About this sermon
The Reformation’s ‘Sola Scriptura’ takes center stage, contrasting Luther’s near-exclusive focus on justification with Calvin’s broader vision. Calvin, unlike the German and English reformations, insisted that church and state remain distinct. Rightly received, the Word itself turns out to be a means of grace in its own right.
Sermon transcript
This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The Means of Grace” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 1, 1992.
Our scripture today is from Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews, beginning at chapter 3, verse 12. Listen to the word of God. Take heed, brothers and sisters, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But exhort one another every day while it is today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast until the end. While it is said, Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation.
For some, when they had heard, provoked him, although not all who came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved for forty years? Was it not with those who had sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who did not believe? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left for us of entering his rest, any of you should seem to fall short of it. For to us the gospel was preached, just as it was to them, but the message did not benefit them, because it was not united with faith in those who heard it.
For we who have believed do enter into rest, as He said, “As I have sworn in My wrath, if they should enter into My rest,” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He spoke in a certain place of the seventh day in this manner: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.” And in this place again He says, “If they shall enter into My rest,” seeing therefore that it remains that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached did not enter in because of unbelief, He again defines a certain day, saying in David, “Today, after so long a time, as it is said, ‘Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’” For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken afterward of another day. There remains therefore a Sabbath-keeping for the people of God. For he who has entered into His rest has also ceased from his own works, as God did from His. Let us therefore strive to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of unbelief.
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Our Father, we ask on behalf of your church in the world, and even now, Lord, we know that there is great suffering for the cause of Christ. We ask, Father, that your people may persevere under trial, and that your word coming to them may be to them as wonderful, gracious medicine. O Lord, may your people be sustained, and may we be a help to those who are in any trouble because of our prayers on their behalf. But now, Lord, we ask that we might be faithful ourselves to your word. Help us in the hearing of it, that we might be faithful in the doing of it.
We pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen. We have been talking about the means of grace. We are identifying those means and reviewing them in these morning messages. We have spoken about the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace. We have spoken about prayer, and this morning we come to the matter of the Word, another means of grace. The Word of God is another means of grace.
The sixteenth-century Reformation was, in the main, a rediscovery of the Word of God. It was, in the main, a rediscovery of the Word of God. The Reformers took their stand for the Word of God, and they took their stand upon the infallibility of that word, the infallibility of the Scriptures. For them, such a stand was an eminently religious act. That is to say, it was an act that had at its heart their love and desire for God, who had marvelously and graciously revealed himself through his word in the Scriptures. In other words, the Reformers believed that their contact with the Bible brought them into direct contact with God, as direct a contact with God as would be possible in this creation.
This meant, then, that the Word was in fact a means, if not the principal means, of grace for them. It was a usual channel through which Christ had bound himself for the communication of the supernatural influences of the Holy Spirit in and for the Church. Now we can go even further. The Scriptures were a usual channel to which Christ had bound himself for the communication of himself.
To say the least, the Bible did not have this exalted position for the Church of Rome. In fact, the Bible had been lost to the people, for the scriptures were retained by the Church for well over a thousand years in a Latin translation, a language that the people no longer understood. But language was not the only problem. In the estimation of Rome, the scriptures had actually been subordinated. They had been demoted to a position beneath the Church and its magisterium. In fact, the scriptures had been demoted in their authority to a position beneath the Church’s traditions. So it was that the Reformation sounded that clarion call: sola scriptura. They knew Latin, too. Sola scriptura, the Scripture alone.
And with that clarion call, the Reformers proclaimed liberty to those oppressed by the arbitrary and even malicious rule of Rome. However, the Protestant doctrine of the Scripture has immediately faced, and continues to face, some obvious challenges. One obvious challenge is the problem of interpretation. All right, let’s grant the Reformers their point.
