In the summer of 1861, when the war began between the North and South, Dr. Smith will tell you all about it. You think about that. The Union faced the nearly insuperable problem of blocking 3,000 miles of southern coastline from the Chesapeake Bay all the way south to the Mexican border. all with 60 schooners. Even though I was a product of public schools and a guinea pig of the so-called new math curriculum, I can do the numbers on this. If you spread the Union schooners out evenly, you have gaps of about 50 miles between the ships, giving new meaning to the word blockade. When I consider my task of tracing the history of the sufficiency of scripture that is about 1,500 years and about an hour, I'm afraid I'll leave 50 mile gaps in my historical blockade. The topic itself is a bit tricky to research. If you take the topic literally, you will not find entries on the history of the sufficiency of scripture. On reference to the theology, you'll find endless entries on scripture and virtually none on sufficiency. For a fleeting moment, I was tempted to examine the two foci independently and then combine my research. This approach reminds me of two university students, not my own, who teamed up to write a research paper. The philosophy professor gave them the research topic of Chinese metaphysics. The students decided to split their research. One student wrote a paper on China. You see where this is going. The other student wrote his paper on metaphysics, and on the day the paper was due, They got together, stapled the two papers together. We're quite proud of producing a fine paper on Chinese metaphysics. There's another image I'd like to suggest regarding this attempt to trace 1,500 years of history in an hour. Perhaps less than an hour since Dr. Smith stole most of my good material. What I will offer is something akin to a drive-by shooting. We will move through history, and at seminal events, pause, aim our guns, and unload a clip or two or three. Then we'll hop back into our reformed vehicle and speed on to the next target. Gas prices being the way they are, we won't get very far either. I hope that my gun will not misfire, or perhaps even worse, shoot blanks like a starter's pistol. I once heard the late William Stanford Reed give a lecture in Chicago on the kingdom of God and our role as soldiers in the army of God. Reed observed that in the army of God, premillennial dispensationalists made up the light infantry. Having once served with soldiers in that division of God's army, I hope that my weapons are of a bigger caliber. Scripture and tradition in the early church. I'm working under the belief and the conviction that the terms, the sufficiency of scripture, sola scriptura, and the regulatory principle of scripture can be used interchangeably. There are perhaps nuances that I did not catch, but my presuppositional starting point is the virtual symmetry of these three phrases. Psalm 12.6 says, the words of the Lord are flawless. We're in the King James Version. The words of the Lord are pure like silver in a furnace of clay purified seven times. The number of perfection. Psalm 19. Now it's interesting we sang Psalm 19 this morning earlier. Psalm 19, 7 through 11 reads, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure, and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward." You will notice that I began reading at verse 7. It is actually instructive to look at the opening verses of this chapter, verse 1 and following. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth. Their words to the ends of the world. How do we know God? How can we learn of God? Psalm 19 contains an interesting juxtaposition of work and word. Verses 1 through 6 speak of the general revelation of God in His creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands. The emphasis of this glorious truth has led to the construction by Rome and some of its theologians of an elaborate system of natural theology which attempts to know God by reason and experience apart from scripture. The second half of the psalm tells us that we know the Lord through his work to us, his special revelation. We know God through his law, statutes, precepts, commands, and ordinances, according to Psalm 19, 7 and following. I think without too much distortion, We can see in Psalm 19 a kind of theological dividing line between Rome and the Reformation. Couched in these terms, the issue at hand is really one of epistemology. Over decades and centuries, Rome developed a threefold epistemology. They based their their theological system on the tripod of scripture, church tradition, and officially, by the end of the late 19th century, on papal infallibility. This threefold Catholic epistemology is antithetical to our affirmation of the sufficiency of scripture. If we trace the development of Catholic epistemology, we can then proceed in our historical survey. How did scripture, church