Protecting Sola Scriptura from Sophism, Part VI: Why the Doctrine Is Only Protected through the Employment of Exegesis

So many people today are looking to unify the church through any other means than good exegesis. Councils, popes, denominations, tradition on the one end and individual intuition or supernatural insight on the other, people think the answer to unity is outside of the Bible. Yet, this very thinking is a denial of sola Scriptura from the start. 

At the Diet of Worms, Luther boldly proclaimed, "I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted one another." 

The ability of a local church to identify a solution to a problem may increase with many eyes on the matter. It could be that the eldership of one church is extended when bringing in another church to look at an issue. It may also not be successful in increasing this ability due to mass cultural delusion, lack of qualifications or gifting,  etc. The number of the Arians outweighed those of the orthodox following the Council of Nicea. Their councils increased the number of elders an Nicean church had but that church would be led into the darkness of the devil through it. Likewise, the Council of Trent concluded that the core doctrines of the Reformation were wrong. The Reformers did not submit to the decision. Does this mean that the Reformers were wrong or the Roman Catholic Church was wrong? According to whom? Who decides? This council against this council? Which one is Christ's when both claim to be Christ's and both claim to be using the Bible to come to their conclusions? Is nihilism the answer? Should we all give up trying to understand the Bible because we believe that it is not possible to definitively do so?  

Councils have historically countered one another even in matters that one would not consider heretical. They overturn previous councils due to conscience, i.e., they do not believe that the previous councils made the godly and biblical decision they should have. At Nicea, it was concluded that the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, etc. would retain exclusive authority over their jurisdictions without further hierarchy from the outside interfering. The Council of Constantinople, however, lifted up Constantinople as second to Rome in primacy. Which one is correct? If we say the first one, then should we conclude that whoever can meet first wins? Many councils now viewed as heretical were held before the councils that are now considered orthodox. "Well, not those councils," someone who is committing the fallacy of special pleading or "no true Scotsman" might say.  

The truth of the matter is that councils and popes don't solve the problem of disunity. The Roman Catholic church has always been riddled with dissension and disagreement, as it is to this very day. The current pope is actually splintering it further rather than unifying it. Yet, this does not stop many a protestant who is fed up with not knowing what the Bible says from joining that church or one that has conciliar government (which is odd since very few Bible passages are interpreted with absolute authority by these groups anyway).

But what are we to do if we do not allow councils by their very nature as councils to decide matters of faith and practice that are in dispute? The answer of the Anabaptists and other radical reformers is to disregard these councils with the assumption that they were prone to err and interpret the Bible for themselves through intuition and what they claimed was the Spirit leading them, letting the Bible "alone" decide these matters. The problem with this thinking, of course, is that the individual who thinks he is interpreting the Bible alone by the Holy Spirit is usually interpreting the Bible with traditions, cultural concepts, limited knowledge, and flawed logic that he is unaware that he brings to the Bible. 

The Magisterial Reformers themselves, while not going as far as the Anabaptists, and although not assuming that all councils have erred in all things, sought to evaluate all things with Scripture, knowing that they approached it within the culture and tradition of the church, but leaving even their own presuppositions open to critique by the Scripture. Hence, they attempted to use exegesis, the logic of the languages used by Scripture, to interpret the text and seek unity through it. Although their methods and knowledge of grammar, syntax, genre, backgrounds, etc. were limited, they nonetheless gave us a legacy to aspire to in that they knew that the ground for unity was not in any external thing other than the Bible itself, and therefore, the ground of unity cannot be in anything other than exegesis. 

The Evangelical answer to division is far more sinister than anything that has come before. It is simply an adoption of relativism applied to Scripture. If you are unfamiliar with a more robust postmodern understanding of relativism, it looks a little something like this: There is an objective truth but humans are limited in their understanding and knowledge as well as their biases. Hence, although objective truth may exist, no one can know whether they have come to know it with any certainty. Every man is feeling the elephant but may be describing it from his or her perspective, which may contradict other perspectives. Interpretation of the objective truth, therefore, is relative to the person, their traditions, experiences, biases, etc., so that the existence of objective truth is affirmed but the knowledge of objective truth is denied. Interpretation, therefore, is a guess, and those who guess should not pretend that they know. To do so would be arrogant and ignorant of the truth that no one can really know the truth when any certainty (the self defeating nature of the claim should be clear).

