The Bible is amazing. The God who created all the universe and each tiny flower in a mountain meadow decided to communicate with people in their own language, and to inspire people to write it down for future generations to read! Even the Bible talks about about invaluable and awe-inspiring the Scripture is. God gave the law through Moses, and after he re-hashed it all to the Israelites in the plain of Moab (Deuteronomy means “second [statement of the] law”), Moses said, “They are not just idle words for you—they are your life” (Deut 32:47). God spoke through Isaiah, “These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word” (Isaiah 66:2). When Jesus quoted a difficult passage of the psalms, he parenthetically remarked, “And the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). The Bible is fully authoritative, life-giving, and amazingly clear (indeed, often far too clear for our comfortable self-deceptions). I do not think we can speak highly enough of God’s gracious gift of Scripture. But it is possible to speak inaccurately of it.
“Sola Scriptura” is one of the five Reformation “solas” (the plural ought to be solae, or rather soli, since one of them is masculine). It is called the “formal principle” of the Reformation, meaning what distinguishes Protestant theology’s method from the theology of Roman Catholics. But “sola Scriptura” has come to mean many different things to different people. It seems to me that some of these meanings are true, but some of them are false. We must evaluate these meanings in turn. (more…)
Marginalia Review of Books just published an interview with Sebastian Brock, who was one of the main architects for the “rediscovery” of Syriac Christianity in Anglophone scholarship since the late 1960s. His interviewer, T. Michael Law, is himself an Oxford-trained expert in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), just as Dr. Brock himself started his academic career fifty years ago. Although in places the discussion turns to in-house matters among academics, many parts of the interview will intrigue those interested in Middle Eastern Christianity, such as the differences in the canon of the New Testament between Syriac and Greek or Latin Christians. The interview may be listened to here (unfortunately, I cannot find a transcript for those who prefer their media read rather than heard).
Readers interested in late antiquity and the rise of Christianity may also be interested in the interview with Peter Brown on the same site, in which he discusses his recent book, Through the Eye of a Needle (part 1, part 2). In the process he has some characteristically provocative suggestions regarding the shape of Christianity in a period of flux.