tradition and papal infallibility become equally authoritative. With no pun intended, I would argue that tradition has a long history. In the early church, Christian tradition was used to define the nature of church authority. Both Irenaeus and Tertullian used the title, the rule of faith, regula fide, as a weapon against heresy. It was a concise statement regarding God the Father, Christ the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit through whom the prophets preached. Irenaeus claimed that the bishops taught these truths and that they came down through the apostles, but he affirmed the scriptures as the only basis of faith. In contrast, Tertullian distinguished between scripture and tradition. In the words of Henry Chadwick, quote, almost as if they were distinct sources of revelation. Vincentius of Lorenz argued in the fifth century that true faith comes from the Bible and from the tradition of the church. Strictly speaking, he was not arguing for a dual epistemology, but for the sufficiency of scripture interpreted by the authority of the church. Vincentius also gave us the maxim which the Roman church used as its standard to distinguish true and false tradition. We must hold what has been everywhere, always, and by all believed. That is, catholicity of time, place, and number, or, put differently, ubiquity, antiquity, and universal consent. Saint Augustine also defended blended authorities with his confession, quote, I would not believe a gospel if I were not compelled by the authority of the universal church. In the 16th century, the opponents of the reformers loved to quote Augustine on this point. The church fathers are not of one mind on the issue of scripture and tradition. Two of the Alexandrian fathers, Clement and Athanasius, affirmed scripture as the sole source of authority. Clement equated the rule of faith with the content of scripture. Athanasius subordinated tradition to scripture. It was authoritative only if it agreed with scripture. In late antiquity, tradition was strengthened as Rome itself gained prominence. Church tradition meant not only the word of the apostles, but also those of bishops, especially the words of the bishops of Rome. I cite a couple of examples of this, the growing reverence for the Bishop of Rome. Pope Innocent I in the fifth century pressed his authority by encouraging the appeals from all other seas be resolved only by Rome, a sort of sola Roma. We've coined a new phrase. Leo I, the so-called father of the papacy, earned enormous power from his personal confrontation with Attila the Hun. Leo met Attila in Venice and persuaded him to stop his barbarian attacks. When the bishops met in Chalcedon in 451 to wrestle over the doctrines of Christ, Leo's formula of union resolved the issue. The delegates said of their pope, quote, Peter has spoken through Leo, end quote. Tradition is the weed in the Christian garden. The Bishop of Rome sometimes fertilized this tender house plant called tradition, and it eventually grew into the theological equivalent of kudzu. If you live up north and don't know what I'm talking about, have one of your neighbors here explain that to you. The growth of tradition as a coordinate source of authority did not emerge from a church council or papal pronouncement. It was a process, not an event. The history of the early church and the development of tradition are so closely intertwined, it is nearly impossible to separate them. This happened in part because the canon of scripture was not fully recognized for the first few centuries of the church. Let's move to the Middle Ages. In John chapter 15, Jesus gave us the beautiful picture of the vine and the branches. Jesus said, He trims clean so that it will be even more fruitful. The master gardener prunes the true vine in order to produce more fruit. In the medieval period, the true vine continued to prosper and yield its fruit, but the kudzu of tradition reentered the garden. From a historical perspective, the Middle Ages receives terrible press. Secular historians see it as a dark age in which Western civilization collapsed. It is depicted as an era of superstition, barbarism, and ignorance. One historian who saw in the medieval period only filth and disease called it a thousand years without a bath. Protestant writers tend to join secular and anti-clerical historians by gang tackling and piling on. One result of this antipathy and even antagonism is that you can count the number of Protestant historians who work in the field of medieval history on the fingers of a single hand with a closed fist. Ronald Wells, a historian from Calvin College, has put his finger on this Protestant angst we have towards the Middle Ages. Our assessment is not very sophisticated, but it's terribly profound. For Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed Christians, something went wrong in the Middle Ages. Baptists, Mennonites, and