“…no prophetic writing of the scripture is a matter for private interpretation.  It was not on any human initiative that prophecy came; rather, it was under the compulsion of the Holy Spirit that people spoke as messengers of God” (2 Peter 1:20-21 REB).

Importance of the Church

Private interpretation of Scripture is one of the basic principles of the Reformation and of evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism.  However, the doctrine carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction.  According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, the body of Christ worldwide now numbers approx. 50,000+ denominations, sects, cults, house churches and many other different organisations and organisms – and every one of them claims to use the bible as their authority.  This became a huge problem during the Reformation, when the bible was taken from its natural context within the Church and given to the laity.  It thus became a bare book containing many obscure passages which are capable of being variously interpreted.  Stripped of its holy mystery and dignity and its central role in the liturgy, it was handed over to the calloused and ignorant hands of the laity to work their unholy will on it.

The Bible then took the role as the only authority which humans had to obey and, out of its context within the Church, it has never been able to replace the position of the Church.  This is not to say that the Church has more authority than the Bible – it doesn’t; and neither is the Church and its interpretations infallible – but it is the guardian of Truth and possesses the authority to interpret the Bible.  Paul writes to Timothy: “I write this in case I am delayed, to let you may know what is proper conduct in God’s house, that is, the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:14-15 REB).  The Church is to defend and protect the Bible, a role which includes exclusive right to interpret scripture and regulate Christian conduct, among others.  

This was the belief and practice of the Church until the Reformation.  The ecumenical Councils of the Church in the first centuries of church history are examples of such teaching authority.  If it wasn’t for the episcopal system of the church polity of the period, these councils would never have been called, and the creeds which state the true doctrines, such as the deity of Christ and the Trinity, would never have been formulated and defined for the whole Church today.  This is because in episcopacy, the emperor only had to notify the bishop of each diocese to attend a council, and this notification would pass down to all the relevant people in the diocese, by command of the diocesan bishop.  Such a thing would be impossible in our Protestant churches because of multitudes of disparate independent congregations scattered through the empire.

One and a half thousand years later, the Reformation’s Protestant churches produced their own statements of belief held by them, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith, Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church, and so on, in order to establish an order and an authority in their particular group.  As I shall show, they were all governed by their new principle of sola scriptura, and each denomination or collection of churches under the name of their Reformer and founder, produced some outlandish doctrines and practices.

In the very beginning and early years of the Church there was no Bible as we understand that term – their Bible was our Old Testament which included the books which we call “The Apocrypha”, which is not a separate book but books and passages extra to the Palestinian (or Jewish) canon.  The New Testament documents had not even been written yet; however, various hymns and creeds collectively known as The Rule of Faith or Tradition, containing the unwritten testimony of the apostles, were written down and included in the liturgy and also distributed throughout the churches; some of these found their way into the NT documents (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; 15:3-7; 1 Tim 3:16).  There were also books included in the Bible which were later discarded, such as The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache – these books had been circulating among the churches for centuries and read to congregations every Sunday, being regarded as Scripture.

Furthermore, the Church is God’s vehicle to glorify himself before all creation: “…through the church, the wisdom of God in its infinite variety might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms….to him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ from generation to generation for evermore!  Amen” (Eph 3:10, 21). 

It is impossible to underestimate the significance and importance of the Church to God, as Paul tells us: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it, to consecrate it by water and word, so that he might present the church to himself all glorious, with no stain or wrinkle or anything of the sort, but holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:25-27).

That Paul is not referring to the Church as an invisible church – such a concept was never even heard of until the Reformation – is evident from the fact that he speaks of a tangible body which is washed and sanctified by water and with scripture, possibly referring to the sacraments. The NT is filled with references to a physical Church, a body of believers gathered together in a community for worship, fellowship, prayer, mutual support, preaching, applying discipline when necessary, and partaking of the sacraments together.  And he commands believers not to neglect gathering together (Heb 10:25). And Jesus set forth principles for preserving harmony in the Church (Matt 18:15-20); practices which can only be performed in a physical, earthbound, Church. 

Examples of abuse in sola scriptura and private interpretation of scripture

In 1907, Thomas Carr, Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Australia, described the disastrous legacy of private interpretation of scripture – which was linked with “sola scriptura” by the Reformers – unleashed on the Church and the world by them.  Using only the testimony of Protestants he quotes one Protestant after another who complains or writes about the problems which confronted the new churches arising from this doctrine/practice.

