This Week at Ss Cyril & Methodius

Thank you for your email and question about the Orthodox Church’s understanding of sola scriptura. Let me see if I can answer this and your other questions.

Indulgences. We don’t and never have sold indulgences. Whether it’s biblically sound or not, I'll leave it to Catholics and Protestants to debate since it isn’t really something with which the Orthodox Church has ever concerned itself. What I can say is that we’ve never seen any need for such a practice.

Sola Scriptura. Regarding sola scriptura, the short answer is that the Orthodox Church doesn’t believe that the Bible is the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice (sola scriptura). This doesn’t mean that we don’t see Scripture as the “rule of faith”; we believe and teach that Scripture is the standard of Christian faith and practice. We also believe that Tradition is the normative context within which to understand the Bible.

The slightly longer answer requires that we first determine what we mean by sola scriptura. While Luther used this phrase, he also recognized the importance of the church as the Bible's interpreter, the regula fidei (or “rule of faith” found in the creeds of the early councils) as the context within which to understand the Bible while also arguing that Scripture as the final authority in matters of faith and practice."The true rule is this,” Luther said, that “God's Word [i.e., the Bible] shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel can do so."

Later Protestant thinkers adopted a more radical version of sola scriptura arguing that Scripture is self-authenticating, clear (“perspicuous”) to the rational reader, self-interpreting ("Scripture interprets Scripture"), and sufficient of itself to be the final authority of Christian doctrine.

Radical Sola Scriptura. It’s worth noting that this more radical understanding of sola scriptura was not only meant to criticize Rome but Luther and the earlier reformers who held more or less to what we read in the Westminster Confession of Faith:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them (Chapter 1, Section VII).

Early Anabaptists together with most contemporary Evangelicals would (I think) reject the Westminster Confession’s affirmation of "the ordinary means" (such as turning to pastors and teachers) for reaching an understanding of scripture.

Check With Others. Finally, I should note that I have greatly simplified the various Protestant views of sola scriptura. I am not an expert in the various streams of Protestant theology and it would probably be better for you to ask a Protestant or Evangelical minister to give you a more authoritative summary of how they understand Scripture and its role in Christian life.

I've gone on too long so let me stop here for now. In my next letter, I'll look at how the Orthodox Church understands the relationship between Scripture and Holy Tradition

In Christ,

Fr Gregory

October 30, 2022

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