Can Sola Scriptura be reconciled with Tradition?

An Exercise in Avoiding the Either-Or

I was fortunate enough to study at a very good university, under some distinguished scholars. It is all
the more unfortunate, therefore, that I can recall very little of the hours and hours of lectures
through which I sat. In fact, there is only one sentence I can recall verbatim. Half-way through an
examination of the problem of the genitive δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ—whether it is an objective genitive—
Dr. Bruce Longenecker looked at us and said, “Gentlemen,” (for it was only men in the room at the
time), “avoid the either-or like the plague. If you can, take the both-and, every time.” That is what I
have attempted to do as a theologian ever since, and that is what I propose to do in this presentation,
for I have come to believe that the false dichotomy, the either-or, is quite literally an invention of the
devil.
This question harks back in many ways to the Reformation, though as I hope to demonstrate, it
owes much less to the Lutheran Reformation than we might at first assume. It is an often overlooked
fact that the Lutheran Reformation was an exercise in continuity rather than disruption. The Re-
formation was not an about rejecting tradition, but about reforming it—in teaching, preaching,
liturgy, canon law, church music. The Augsburg Confession and its Apology make and defend the
claim that it was the Reformation that was on the side of tradition, while Rome was on the side of in-
novation.
Nevertheless, it is indeed the case that the phrase sola Scriptura is most intimately associated to
the Reformation of the sixteenth century along with the other ‘solas’: sola gratia and sola fide. To
summarise to the point of conciseness bordering on caricature: Our salvation is by grace alone, re-
ceived through faith alone. All this we know and hold to be true on the authority of Scripture alone.
All man-made traditions that contradict or undermine the ‘doctrine on which the church stands or
falls’ must be rejected, while other man-made traditions must be put in their proper place as adia-
phora, things which may be kept or rejected without sin.
So far so good. However, to say this places us immediately in a state of potential self-contradic-
tion. After all, Scripture itself nowhere states explicitly the principle of sola Scriptura as the hermen-
eutic for establishing doctrine—if for no other reason than the fact that the library of Christian
Scriptures we call the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testaments are by definition a post-
biblical collection, since it could not be collected until after the books were written. More troubling
is the fact that as Lutherans we hold the solas on the grounds of our confessional subscription. That
is to say, the claim that we hold the Scriptures to be the sole rule and norm of doctrine and life
comes from outside the Scriptures themselves, from the Lutheran Confessions. Therefore, this sub-
scription itself is a tradition—Lutheran tradition. Whether we subscribe to the whole Book of Con-
cord of 1580, or to some of it, or add to it the Decree of the 1593 Synod of Uppsala, is beside the
point.
All of this is to say that the question I have given itself begs a question. What we really need to es-
tablish is what we mean by the central terms, ‘sola Scriptura’ and ‘tradition’, in order to establish
whether we are dealing with an either-or, a both-and, or perhaps a tertius quid. For the sake of con-
ciseness, I want to kill these birds with the smallest number of stones possible by stating and defend-
ing two brief theses.

