C. Michael Patton and Rhome Dyke · The Theology Program · 76 minutes
Lecture by C. Michael Patton, Th.M., and Rhome Dyke, Th.M., from The Theology Program, published on their public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
The course opens with its deepest question: when Scripture, church, and tradition all claim a voice, who has the final word? Patton and Dyke walk the syllabus, then tell the story of Martin Luther, the anxious monk whose conscience was taken captive by the word of God, and lay out five views of authority side by side. Listen for the difference between tradition one and tradition two; the whole course turns on it.
Bibliology and Hermeneutics focuses on the authority, nature, and interpretation of the Scriptures, and it is designed to help students work through the trust they place in the Bible. The method carries over from the first course: study the Scriptures as an ancient text, without starting from the assumptions that we have the right books, that the text has been transmitted correctly, or that the English accurately represents the Greek, because those are assumptions most of the watching world does not share. The course will compare the traditions’ views of authority, examine the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, press hard questions about inspiration and inerrancy, and then turn to interpretation: how a psalm is read differently from an epistle, and whether Genesis and Revelation are handled the same way.
The sessions run in a deliberate order: authority, sola scriptura, the transmission of the Old and New Testaments, canonization, inspiration, then the justification of inspiration, which the teachers call the hinge of the whole program, because once it is concluded that the Bible in hand is accurate, has the right books, and is God-breathed, everything after can build on it. From there the course defines inerrancy, surveys the history of interpretation, and ends in the historical-grammatical hermeneutic and a Bible study method. The stakes are not academic: books like The Da Vinci Code raise exactly these questions, whether the right books were recorded and whether the text can be trusted, and the teachers commend engaging that story rather than fleeing it, because it is where neighbors and teammates actually ask their questions.
The story of authority is told through Martin Luther. Before Wittenberg he was, by the teachers’ affectionate word, neurotic: intensely anxious about his sin and afraid of going to hell, so much so that after a thunderstorm and a vow he became an Augustinian monk, and even then would confess his sins for up to six hours a day. His fear had a German name, Anfechtung, a word so loaded it resists translation: turmoil and doubt, pain, tremor, panic, despair, and desperation of spirit, as if God or the devil had sent a trial. His spiritual mentor, Johann von Staupitz, watched all this and gave the last counsel anyone would expect: go to the university, head the Bible department, and preach. God’s grace works differently than our methods, and it was in studying Scripture that Luther became convinced the gospel was something other than what the church of his day was teaching.
Luther began, slowly and fearfully, to think the unthinkable of his day: perhaps the church was wrong on some things. He saw himself not as rejecting the church’s tradition but as carrying on its true tradition against more recent corruptions, and he posted ninety-five points for debate on the church door at Wittenberg, at a moment when debate within the church was still possible. The list reached the pope, a papal bull demanded recantation, and excommunication followed. Summoned before the council and shown his writings, Luther did not answer bravely on the first day; he was afraid, and asked for a day to think. What he was standing against was not one denomination among many but the whole fifteen-hundred-year structure of pope, magisterium, bishops, and cardinals, understood as the guardian of truth itself.
The next day Luther gave the answer the teachers count the most remarkable statement since the close of Scripture, not inspired, but carrying an aura of God’s presence: unless convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by evident reason, since popes and councils have often erred and contradicted themselves, he was held fast by the Scriptures, his conscience taken captive by the word of God, and he could not and would not revoke anything, for to act against conscience is neither safe nor right. God help me. Amen. The teachers point out the humility in it: this is not yet the confident later Luther, but a man in fear, convinced by conscience bound to Scripture that even if the whole world went the other way, he could not.
Before the views of authority can be compared, tradition itself must be defined. Tradition covers practices handed down, like Sunday school and the way churches observe baptism and the Lord’s Supper; teachings handed down, like familiar gospel summaries; and, more critically, claimed bodies of teaching beyond Scripture. The dictionary gives the range: elements of a culture passed from generation to generation, customs, a body of unwritten religious precepts, time-honored practices. The question that divides the church is not whether tradition exists but what kind of authority it carries, and whether any of it is infallible.
Borrowing a distinction the teachers credit to Heiko Oberman and Keith Mathison, tradition one is a summary of Christian orthodoxy held by the universal church since its inception, infallible only because and only insofar as it accurately represents Scripture; if it does not represent Scripture, it is not true tradition, and it is always subject to Scripture. Tradition two is an infallible unwritten body of material containing information beyond what Scripture contains, said to have begun with the apostles and been passed down through the succession of bishops, revealed when a pope or council must speak from the deposit: the Marian dogmas of the assumption, perpetual virginity, and immaculate conception, and the infallibility of the pope, are the standing examples, teachings that cannot be derived from Scripture no matter how hard one tries.
The regula fidei, the rule of faith, is the early church’s summary of the Christian faith, that which has been held everywhere, always, and by all. Reading the fathers, one meets it constantly: a heretic is wrong because he does not square with the rule of faith, and when a father like Origen pauses to say what the rule is, it turns out to be a summary of Scripture: Christ born of a virgin, sinless, risen from the grave. The Apostles’ Creed functioned as the regula fidei, recited before baptism as the received summary interpretation of Scripture. Everyday evangelical speech works the same way: the word Trinity is not in the Bible, and no single verse states the substitutionary atonement in summary form, yet believers confess both as true because these summaries accurately represent what Scripture teaches. That is tradition one at work: true, and even called the word of God in the loose sense, without being infallible in itself.