The Bible is the chief and primary authority. But how are we to interpret the Bible? Rome was quick to point out that without an official interpretation, such as they claimed to have, the many competing and contradictory interpretations of Protestantism would eventually lead to sectarianism, to the division of the Church, and even to theological and ecclesiastical anarchy. Rome said that the Bible must be kept under the church, beneath the church. It cannot be placed above the church. It must be kept subordinate even to the visible symbol of the church’s unity, namely, the Pope himself, the Vicar of Christ.
But further, as with the Church, so also with the state and with society at large. Rome was convinced that the Reformation position on Scripture would lead to private opportunism, to individualism, and to libertinism, as well as to social insurrection. In other words, Rome saw at stake in the Protestant view of Scripture not only its control over ecclesiastical matters, but over political and social matters as well. Rome held that just as the Church must stand above the Word, so the Church must also stand above the state and above society. Christ’s rule, as found in his vicar, the Pope, was above all. And that by necessity.
The leaders of the German, Swiss, and English Reformation were intelligent men. They were not slow to see the problem. How to hold to the supremacy of Scripture and the authority of Scripture, and still save the church from fragmentation and preserve order within society. How to hold to the supremacy of Scripture and still save the church from fragmentation and preserve order within society generally.
The German and the English Reformation adopted in their own ways a doctrine which turned the Catholic position on its head. They opted for a position of the supremacy of the state over the church. The exact opposite of the position of Rome. Rome’s position being that the church must be above the state.
The German and English reformers looked to the Christian monarch or to the Christian peace to maintain Christian unity and social order. It must be acknowledged that these English and German reformers envisioned a future in which there would always be and only be Christian heads of state. We must admit, as we look back, that their solution acquiesced to the exaltation of secular power, to which the church willingly and even unquestionably submitted. To say the least, this appears to be incorrect, does it not? Was the Reformation faultless? Are the suggestions and solutions of some of the Reformed figures without fault? Hardly.
In the wake of the English and German solutions to the problem, there has now come the tidal wave and the triumph of secular power—the state and society itself—over the church, to the extent that the church’s value within society, where this position has triumphed, is measured solely by the value the church serves in reinforcing society itself. And this occurs in the name of a civil religion devoid of Trinitarian content. One might consider the civil religion in our own country. It has also signaled the triumph of secular power and society over the church, to the extent that the church’s value is now measured solely by its ability to reinforce the society’s values. All of this occurs in the name of a civil religion, a general deity devoid of all Trinitarian content. Who is this God that all the politicians appeal to?
It is not the God that I know. It is the Swiss Reformation. The French reformer in Switzerland, John Calvin, who offers his solution. Calvin saw the church and state as separate authorities, each respective to the other, both bound by and called to be respectful of the biblical principles that pertain to them respectively.
However, as things have worked out, the Calvinist position had a further development. According to some, the church is called to ensure that the state honors its scriptural allegiance and responsibility. Thus, they approach a passage like Romans 13 not as descriptive but as prescriptive. Likewise, turning the matter around, the state is called to ensure that the church honors its scriptural duty. But what happens in a day when the modern secular state triumphs over the church? Many Calvinists have been left in a position of isolation, fighting for their rights under the assumption that the state must be as subordinated to the scriptures as the church itself is. Their goal now is to make the state biblical, if you will, Christian, so that the state in turn might ensure that the church remains biblical and Christian.
Here now, according to some who have descended from Calvin, is the prescription for societal harmony and church unity. Whatever we may think of these Calvinist solutions to the church-state problem, it is at least obvious to us, I hope, that Calvin and his descendants were striving to honor the biblical principle of sola scriptura with all their energy. There may have been some wrong turns. They may have gone off in the wrong direction. They may even have been guilty of some deeply harmful actions. But at their root, there was always this commitment to honor and remain faithful to the principle of sola scriptura.
In the end, during the English Reformation, Anglicanism—its descendant, Episcopalianism—exalted the state above the Church. This expressed a reverence for tradition and even natural reason over Scripture, thereby compromising the English Reformation. The great codifier of Anglicanism, Richard Hooker, subordinated the Bible to both reason and the light of nature. Effectively, for all intents and purposes, the principle of sola scriptura was lost in the heritage of the Anglican Church.