1. Scripture is tradition
It is an unfortunate consequence of the simultaneous, though possibly unconnected, decline of Latin
and theology in the Western church, that for all practical purpose, sola Scriptura has been displaced
by, or at the very least conflated with, solo Scriptura, both by proponents and opponents of the Re-
formation tradition. The very questions we are studying today betray this conflation. We either fol-
low Scripture alone, or we hold to Scripture and to tradition.
 Of course, sola Scriptura in Lutheran theology never implied such a dichotomy. The very fact of
making and subscribing to confessions of faith which claim to be catholic, œcumenical, means that
there is much more to doctrine than quoting and re-quoting Bible. I will say more on this in my
second thesis.
Nevertheless, Scripture is the norma normans for the Christian Church, in her dogma and in her
life. This is to say, that Scripture itself is the tradition of the Church. We see this basic fact living
within the text of Scripture itself. Already within the Old Testament, the Bible is simultaneously a
book* that consists of layers of authority built on earlier and more foundationalauthority, and an
eschatological and teleological book. The Torah is founded on the narrative of the Creation and the
Fall, flowing out of it and back towards it. The Law, an expansion of the first commandment, then
gives shape to the history of Israel, her God-given Psalms and wisdom, and is the content of the
preaching of the prophets. “Thus says the LORD” is as much a reference to the tradition of the Torah
as it is to divine revelation.
This ordering of biblical revelation becomes even clearer and more explicit in the New Testament.
Fundamentally, this ordering is Christological. The Word became flesh, not ink. Christ, the eternal
Logos of God—His eternal utterance, the expression of His divine mind—is God’s final and ultimate
Word to His creation (Heb. 1:1ff.). Being word-made-flesh, Jesus was rarely silent. He instructed the
Twelve, His disciples, His opponents and the crowds. Moreover, as Matthew was particularly fond of
pointing out, His whole life took place “what was written”. Christ is not the Word of God over against
the written Word, but He is the author and content of the Scriptures (Jn. 5:39; Lk. 24:27). Likewise,
He called and authorised the Twelve to continue to teach all that He had commanded them (Mt.
28:18–20), such that whoever heard them heard Jesus Himself (Lk 10:16).
Thus it is that the teaching of the apostles consisted of demonstrating that the life, death, resurrec-
tion and ascension of Jesus were the ultimate fulfilment of the Scriptures of the Old Testament (e.g.
Peter’s sermon in Acts 2)—the correct understanding of the tradition of the Old Covenant—and of
passing on that which they themselves had received (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:23; 15:1ff.).
This passing on—in Latin, traditio—of that which has been received is what Scriptures are. This
understanding of the Scriptures was what finally defined the content of the canon, as the so-called
Muratorian fragment makes exceedingly clear: that which is apostolic is authoritative and may be
read in churches. Other things, such as the Shepherd of Hermas, may be salutary and commendable,
but they are not apostolic and therefore not authoritative.
Thus we also have a solid ground for the authority of Scripture. Not in the inner testimony of the
Holy Spirit, as with Calvin, or in the demonstration of its inerrancy, as with post-Enlightenment
Protestant biblicism. Rather, the Bible is authoritative because it is the Word of Christ: because Jesus
is the author, subject and substance of the Scriptures. In Reformation terms, sola Scriptura, no less
than sola gratia or sola fide, is an expression and outworking of solus Christus.

2. Tradition is Confession
So far, I have not answered the question, except by re-defining its terms—the gambit of the cheat. All
the practical problems still remain. For it is all very well to say that the Bible is the tradition of the
Church. Isn’t this what undogmatic Protestant biblicism does when it claims that it doesn’t need
creeds, because it simply believes what the Bible says. Because of course the real question is: what
does the Bible say? It is this question that lurks behind the battles on both fronts against the tradition
of sola Scriptura: for both the individualistic enthusiasts of the Reformation and the institutional en-
thusiasts of Rome justified their rejection of the Lutheran sola Scriptura by quoting Scripture in de-
fence of their position, in order to avoid the death-trap of circularity.
So what does the Scripture say? Or, to put the question in terms I set out in the first thesis, what is
that teaching which we have received and are to pass on? It is on this battle ground that the christo-

* Of course, the Bible and each of its Testaments are libraries rather than books. But having stated it once, and since
the library is received and treated as a book, it is hardly necessary to keep labouring the point.
logical, trinitarian and pneumatological battles of the early church were all fought. Even before that,
the catechesis of the missionary church had to answer this question, in order to be able to instruct
those who wanted to receive, and in turn pass on, the faith. Because it was tradition, the answers ul-
timately consisted of joining oneself, or subscribing, to the teaching passed down. Hence they began
with the words “I believe”, or “We believe”. The tradition was condensed into the Creeds, both local
and œcumenical. They became both the content and the litmus test of the true faith. If your faith was
in accord with the Creeds, the tradition you held was the true tradition, and vice versa.
Therefore, to say that the Bible is the tradition is also to say that the Creeds are the tradition.
Rather than floating about in the uncertain waters of individual interpretation, the rule of faith (reg-
ula fidei) was set down, not over against, or alongside, Scripture, but as its summary, such that every
teacher and every believer in the church could know whether the teaching they were receiving and
passing on was the Christian tradition—the doctrine of the apostles—or a man-made tradition.
To use Lutheran terminology, the confession of the church is what tradition is. Both our respective
churches recognise this in our constitutions, when they accept the œcumenical creeds as binding on
the church. Moreover, as new questions were posed to the Church, and new abuses and false teach-
ings crept in, new answers had to be given, in order to safeguard the tradition, the Word of Christ to
a fallen world. In particular, at the end of the Middle Ages, the growing divergence of what the West-
ern church called tradition from the tradition of the apostles caused a crisis that came to a head in
the Reformation. Having been rejected and condemned, the Reformation had to re-state what the
Christian faith—the doctrine of the Bible, or the true tradition—was, over against contrary claims.
The permanent record of these confessions is the Lutheran tradition: the Augsburg Confession and
its apology, the Catechisms, and the other books that make up the Book of Concord.
These do not stand over against, or even alongside, Scripture, as they themselves make exceed-
ingly clear. Rather, they claim to be a statement of the teaching of the Bible on the matters at hand.
Moreover, they do not stand over against earlier tradition. The compilers of the Book of Concord,
who were also behind the Formula of Concord (1577) were quite happy both to draft “The Summary
Formulation, Basis, Rule, and Norm” at the head of the Formula, and to include the Catalogue of
Testimonies as the Appendix of the Book of Concord. The confessors of the Lutheran Reformation
neither rejected tradition nor established new traditions; rather, they joined their voices to the tradi-
tion of the Church: the doctrine of the prophets and the apostles, which the Church catholic has
confessed at all times and in all places.