Below is a selection of quotes from Carr’s book Protestant quotes from their writings:

• From Martin Luther: “This one will not hear of baptism, that one denies the Sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day; some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that; there are about as many sects and creeds as there are heads.  No bumpkin is so rude, but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet”. 
• And of the utter confusion of doctrine, Luther is compelled to declare: “If the world endureth much longer, we shall be forced, by reason of the contrary interpretations of the Bible which now prevail, to adopt again, and take refuge in, the decrees of the councils, if we have a mind to maintain unity of faith”. 
• John Calvin wrote to Melanchthon: “It is of great importance that the divisions which subsist among us should not be known in future ages! For, nothing can be more ridiculous than that we who have been compelled to make a separation from the whole world, should have agreed so ill amongst ourselves from the beginning of the Reformation”. 
• Carr says: Beza is even more emphatic: “Our people…are carried away with every wind of doctrine.  If you know what their religion is today, you cannot tell what it may be tomorrow.  In what single point are those churches, which declared war against the Pope, united amongst themselves?  There is not one point which is not held by some of them as an article of faith, and by others rejected as an impiety”. 
• Jenaer: “How insecure the Bible is, as a foundation for a system of religion, may be learned from the fact, that all the advocates of the Bible have formed their peculiar and contradictory creeds from the same volume, and anathematized and persecuted each other on the same plea”. 
• Dr. Honinghaus, writes Carr, “gives the views of non-Catholic German writers….that the new doctrine as to the Bible being the sole Rule of Faith, is eating into the very vitals of religion in Germany”.  Carr then supplies the following four German non-Catholic theologians from Honinghaus’ work.  
• “Can any man deny that there are but few passages in the New Testament from which all readers deduce the same meaning?  Now which of these is right?  Which should be adopted?  Who is to decide? – who can decide?” Lessing, Beitrage zur Gesch. Der Literat., B. vi, s. 58
• “Were Luther to rise again from the grave, he could not possibly recognise as his own, or as members of the society which he founded, be considered as his successors.  He founded the Church in Saxony.  We come together to thank God for its foundation; but alas, it is no more” Reinhard, uber die Kirchen, Verbesserung, 1800. 
• “According to genuine Protestant principles, it is impossible that the internal dissensions of the Church can be cured, except superficially; they cannot be stopped by the power of the [Catholic] Church, but must bleed on internally” Schleiermacher, Reformations-alman., 1819. 
• “Within the compass of a square mile, you may hear four, five, six, different gospels.  The people, believe me, mark it well; they speak most contemptuously of their teachers, whom they hold either for blockheads or knaves, in teaching these opposite doctrines; because in their simplicity they believe that truth is but one, and cannot conceive how each of these gentlemen can have a separate one of his own”.  From his “uber der Kirchen, Verbesserung, 1800”.

Carr writes further: “The injury to public morality is a branch of the subject I approach with repugnance and it is one on which I do not desire to dwell.  Luther will tell us what promiscuous reading of the Bible did for Germany.   With all his partiality for the work of his own hands, he is forced to admit that it were no wonder if his beloved Germany…. 

• “…were sunk in the earth or utterly overthrown by the Turks and Tartars, by reason of the hellish and damnable forgetfulness and contempt of God’s grace which people manifest; nay, the wonder is, that the earth does not refuse to bear them and the sun to shine upon them any longer” (Luther quoted in Dollinger’s Die Reformation, Vol. 1., p. 312, by Carr). 
• Luther from Dollinger:“Everything is reversed…the world grows every-day the worse for this teaching [private interpretation of scripture]; and the misery of it is, that men are now-a-days more covetous, more corrupt, more licentious, and more wicked, than of old under the papacy” (Carr’s quote from “Die Reformation”, by Dollinger, Vol. 1, p. 297). 
• And Luther, from p. 285 of the same book: “Our evangelicals are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before.  In proportion as we hear the Gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, and commit every crime.  If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and His menaces”.

Today we see this glaringly and shamefully demonstrated in the lives of televangelists who are no less corrupt and immoral than those whom Luther condemned.  With their brazen sexual immorality, abounding greed and covetousness, fraud, embezzlement, and false teaching, hardly any of them in the last century have stood firm.  Their corrupt history goes back to the beginning of the Pentecostal movement, and the corruption and false teaching have been astonishing. 

But it hasn’t been limited to televangelists and the Pentecostal movement.  The sexual immorality, adultery, and paedophilia committed by some clergy and other church leaders, as well as false doctrine and church practices, are evident within churches in every denomination.  It is not only the doctrine of sola scriptura which has been badly misused by fundamentalists, but also the misuse and abuse of the doctrine of sola fides (faith alone), which the abusers use as licence to sin, because as long as we repent by “rededicating” our lives to Christ at some church meeting or “crusade”, we think we can repeatedly get away with anything.  As one cynic I knew said, “It’s easier to obtain forgiveness than permission”.  Another commented: “It’s the 99% of Christians which give the rest a bad name”.

References

Carr, Thomas Joseph, Archbishop of Melbourne, “Lectures and Replies”, 1907, p. 21-23, publ., The Australian Catholic Truth Society, Melbourne, Australia

“Copyright Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press 1989.  The Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha.  First published 1989”