What about Luther? What happened to him and his subsequent Lutheranism? Luther was committed to a single doctrine above all others. You know what that doctrine was. It was justification by faith alone, a grand and glorious doctrine, and we can thank God for Martin Luther that he reintroduced that doctrine to the Church of Jesus Christ. But what happened when Luther came to Scripture?
What did he do with the Bible, with the doctrine of justification by faith in hand? Interpreting all of Scripture in light of that doctrine, he could not make all the pieces fit. There were some books in the Bible that did not seem to preach the doctrine of justification by faith. They did not even seem to reinforce it.
What are you to do with the epistle of James, the epistle that Luther called the epistle of straw? By this route, Luther admitted that there were contradictory strains within the Bible itself—competing strains within the Bible itself. You could not have all of Scripture, even though you insisted upon sola scriptura. You see the contradiction that existed for the Lutheran: some parts of the Bible were shelved, relegated to an inferior place.
And thus Luther compromised the reformational principle, a principle for which he was, in part, responsible. He compromised the reformational principle. But I think that you now can see the consequences of Luther’s position. Not that Luther was not a genuine Christian, a wonderful saint of the Lord who stood forth for the church at a time of desperate need. But consider the subsequent history of the church in Germany. In the succeeding centuries, Lutheran scholars began to undermine the Bible, arguing that no, we cannot hold on even to the principle of sola scriptura, because our Lutheranism will not permit it. Let alone what we have learned from the Enlightenment.
Calvin and subsequent Calvinism have fought tenaciously, sometimes falteringly, sometimes greatly at fault, for the principle of sola scriptura—the whole of the Word—and that Word above everything else. The primary authority for the people of God, and the church in fact organized beneath that Word, the Word itself then being the symbol of unity which God has given to His people.
And instead of isolating themselves around the singular doctrine of justification by faith, as marvelous and indispensable as that doctrine is, Calvin and the Calvinists consistently emphasized broader themes in harmony with the full scope of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. This is why Calvin held firmly to the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. This is why Calvin emphasized the doctrine of the kingdom of God and its comprehensive nature. This includes, of course, the marvelous doctrine of justification by faith, but also embraces the entire biblical narrative. Subsequent Calvinism developed a principle by which it could approach the totality of Scripture, not limiting itself to a single point in discussions about theology, particularly the doctrine of salvation as it pertains to justification by faith, but rather addressing the full scope of God’s redemptive plan under the covenant of grace.
Everything, then, fits within this framework from Genesis to Revelation, including, I might add, the Epistle of James. At its best, Calvinism has been ready and able to affirm the unity of Scripture, the totality of Scripture, and the authority of Scripture. It has also provided a comprehensive approach to the interpretation of Scripture. I dare say that although the solution to all the problems that have arisen, including those we have discussed today, may still be developing, I maintain that Calvinism offers the most promising path toward resolving these difficulties.
Let us continually remind ourselves, in light of all of this, that we are here dealing with no theoretical matter, although this message this morning might sound somewhat heroic. Set before our eyes is a passage from Hebrews. There it is. It is about dealing with the Word of God. The Word in its totality, in its comprehensiveness, and in all of its vitality. The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. And why is that? Because the Word in its totality now, the Word in its totality, is truly a means of grace.
By that I mean that through the Word you are brought into direct contact with God, who communicates himself through it. Pick up the Word. Sit under it. Submit yourself to it as the Church of Jesus Christ must submit herself to it. Embrace its wholeness, its comprehensiveness, and be engaged now in the matters about which it speaks for your good and for God’s glory.
Our Father, may we not neglect your Word. I plead with you, Lord, that our hearts would be open to it and that we would be driven to that Word. But, Father, may we be honest before you, driven by your Spirit, that we would have all of the Word in its comprehensiveness, the totality of it. And, Lord, may its authority over us be evident to us and in us. But, Father, through it may we commune with you, knowing that by it you have communicated yourself to us, you have disclosed yourself, you have revealed yourself. We would hunger for your Word, and, Lord, you will fill us, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.