Amandus Polanus on the Church’s Role in Interpreting Scripture (1)

Basel Munster

Sola Scriptura is one of the slogans that have come to be attached to the Protestant Reformation.While the so-called five solas, as descriptive terms of Protestant theology, originated long after the sixteenth-century, they capture well some of the primary emphases of Protestant thought as they relate to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Reformed authors, in particular, treated Scripture as the cognitive foundation of the knowledge of God for redeemed sinners. The Spirit of God working by and through the written and preached Word produced the true knowledge of God through his Son Jesus Christ. Among other things, these ideas require that Scripture possess divine authority, that it be sufficient for faith and practice (2 Tim. 3:15-17), and that its primary message be clear (perspicuous). Scripture possesses divine authority as the very Word of God. Scripture is all that the believer needs to become wise for salvation through faith in Christ as well. Scripture is able to make believers complete by furnishing them with all they need for every good work (1 Tim. 3:15-17). Yet if Scripture is not clear on these points, then it will remain a closed book to all who read it.

The clarity, or perspicuity, of Scripture became one of the main points of debate between Protestants and Roman Catholics in the Reformation and Post-Reformation periods. Roman Catholic authors denied the perspicuity of Scripture. They appealed to the magisterium of the Church to provide authoritative interpretations of the Scriptures in light of church tradition. Protestants, by contrast, argued that was inherently clear because Scripture is profitable and sufficient for the ends that Scripture assigns to itself. Scripture authority and sufficiency both supposed and demanded perspicuity. Read More

A historical note. Puritanism began as theological movement within Anglicanism. Among the leading Anglicans of the seventeenth century who were also Puritans was Bishop James Ussher, Archbishop of Amargh. While some Puritans were ejected from the Church of England at the Restoration; others conformed to the Prayer Book and retained their livings. Bishop Edward Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich, who composed the General Thanksgiving, like Bishop Ussher, was a Puritan. As Anglican theologian J.I. Packer has written. Anglicans can learn a lot from the Puritans. We should not shy away from web sites that are devoted to the writings of the Puritans as if reading their writings was in some way un-Anglican. It must be remembered that historic Anglicanism, the Anglicanism of The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, the Articles of Religion of 1571, the Larger Catechism of Alexander Nowell, and the two Books of Homilies, is Reformed in its theological outlook and is a part of the greater Reformed tradition.