The Five Solas - Cameron Jungles - 10-2-2013 PM

“The Five Solas”

Brief Historical Background

•  Progressive development of church authority
•  Church authority came to be recognized as equal to the Bible.
•  Church authority essentially trumped the Bible’s authority.
•  Church authority and developing traditions led to distortion of biblical teaching, loss of the true gospel, and increasing abuse of church power.
•  Reformation was the response.

5 Guiding Principles

•  Sola Scriptura
•  Solus Christus
•  Sola Gratia
•  Sola Fide
•  Soli Deo Gloria

“Sola Scriptura”

• Scripture Alone

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
(2 Tim. 3:16-17, NIV)

What is sola scriptura?

•  Belgic Confession, 1561
•  Westminster Confession, 1647
•  London Baptist Confession, 1689
•  Philadelphia Confession, 1742
•  New Hampshire Baptist Confession, 1833

What is sola scriptura?

•  The Bible alone is God’s true, inerrant Word and is the sole authority for faith and practice and is completely sufficient for the knowledge of salvation, growth in the Christian life, and guidance in the will of God.

Key elements of sola scriptura
 Necessity
 Revelation
 Truthfulness
 Authority
 Canon
 Sufficiency
 Clarity


Challenges to sola scriptura
 The world’s “-isms”
 Postmodern relativism
 Pragmatism
 Other academic disciplines
 “Morality” by majority
 Cultural myths
 Church tradition
 “churchy familiarity”
 Hearing without obedience
 Personal spiritual experiences
 Bad hermeneutics

Where do we go from here?
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. (Eph. 2:19-20, NIV)

Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:14-15, NIV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
(Rom. 1:16, NIV)

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
(1 Pet. 1:23, NIV)

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
(2 Tim. 3:16-17, NIV)