Contrary to Roman Catholics, the Bible Is Our Sufficient Authority
00:00:00.000 | Eustitiae nimde, for the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
00:00:05.600 | As it is written, the just shall live by faith.
00:00:08.960 | Worthy vicar, do we find anything here of relics?
00:00:11.840 | By faith man lives and is made righteous, not by what he does for himself,
00:00:15.920 | be it adoration of relics, singing of masses, pilgrimages to Rome,
00:00:19.760 | purchase of pardon for his sins, but by faith in what God has done for him already through his son.
00:00:25.520 | Dr. Martin, if you leave the Christian to live only by faith, if you sweep away all good works,
00:00:31.840 | all these glorious things you dismiss as mere crutches, what will you put in their place?
00:00:36.640 | Christ. Man only needs Jesus Christ.
00:00:41.040 | That is a classic clip from the movie Martin Luther, the 1953 version starring
00:00:45.680 | Niall McGuinness as Luther, here discussing Romans 117, the famous Reformation text.
00:00:51.760 | And Pastor John, as you know, Reformation Day is Monday, the 499th anniversary of Luther
00:00:56.960 | writing out his 95 theses, sending them to the archbishop.
00:00:59.920 | So let's tackle two questions on what divides Rome and Geneva, or Rome and Wittenberg.
00:01:04.800 | The first one for today comes from Dan.
00:01:06.720 | Dear Pastor John, several of my evangelical friends have converted to Roman Catholicism
00:01:11.280 | in recent years. One key issue is over whether the Bible is our sole rule of faith.
00:01:16.640 | After reviewing some of the Catholic arguments, I have come to appreciate their persuasive force.
00:01:22.240 | As I've engaged Protestants, however, I've not yet found an equally persuasive defense
00:01:26.480 | of the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura.
00:01:29.280 | Pastor John, I was wondering if you could please persuade me.
00:01:32.240 | Well, I don't know if I can persuade you.
00:01:35.200 | There are good books, and so maybe we'll make some of those known in the podcast.
00:01:43.920 | But here's what I want to say.
00:01:46.240 | Here's what carries me, and if it helps, it helps.
00:01:51.360 | I have three kinds of response, three responses, all of which, Dan, will, I hope,
00:01:58.080 | help you resist the temptation to move toward the Roman Catholic Church.
00:02:04.960 | Here's my first response.
00:02:06.320 | If the Bible is God's word, by definition, no human authority or human institution
00:02:14.080 | can serve alongside the Bible with equal authority.
00:02:20.160 | Neither the Pope nor any human council or any scholar or priest or pastor or human tradition
00:02:27.440 | has the authority of the Bible, if it is God's word, and it is.
00:02:32.960 | Not only that, but the Bible itself nowhere grants to any person or ecclesiastical office
00:02:42.800 | an authority equal to its own.
00:02:46.320 | There are pastors and teachers which Christ gives to the church, according to Ephesians 4.
00:02:52.320 | Their job is not to impart revelation, but to stand on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
00:03:01.280 | And Paul makes plain in 1 Corinthians 14.38 that the authority of those in the church
00:03:07.520 | must always give an account to the scriptures, not themselves.
00:03:15.440 | That's the first response.
00:03:16.720 | Second response is that it is neither biblical nor wise—that's kind of a paraphrase of
00:03:24.640 | Martin Luther's famous statement—it is biblical nor wise to surrender one's conscience
00:03:31.520 | to any human authority outside the Bible.
00:03:36.080 | Indeed, it is impossible—try to get me here now—it is impossible to have biblical
00:03:45.120 | faith in a truth one does not believe is in the Bible.
00:03:49.920 | It is not the nature of biblical faith, or biblical submission, or biblical
00:03:59.920 | allegiance to God and his word, that it would bow to any man who teaches anything contrary
00:04:08.720 | to the scriptures, which means that the final locus of authority is in the scriptures, and
00:04:16.720 | the final court of appeal to what the scriptures teach is in the Spirit-illumined conscience,
00:04:22.640 | not in a second authority outside the Bible and outside the conscience.