The first of five views of authority is what the teachers call sola ecclesia, more politely the dual-source theory, the Roman Catholic position: the one deposit of faith once for all entrusted to the saints is carried down two avenues, written Scripture and an infallible unwritten tradition passed from bishop to bishop, with the magisterium, the teaching authority of pope and bishops, defining the canon and settling interpretation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states it plainly: both Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence, and the church does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from holy Scripture alone. The teachers ask the class to feel the historical force of the argument: in the first centuries, before the New Testament was gathered and recognized, where did believers go for authority? The development was not driven by villains grasping for power; a church holding one letter from a dead apostle naturally grew in interpretive authority. The question is not how it started but where it ended.
Prima scriptura holds that there are two sources of authority, Scripture and tradition, with Scripture primary: where rightly interpreted Scripture and tradition conflict, Scripture wins, yet Scripture by itself is judged insufficient for all matters of faith and practice, so tradition contributes essential elements for the Christian life. Some Roman Catholics, some Eastern Orthodox, and even some Protestants land here. The regula fidei view goes a step further in a different direction: tradition is an infallible summary of Scripture passed on through apostolic succession, so there is ultimately one source of revelation but two sources of authority, tradition simply being Scripture in summary form, inspired in its own way. This is the primary view of the Eastern Orthodox, and, the teachers will argue, close to the instinct of the early church; a 1984 Anglican and Orthodox dialogue could jointly affirm that Scripture is the main criterion whereby the church tests traditions, while tradition safeguards the integrity of the biblical message.
Sola scriptura, the position of the Reformers and most evangelicals, is the belief that Scripture is the final and only infallible authority in all matters of faith and practice. It does not empty the stage of truth of everything but Scripture; it puts Scripture alone at the front. In the earliest generations, the gospel was carried by teaching, by summary, by the regula fidei, and the closer that teaching stood to its apostolic sources the more accurate it was, but on this view it was never infallible, because unwritten tradition further and further from its source inherently corrupts and cannot be checked. Scripture alone remains as the infallible measure. This is tradition one: real respect for the creeds and the rule of faith, tested always by the Scripture they summarize.
The last position, solo scriptura, holds that Scripture is the sole basis and authority in the Christian life, that tradition is useless and misleading, and that creeds and confessions are merely man-made. The teachers place fundamentalist, restorationist, and Anabaptist streams here, and quote Alexander Campbell, founder of the Disciples of Christ: he endeavored to read the Scriptures as though no one had read them before him, anew every day, guarding even against his own views of yesterday. The Reformers would have rejected this outright, and the teachers press that it is not merely wrong but impossible: no one can divorce themselves from the family, the era, and the language they were raised in, and those who profess it still confess the Trinity, a doctrine framed in the church’s summary words. On the spectrum from absolute individualism to absolute authoritarianism, the healthy ground is in the middle: individual conviction with real respect for the authority of the believing community across the ages.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Key TermsTap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all fourteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What does this course say it will focus on?
2. Why do the teachers insist on studying the Scriptures as an ancient text, without the usual assumptions?
3. Which session do the teachers call the hinge of the whole program?
4. What was Luther’s condition before he became a reformer?
5. What surprising counsel did Johann von Staupitz give the fearful Luther?
6. How did Luther understand his own protest against the church of his day?
7. On what grounds did Luther refuse to recant at the council?
8. What is tradition one?
9. What is tradition two?
10. When a church father like Origen pauses to say what the regula fidei actually is, what does it turn out to be?
11. How does the Catechism of the Catholic Church say Scripture and tradition are to be received?
12. What historical argument do the teachers ask the class to feel the force of in the dual-source view?
13. What does sola scriptura actually claim, rightly defined?
14. Why do the teachers say solo scriptura is not merely wrong but impossible?
All fourteen correct. Lecture 1 is complete.
Luther said his conscience was taken captive by the word of God, and that to act against conscience is neither safe nor right. Where does conscience sit on your own stage of truth, and how do you tell a conscience bound to Scripture from a conscience bound to preference?
The teachers showed the class that they already trust summaries like the Trinity and the substitutionary atonement, words not found in any single verse. What traditions, good and questionable, has your own church history handed you, and how would you test them by Scripture?
The dual-source argument asks where believers went for authority before the New Testament was gathered. How would you answer that question, and what does your answer reveal about what you believe Scripture is?
The passage the syllabus sets over the whole course, from 2 Timothy 3: all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
The lecture’s own directions for the week: meet with others over the discussion group questions, since theology is done in community and not alone; the teachers also commend the course reading, naming a reference work on the journey from the ancient texts to our translations, studies of sola scriptura including one on its historical shape, Howard Hendricks’s beginner’s book on Bible study method, and F. F. Bruce’s advanced work on the canon of Scripture; and they encourage engaging The Da Vinci Code, whose questions this course answers. The course turns next to the case for sola scriptura itself.