Reaffirming Biblical Authority in a Crisis of Faith

The Christian church has been on this planet now for almost 2,000 years, and for the first 1800 years of church history, the church has enjoyed virtually universal confidence about her source, her primary source of written authority, namely the sacred scriptures. But for the last 200 years, the church has endured an unprecedented period of crisis, a crisis that reaches to the very root of the life of the church as it relates to the question now: can we trust the scriptures? [00:00:31]

The central issue of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation was Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone, the slogan of the Reformation. Because justification was the central point of the debate, it was this simple Latin phrase sola fidei, which means by faith alone. We've heard the story of Luther on all Saints Eve tacking up the 95 theses at the church store at Wittenberg, and we follow then the rapid expansion of the controversy beyond the confines of that university. [00:01:33]

The formal issue of the 16th century, the structure in which the whole debate ensued, was the question of final authority in the life of the church and of the Christian. After Luther posted his theses at Wittenberg and attracted the attention and notice of the authorities of the church in Rome and got himself in no small amount of ecclesiastical hot water, he pled for an opportunity to engage in debate and even to be involved in what was called public disputations. [00:05:08]

Luther was asked, do you stand against the pope and church councils? And Luther admitted, to the shock of those who were present, that he indeed did question some of these teachings of the church, and he admitted to those who were gathered that in his opinion, which did not appear to many to be a very humble opinion, that in his opinion, church councils can err, church councils can make mistakes. [00:08:29]

Luther made this statement when they said, Brother Martin, will you recant? He said, unless I am convinced by sacred scripture or by evident reason, he said, I will not recant. And then he went on to say these words, which have had such an impact on the world ever since: for my conscience is held captive by the word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. [00:11:19]

Luther was saying that the only written source in this world that has the level of authority to actually bind the conscience of a person is the Bible. Luther had enormous respect for the insights, the wisdom, the collective teaching of the great theologians of the past. He said we can certainly be instructed by church tradition, we can be led by church councils, the creeds and the confessions of our faith are not to be despised. [00:12:05]

The only person that has that kind of authority to simply utter the words and say so let it be said, so let it be done, is God himself, and only the word of God carries that kind of weight and authority. And so what we see here now is a crisis of authority. Is the authority vested in a book, or is the authority vested in the institution, the church? [00:14:18]

The Roman Catholic Church responded to sola scriptura in two general ways. In the first place, they reminded Luther and Calvin and the other reformers of the 16th century that the church wouldn't even have the Bible except for church councils early on in church history that defined what the Bible really is when the canon of the Bible and of the New Testament was established by church councils. [00:18:36]

The Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent made it quite clear that there are two sources of divine authority in the world today. Those two sources are scripture and tradition. So this indicates what we call a dual source of special divine written revelation, that you can find it here in scripture and in the tradition of the church. [00:21:24]

The Roman Catholic Church has always had an extremely high view of the Bible. The Roman Catholic Church was by no means denying the authority of the scripture. The Roman Catholic Church then and now officially hopes that the Bible is nothing less than the word of God, inspired, infallible, and so on. And we're not denying that, but they said in addition to that source, we have another infallible source of the truth of God, and that infallible source is tradition. [00:23:22]

The debate in the life of the church is what is the authority? Is that every man for himself? We embrace cultural relativism, philosophical relativism. Even this morning's paper, I read one of the editorials by Charlie Reese saying that we live in a society today that has no morality. It's not immoral, it's amoral. There is no standard, no absolute authority. [00:23:52]

The simple definition of authority is the right to impose obligation. The right to impose obligation. We use authoritative language all the time in our culture. We say you must, you should, you ought, and the thinking person when they hear someone say you ought to do this or you must do this or you should do this, the thinking person at least in their mind is thinking, says who? [00:25:20]