Now, let's match that up to how Evangelicals view biblical interpretation. There is a Bible that speaks objective truth as the Word of God. The interpreters of this objective truth, however, are finite and lack knowledge and understanding, have personal biases, etc. Hence, although the Bible is objective truth, there is no way to know if someone has interpreted it correctly with any certainty. For someone to claim that he knows what the Bible says therefore is arrogant and ignorant of the truth that no one can really know it. Hence, interpretation of the Bible is a guess and no one should pretend that it is otherwise. 

Depending upon the group, this rear its head in various ways. Some will claim people can know but it is through answers described above (i.e., tradition, councils, popes, personal intuition, or the Spirit's leading or supernatural gifting). Others will say that some interpretations can be known to be untrue using some exegesis (but not too much of course) but others that are not so obvious cannot be excluded and therefore must be considered valid. In all of these, sola Scriptura is being denied because the Bible itself is not the answer to the problem of biblical interpretation and unity. In other words, the Bible is not the supreme authority in matters of interpretation. The supreme authority is outside of the Bible, and when that supreme authority cannot be found or fails to give us a clear result, the objective truths of the Bible cannot be known.

This is unacceptable to one who is seeking to line up his theory of interpretation with the doctrine of sola Scriptura. As I have argued in this series, the Bible supplies what we need to interpret it. It informs us what languages it uses, what cultures it references, that it uses the logic of language to communicate, etc. In other words, it informs us how we are to interpret it and the answer is exegesis which limits the possibilities of interpretation within the parameters offered by the text itself. 

The seemingly spiritual idea that the Spirit guides biblical interpretation through a majority has proven to be untrue. The authority of the majority in the ecclesiastical community isn't about biblical interpretation but about application of the Bible and matters not addressed by the Bible and are under dispute. God never promised that where two or three agree in my name about a Bible verse, Jesus is giving them the answer. If that were the case, the contradictions between Christian groups, councils, cults, etc. would make little sense. Instead, ecclesiastical authority is the majority deciding judicial matters by the majority, not interpretive ones. If this is not the case, and it is also the majority that decides interpretive issues, then the authority is not the Bible but the majority. If that is the case, the Bible isn't even needed to begin with, as the Bible does not give what is needed to be interpreted correctly and so the Spirit must give an interpretation to the majority that can only be known through external means. 

As Vanhoozer has argued:

"Is biblical interpretation a form of rational inquiry? This query takes on a certain urgency in our

present postmodern climate. Is it possible to recognize, and to reject, false interpretations (knowledge

falsely so called), or is meaning relative to the interpretive community? What is the alternative, on the

one hand, to cognitive anarchy (where everyone believes what he or she wants about a text), and

cognitive totalitarianism (where the individual’s belief is dictated by the powers that be, that is, the

institutions of Church or State), on the other? Our belief that there is indeed meaning in the biblical

text would be small comfort if we could not say, however tentatively, what that meaning is. Of course,

part of the problem in resolving interpretive disputes is that different interpreters work with different

definitions of meaning. It is impossible to answer the question “Can we determine determinate

meaning?” until we first determine whether readers are engaged in the same enterprise. I have already

presented my case for defining meaning in terms of communicative action. Even so, it is possible for

interpreters to agree with this definition and still talk past one another, for communicative action

itself can be described in many ways. In the final analysis, however, the conflict of interpretations

owes more to the complexity of communicative action than to the inherent indeterminacy of language

and textuality. It therefore follows that deconstructive despair about the possibility of correct

interpretation need not be the last word on the matter" (Is There Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge 258-59)

In conclusion, therefore, only a theory of interpretation that believes that the Bible provides what is needed to interpret itself and that its interpretation can be known through that means supports the doctrine of sola Scriptura. That methodology of interpretation, as stated before, is exegesis. Exegesis is the Word of God supplying its own interpretation. To deny it is to deny the Word of God itself and to abandon our only true hope for unity.