Again and again since the close of the New Testament, the church has reasserted the essential evangelical principle of the supremacy of Scripture alone. Why so? Quite simply, because that is what Jesus taught about how we can know the truth.
Mark 7:1-13 depicts Jesus’s controversy with the Pharisees over Scripture and its authority. A dispute had arisen over handwashing. The Pharisees’ concern was a religious one, that they might be “defiled” (v.2) and they therefore insisted on a ceremonial handwashing according “to the tradition of the elders” (v.3). Their objection to Jesus was that His disciples did not walk according to this tradition (v.5). To this, Jesus replied: “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (v.8).
Clearly for Jesus, whereas Scripture is of God, tradition is of men and it is vain hypocrisy to equate “the commandments of men” with the “doctrines” of God (v.7). As Jesus demonstrated every time He asked “Have you not read in the Scriptures?” or “What is written in the Law?”, He believed that Scripture is the supreme, sufficient authority that overrules all our words and thoughts.
The evangelical approach
At the time of the Reformation, the matter of the supremacy of Scripture was thrown into particularly sharp relief. Martin Luther found himself challenging a church in Rome that did affirm Scripture’s authority, but did not regard Scripture as the supreme authority. Luther came to see that if the Roman Catholic Church held the pope to be an authority equal to or even above Scripture, she could never be reformed by God’s word. The pope’s word would always trump God’s.
Roman Catholicism looks to Scripture and tradition together as equal authorities (much as in Eastern Orthodoxy). Liberal theologians see human reason and feeling as their primary guiding light. In contrast with both, the evangelical approach follows Jesus’s teaching that Scripture is the word of God and must therefore overrule the feelings and traditions of men. To be evangelical means Scripture trumps all.
Sola Scriptura is not the same as the view that we should have “no creed but the Bible!”
Of course, this principle has not always been well understood. Too often, self-confessed evangelicals have veered towards an anti-intellectual “me and my Bible” Biblicism that rejects all wisdom found elsewhere. But sola Scriptura is not the same as the view that we should have “no creed but the Bible!” That is a sub-evangelical position.
Jesus did not reject all human traditions out of hand, but would celebrate the Feast of Dedication and recline at table to eat, according to the custom of the day. The apostle Paul, who taught that even the apparent foolishness of God “is wiser than men” (1 Cor. 1:25), also affirmed that unbelievers could know and speak some truth (see Acts 17:27-29). Equally, the Reformers did not reject all tradition or insight from outside of Scripture. They wanted to renew the church, not invent a new one from scratch.
Perhaps the main reason why evangelicals have sometimes been historically shortsighted and Biblicist is the fear that some tradition or insight could become the supreme authority. It is a reasonable and right fear. We must see to it “that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, … and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). However, that carefulness must not become a panicked retreat from all learning or tradition. Instead, we simply need to be clear that reason and tradition have a ministerial, not a magisterial, authority.
There are a number of authorities to which the healthy evangelical will want to submit: the governing authorities of the land (Rom. 13:1), church elders, and creeds. We should want to hear the word expounded by trustworthy teachers and to listen to the wisdom of the saints, both dead and alive. But none of those authorities are infallibly trustworthy. They are of men. Scripture is of God. They must bow to Scripture, not the other way around. They should be listened to, but Scripture must reign supreme.