A Word on Hermeneutics: or why Eco is right and Derrida was wrong

At this point, some of you may be getting impatient with this dinosaurian approach to hermeneutics.
Does this fellow know nothing about the challenges of interpretation, the gap between text and read-
er, and the subjectivity of establishing meaning? To quote the patient response I once received from a
great scholar whom I had accidentally patronised in his field of expertise, “Well, I did pass that exam
once.”
My seemingly naïve optimism can be explained in part by the fact that I’m young enough to think
that Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) is part of the establishment, rather than a voice against it. The
great and principled uncertainty of much modern hermeneutics, which culminated in that relativism
and studied ignorance that is frequently and unhelpfully called postmodernity, is not necessarily the
only way to read the seemingly endless debates over how to establish meaning. More recently, a
newly re-discovered optimism has begun to rear its head in the debate. I pick just one name out of a
growing pack, the Italian celebrity multi-disciplinarian, Umberto Eco (1932–). Rather than the
French school of diadic hermeneutics represented by Derrida, Eco followed the semiotic theories of
Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) to establish a triadic hermeneutic. That is to say, rather than having
only two fixed points in the interpretative process—the reader and the text—leading to an endless
hermeneutic cycle of readings and re-readings where the interpreter is supreme, Eco joins the Amer-
ican and Russian schools which holds out that there are in fact three fixed points: the author, the text
and the reader. To cut lengthy and complex scholarship very short, having three fixed points enables
triangulation in the search for meaning, thus establishing clear limits to number and range of pos-
sible meanings a text can yield. The interpreter is curtailed by and subject to the author and the text.
As a result, we are able both to answer Luther’s question, “Was ist das?”, with confidence, and to
know at the same time that we will not have exhausted the Scriptures at the first answer. Because the
text is rich, it can yield new discoveries and answer questions posed anew by new generations and
cultures. Because the text is a text, it contains within itself the limits of what it can be held to say. Be-
cause the text is the voice of Christ, it is true—true as it is written. And fundamentally, because it is
the voice of Christ, given “so that you may believe” (Jn. 20:31), we know that it was given to be un-
derstood. Or, to put it in other terms, the chief hermeneutical question is still, “Was ist das?”, rather
than “Was bedeutet das?”. The reader primarily discovers rather than establishes meaning.
All of this is auxiliary to the fact that the Bible is God’s speech to His creation. Therefore, the key
theological hermeneutic for reading the Scriptures is Scriptura Scripturam interpretatur—‘Scripture
interprets Scripture’—or Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres—‘Holy Scripture is its own interpreter’.
This basic axiom establishes both the breadth and the limits of biblical interpretation, and gives us a
firm yet versatile tool for evaluating post-biblical tradition. On this point, the Reformation was able
to stand without hesitation against the claims of Rome both on the scholastic doctrinal traditions
that were destroying the doctrine of justification on the page and the Late Mediæval liturgical and
devotional traditions that were doing the same in cloisters, churches, homes and hearts. Verbum Dei
manet in æternum: and so we can sit with the same confidence in the seat of the Reformers and en-
gage in the vital task of discerning the spirits of the age in the traditions of our age, to discover
whether they are of God or not.

Conclusion
And so it is that I will once again walk away from the either-or. But nor will I have the both-and. For
to hold a both-and with Scripture and tradition is to maintain that there are in fact two authorities in
the Church, that there is both a Torah and a Halakhah—that the doctrine of the apostles, which is
nothing other than the doctrine of Christ, is insufficient. Sola Scriptura remains a sine qua non for
the Christian faith, because only then can we know what it is we are to believe that you may believe
and have life in Jesus’ name.
There is no tradition alongside Scripture. There is only the Torah, the instruction of God, formerly
spoken through the prophets and now in these last days by the Son. This we have received from the
saints who went before us, this we confess in the world and the Church, and this we will hand down
to those who will come after us. For the Church always was, and always will be, the “holy believers
and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd” (SA XII.2).

Tapani Simojoki
14 November 2014