Underlying the Reformation, as evidenced in the five solas, was the renewed aspect of Scripture’s absolute authority over the Church. Rather than submit to Roman papacy, the Reformers desired to return to the doctrines authorized by Scripture and developed by the early Church. Yet, it was not against Rome alone that the magisterial Reformers fought. On the other extreme were the radical reformers, the anabaptists. Such groups, believing that the magisterial reformers had not gone far enough, sought to take nearly everything to the extreme. Thus, rather than seeking to be guided by Church history in their interpretation of Scripture, as the reformers sought, they did away with anything assembling authority or tradition save Scripture. Creeds and confessions were no longer of any value since these were not scripture. Like Charles Finney, they would view such creeds and confessions as “paper popes”.
Unfortunately, the anabaptist (mis)understanding of doctrines such as sola scriptura continues in our day. Evangelicalism has become a privatized religion, where, rather than believing the doctrines of Scripture (which are said to be man-made), people are turning to “scripture alone”. Any book that seeks to expound doctrines from Scripture are set at odds with the sacred book and are viewed as unimportant. The presupposition here is that anything that is not the Bible itself is in competition with it. The words of the bible themselves are seen as means of grace rather than the message of the bible. All that matters is that people read Scripture. Here we find the heartbeat of the radical reformers. They failed to see that the Reformation was not simply a set of principles to be followed (by which many claim to be heirs of the Reformation), but a Reformation of doctrine. The Magisterial Reformers did not deny the Trinity because it was “not explicitly in Scripture,” nor did they deny doctrines such as paedobaptism. The Westminster Confession of Faith states that Doctrines deduced from Scripture by “good and necessary consequence” are to be viewed as part of the “whole counsel of God.”
It is not enough to be “biblical.” Nearly every cult claims to be scriptural, and they are quite able to demonstrate their knowledge of proof texts to support their heretical views. In fact, one of the chief claims of Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they don’t “interpret” Scripture, but that they let it speak for itself. Through this distorted idea of “scripture alone” the cults twist and utterly deform Biblical christianity. Are they able to prove their views from Scripture? If we adopt the view of the radical reformers we must accept what they claim. Yet if we turn to historic Christian creeds and confessions and witness the development of doctrine throughout Church history we are able to readily refute such cults and call them what they are, heretics. The Magisterial Reformers understood very well that against Rome’s interpretation they were arguing their own. The claim of the Reformers was not that they avoided interpretation but that theirs was the true interpretation. Yet they did not accomplish this by viewing Scripture as a magical book from which verses could be taken out of context; they understood the bible as an organic whole, and that any part of Scripture had to be viewed within the context of the entire canon. In this way they were able to come up with the biblical Law/Gospel contrast and harmonize Paul and James and their respective doctrines of justification (which are the same).
In this light, the confessions and catechisms ought to be viewed. The Reformers did not set such things in opposition to Scripture, but viewed them as complementary. The creeds and confessions are called summaries of Scripture so that the Christian will be able to read Scripture and discern what is Law and what is Gospel. Creeds and confessions keep individual believers from their own privatized interpretations that often contradict that which is biblical. It is not difficult to take a passage from Scripture and come up with a thoroughly unbiblical idea, a thing we see everywhere- from the unguided Christian within the Church to Oprah. The last thing we need is to pit creeds against Christ.
Here, then, is a plea. To forsake the presuppositions of the radical reformers, and to adopt a truly Reformed and biblical understanding of the Reformation doctrines. Dorothy Sayers is right in saying that we must choose between creeds or chaos. Which will it be?