00:04:28.640 | I say that this conviction is rooted in the very nature of biblical faith and the nature
00:04:36.000 | of biblical submission.
00:04:37.840 | Here's what I mean.
00:04:38.960 | To say that another human authority outside the Bible could bind the human conscience
00:04:49.360 | against what it sees in scripture is to demand that faith and submission not be an act of
00:04:58.800 | understanding but only an act of blind submission to external authority.
00:05:04.960 | It is in the very nature of faith that a person cannot believe as biblical something contrary
00:05:15.200 | to what he sees in the Bible just because another person tells him it's so.
00:05:20.400 | You can't.
00:05:20.880 | It's the nature of faith.
00:05:22.000 | You can't believe what you don't see is biblical, no matter who tells you to.
00:05:27.840 | If I see one thing in the Bible but submit to an authority that teaches something different,
00:05:34.480 | I am de facto elevating that authority above the Bible, and I am attempting the impossible
00:05:44.960 | to believe as biblical what I see to be unbiblical.
00:05:50.080 | That's my second response.
00:05:53.040 | And the third response is this.
00:05:56.160 | I've always been amazed that people don't seem to function this way.
00:06:00.560 | Namely, deciding what church to belong to, don't at that moment just take the issue of
00:06:10.560 | authority into account and leave all the other doctrines aside.
00:06:16.080 | It seems to me that an evangelical who has shaped his convictions around biblical truth
00:06:24.080 | would have to simply close his eyes to be led in the dark in order to embrace the Roman
00:06:31.600 | Catholic doctrines of baptismal regeneration with its undermining of the biblical necessity
00:06:38.480 | of saving faith as a sign of the new birth, and the doctrine of justification on the basis
00:06:43.440 | of what God works in me, not on the basis of Christ alone through faith alone, and the
00:06:50.720 | doctrine of transubstantiation at the Mass and the transfer of grace through those physical
00:06:59.120 | instruments and practices, and the doctrine of indulgences as strategies of penance and
00:07:06.000 | forgiveness which the present Pope has brought forward again and made explicit.
00:07:10.480 | We thought that was all gone, and it's not all gone.
00:07:14.800 | And the veneration of Mary, which I just saw appallingly in my days in Italy a few weeks
00:07:24.640 | ago, and the prayers to her elevating her in effect to a co-redeemer with the accompanying
00:07:33.760 | diminishing of the centrality of Christ in the piety of millions of people.
00:07:38.720 | So in other words, when you ponder the issue of authority, that is the issue of scripture
00:07:46.160 | alone versus the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman church, are you willing to isolate
00:07:51.840 | that issue?
00:07:52.880 | Does not the entire sacramental system almost at every point contradict what you have seen
00:08:00.480 | in scripture as an evangelical?
00:08:03.360 | And if so, are you willing to sacrifice your conscience and say, "I do not see what I
00:08:12.240 | see"?
00:08:12.740 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:15.120 | And that leads us to the weekend and then to Monday, Reformation Day, the 499th anniversary
00:08:20.800 | of Luther.
00:08:21.360 | And I want to know, Pastor John, when you celebrate the Protestant Reformation, what
00:08:25.760 | are you celebrating in particular?
00:08:28.240 | There's so many answers to that question, but we want to hear from you on Monday.
00:08:32.080 | Until then, for more details about this podcast or to catch up on past episodes that we have
00:08:35.600 | released, or to subscribe to the audio feed, even send us a question of your own, go to
00:08:39.600 | our online home at desiringguide.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:41.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:45.200 | Have a great weekend.
00:08:46.480 | We'll see you on Monday.
00:08:47.520 | [END]
00:08:48.400 | Desiring Guide to the Protestant Reformation.
00:08:50.480 | [END]
00:08:51.520 | Desiring Guide to the Protestant Reformation.
00:08:53.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]