, and thus not open to public scrutiny, not susceptible to evaluation and, crucially and ironically, not subject to testing by scripture to see whether they are true or not.” (Carl Trueman, The Creedal Imperative. Location No. 161, [Kindle])

If we were to adapt Trueman’s words to address the more specific issue I’m addressing in this post, we could say: “Christians are not divided between those who listen to the teachings of man and those who don’t; rather, they are divided between those who listen to tested and trustworthy teachers of the Bible who teach the Bible in ways that are consistent with the historic central teachings of the Christian church; and those who listen to teachers who are not nearly so tested and trustworthy because they teach the Bible in idiosyncratic and quirky ways, that are often disconnected from the historic and central teachings of the Christian church.”

If you say that you only listen to the Bible, and yet are one who believes the Bible and has formulated convictions regarding what the Bible says about God, man, sin, Christ, the Gospel, and things like these – it is simply not true that you only listen to the Bible. It is not a logical possibility, for where did you learn to reject human teachers and only listen to the Bible? Probably from at least one other human teacher that you found convincing.

No Creed but the Bible is Unbiblical

To increase the irony here, not even the Bible advocates that Christians should avoid listening to human teachers of the Bible. In fact, the Bible by its very nature is God teaching his people through human authors the things they must believe for salvation and a faithful Christian life (2 Peter 1:21). Rather than degrading human teachers of the Bible, the Bible celebrates and encourages the church to listen to faithful ones. This is why in the book of Acts, for example, we see the early church paying close attention to the apostle’s doctrine together (2:42) and preaching God’s Word to others. It’s why we see people searching the Scriptures together to ensure that what the Apostles were preaching was actually in the Scriptures (17:11). It’s why when Jesus ascended to his Father, he actually gave gifts to the Church; gifts like apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers”; people who are given to the church to (at least in part) explain the Word of God to the people of God (Ephesians 4:11-13). It’s why in 2 Timothy, Paul rejoices in the fact that Timothy had been faithfully taught the Bible by his mother and grandmother and tells him to go on and serve other Christians in the same way (2 Timothy 3:14-4:2), so that they might go and do the same with others (2 Timothy 2:2).

The “no creed but the Bible” position is actually a mistreatment of the biblical doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Some have put a label on this position, calling it the principle of Solo Scriptura or Nuda Scriptura; the idea that the Bible is not merely the only infallible authority of our faith and practice, but is the only authority, period. The problem is, as Keith Mathison has pointed out, that “if a proponent of solo scriptura is honest, he recognizes that it is not the infallible Scripture to which he ultimately appeals. His appeal is always to his own fallible interpretation of that Scripture.”

The result of this attitude toward human teachers of the Bible is an extremely individualistic reading of Scripture that gives far too much weight to personal and private interpretations of the Bible. And when this happens, people begin listening not to the true voice of God in the Bible, but the voices in their own heads. What this means is that not only is a rejection of all human teachers of the Bible logically impossible; such a rejection is not at all biblical, and ironically elevates the opinions of men (assuming you are a mere human, dear reader) to a level of ultimate spiritual authority – the very problem that Sola Scriptura is meant to protect us from. The simple fact is that “no creed but the Bible” is actually a creed in and of itself that goes against the direct teaching of Scripture.

Sola Scriptura was never intended as a reason to be suspicious human teachers of the Bible, or of the theological traditions and confessions of the church. It was however, intended as reason to be suspicious of those who, on the authority of their own opinions & personal interpretation of Scripture, belittle those traditions and confessions. If the only person’s interpretation of the Bible you will listen to is your own; it’s not actually the Bible that you regard as the only infallible authority of Christian faith and practice; but your own private interpretation of the Bible. But surely you do not believe yourself to be infallible, do you?

It is a good thing to listen and learn from human teachers of the Bible. The real key is listening and learning from those who can be trusted to handle the Bible faithfully.

But how do you know whether a teacher is trustworthy or not? I’d like to wrap this article up with a few guidelines to follow, using the principle of Sola Scriptura as a grid by which to evaluate whether a teacher of the Bible is trustworthy or not.

When is a teacher of the Bible worth listening to?

First, if the Bible is the only infallible authority of Christian faith and practice, we should look for teachers who are not trying to interpret the Bible in novel and unprecedented ways.

“This teacher sees things in the Bible that no one has ever seen before!” “This teacher gets one no one else gets.” “The church has gotten this issue wrong for the last 2000 years, but now finally this guy gets it!” “No one else can teach like this person!” “This is a Bible teacher like no other.”

Let me say it plainly. If you believe these things are true of any given teacher, it is either because you have not been exposed to faithful Bible teachers in the past, or because that teacher is simply not trustworthy. And there is actually a good chance he/she is a straight up heretic, even if the teacher claims to believe in the authority of the Bible. Always remember; if a teacher claims to believe in the infallible authority of the Bible, and insists that the teaching of the Bible is the only thing you ought to care about, but then goes on to teach the Bible in ways that are more-or-less unprecedented – that person actually doesn’t believe in the authority of the Bible, but in the authority of their own private interpretation of the Bible. They have simply appointed themselves as the only infallible authority over the church.

Second, if the Bible is the only infallible authority of Christian faith and practice, we should look for teachers who themselves seek help to interpret the Bible and help us understand it.

This is to say, look for teachers who show clear evidence of wrestling with the text of Scripture with the help of other faithful theologians and Bible teachers from the past and present. (And yes, this point clearly riffs off of the first one.) If a teacher truly believes that the Bible is the only infallible authority over the church, he will have no problem with being taught the Bible from other faithful teachers, and looking to other faithful teachers for help in understanding it and in teaching it to others. And he will have no problem letting you know that he does so.

So then be looking for teachers who care about what the church has taught about the central things of the Bible over the centuries. Look for teachers who respect the historic creeds and confessions of the church. Look for teachers who don’t see themselves as more intelligent or more enlightened than the teachers who have come before them. If they’re submitting to the Bible as the only infallible authority over their own life, they will gladly learn and listen from others.

Third, if the Bible is the only infallible authority of Christian faith and practice, we should look for teachers are glad to make distinctions between what they think and what the Bible actually says.

If everything a teacher says in their teaching of the Bible has a “thus says the Lord” ring to it, or if he never admits that some passages are difficult to interpret and understand (2 Pet 3:16), or if he never encourages you to go read and study the Bible for yourself, or if (and this is a big one) he teaches you to think of yourself as sinning if you don’t do whatever he says you should do in light of the teaching of the Bible, you’re probably dealing with a teacher that (whether knowingly or not) has elevated his own views of the Bible to the level of the Bible itself.

Faithful teachers of the Bible will acknowledge that not everything is equally clear in the Bible, and that there is a difference between their opinions about the Bible and the teaching of the Bible itself. If they want you to live under the authority of the Bible; they won’t demand that you live under them.

Much more could be said about these things, to be sure, but the bottom line is this: If Scripture is the only infallible authority over the church, then you and I need to listen to and learn from faithful teachers of the Bible, and not reject them. Hopefully this will at least spark some personal thought and reflection on this issue. And if your creed is ‘no creed but the Bible,’ perhaps in light of this, you would be willing to put that creed under sustained scrutiny and consider whether it truly honors the authority of the Bible like you have thought that it does.