the Free Church concludes that something went terribly wrong in this period. The wrong here is the abandonment of the objective truth of scripture. For an exotic garden of purgatory, prayers for the dead, indulgences, pilgrimages, all of which lacked biblical support. The seed of tradition planted in antiquity grew into the vine of kudzu, and by the late medieval period, flowered into a dense mat which threatened the fruit of the true vine. By the late medieval period, the problem grew increasingly tangled. Who would interpret the scriptures? Church councils? Bishop of Rome? Or scholastic theologians? Who would define the tradition, both written and unwritten? Some in the church sought to broaden tradition from the fathers and councils to a whole range of teaching and ecclesiastical practice accumulated during the history of the church. The field of late medieval theology has attracted considerable attention by scholars in the past few decades. Professor Heiko Obermann stands at the center of much of this attention. Obermann's research over the past 35 years are largely spinoffs of his provocative book, The Harvest of Medieval Theology, published in 1963. In an effort to explain the historic relationship between tradition and scripture, Obermann developed a paradigm he called Tradition I and Tradition II. In its defense of a faith against heresy, the early church drew from scripture and trues directly inferred from scripture necessary for salvation. This regula fide of the early church constituted what Obermann has called Tradition One. This scripture tradition collapsed, according to Obermann, with the rise and influence of canon lawyers like Ivo of Chartres and Gratian of Bologna in the 12th and 13th centuries. The canonists elevated church law to the point that by the 14th century, a two-source theory of authority of scripture and tradition was in place. This synthesis formed the foundation of what Obermann called Tradition II. Tradition I affirms the sufficiency of scripture as understood by the fathers of the church. In case of disagreement between these interpreters, holy scripture has the final authority. This category included Oxford scholars Thomas Bradwardine and John Wycliffe. The principle of a sufficiency of scripture, in fact, provided Wycliffe the basis for his analysis and condemnation of medieval church practices which lacked a biblical foundation. The two-source fusion, called Tradition II, included not only the written and unwritten apostolic message, but ecclesiastical traditions and canon law. Tradition II considered this extra-biblical mess of pottage to contain the same degree of authority as that of Holy Scripture. Defenders of this dual source, Tradition II, include William of Ockham, Pierre d'Ali, Jean-Charles Gerson, Gabriel Beale, and the preacher Ambrosius of Speer. Promoters of the two-source theory used John chapter 20 verse 30 as something of a proof text. Quote, now Jesus did many other things in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book. In his dialogue, William of Ockham argued that in defending orthodoxy against heresy, the Pope, quote, should chiefly rely on the Holy Scripture. According to this theory, since the Bible did not address every issue of life, God in his providence provided an additional source of revelation going back to the apostles. Successive generations then faithfully passed on this authoritative tradition within the church. By the late medieval period, theologians and churchmen could recognize a church adrift from its biblical moorings. the church tolerated two epistemologies simultaneously. The scriptures alone were sufficient, and the scriptures plus tradition as equal authorities, well found a home in the wide awning of Rome's garden. In political terms, this is akin to the big tent theory. Let's move to the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages, if the Middle Ages suffer at the pen of many Christian writers and historians, the Renaissance is often portrayed as a calamity. Under the title, College Kids Say the Darnedest Things, the Wilson Quarterly collected actual excerpts of essay answers from history students waxing eloquent about the Renaissance. Their brain pooling produced these responses. The Renaissance bolted in from the blue. Life reeked with joy. Italy became more robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human beings. Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world, thanks to Northern Europe. Man was determined to civilize himself and his brothers, even if heads had to roll. It became chic, S-H-E-I-K, it became chic to be educated. Art was on a more associated level. Europe was full of incredible churches with great art bulging out their doors. Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike. Many Christians have unwittingly accepted at least half of the so-called Burckhardt thesis. In 1860, historian Jacob Burckhardt wrote Civilization of the Renaissance of Italy. It was the first book to identify a sharp distinction between the otherworldliness of the medieval period in contrast to the secular spirit of the Renaissance. For Burckhardt, the Renaissance is the beginning of the modern era. Many Christians conceive of the period as pagan, individualistic, the revival of classical humanism with even atheistic overtones. But it is also a period of enormous literary and artistic achievement, an age of discovery both geographically and metaphysically. The late Francis Schaeffer has contributed to this very negative image of the Renaissance. In his long list of achievements in the Kingdom of God, we should not rush to include his historical scholarship. He restricted his coverage of the Renaissance in How Shall We Then Live to developments in painting, sculpture, and architecture. Beyond some aesthetic advances, Schaeffer dismisses the Renaissance as a period of humanist autonomy. Any analysis of educational or philological development is lost amid his analytical framework of nature and grace and upper story, lower story. Schaeffer's assessment notwithstanding, it is wrong to press a pagan mold on the Renaissance. It's wrong to blend and thereby confuse the northern and southern expressions of the Renaissance. And it's wrong to see the Renaissance exclusively as a philosophy. and ignore its methodology. It's wrong to separate the study of the Reformation from the Renaissance. It is an error to blend secular and religious humanism together. The passion of humanists, of Renaissance humanists, involved the promotion of eloquence, not philosophy. Humanists sought to recapture classical texts of antiquity and thus recapture its vitality. The philological tools helped them to mine the textual treasures flowing into Italy by scholars who fled from Constantinople in 1453. The collapse of Byzantium actually provided one of the foundations of biblical scholarship which led to the Reformation. As we will see, several of the leading Protestant reformers were trained in the humanist methodology. These sharp philological tools they earned as humanist journeymen allow them to cut through the thick husk of tradition and restore the pristine text of scripture to its rightful place. Martin Luther was not himself trained in the humanist method, but he viewed the availability of these philological tools a providential gift of God for the reform of the church. The humanist motto of ad fontes, back to the sources, back to the fountain, pushed a generation of scholars directly to the biblical text without a reliance upon the glosses or scholastic commentaries. Far from being the enemy of the Christian church, the Renaissance provided education, patronage, and encouragement for the Christian scholar. Alistair McGrath captured this well with his assertion that humanists of the Renaissance were remarkably religious and concerned with the renewal rather than the abolition of the Christian church. This is the context for that oft-cited comment that Desiderius Erasmus, the humanist reformer, quote, laid the egg which Luther hatched. Despite their intense theological battles, Luther used Erasmus' Greek translation in preparing the German New Testament in 1522. Erasmus and Lorenzo Valla, another humanist scholar, used this so-called sacred philology to challenge several mistranslations they found in the Latin Vulgate. They called into question the biblical foundation of Mariology and penance. The collective work of the Renaissance scholars eventually dethroned the Vulgate from its exalted designation as scripture. For the historian examining Sola Scriptura, the Protestant Reformation is not only paydirt, it's the motherlode. In its simplest terms, the Reformation is simply a revival of biblical Christianity. In what Jaroslav Pelikan labels the tragic necessity of the Reformation. The crisis forced both Protestants and Catholics to defend and clarify their biblical foundations. It is more than a cliche to claim that the reformers dethroned the Pope and enthroned scriptures. Haldrig Zwingli's life and labor testify to the exploitation of a humanist education for the advance of the gospel. Bernard Mueller summed up this relationship in four words, quote, no humanism, no reformation. It's a terrible view of sovereignty, but it's a provocative statement. Some scholars challenge Zwingli's coronation as the father of the Reformed faith, but his contribution to biblical scholarship is undeniable. It's fair to say that the Bible stood at the center of the Zwinglian Reformation. In 1515, Zwingli's path to reform led him to Erasmus, who inspired him to devote his whole strength to the study of the Greek New Testament. This has even led to the rather silly conclusion that Erasmus was the secret reformer of Zurich, if not the father of reformed theology generally. Unlike Erasmus, whose Bible study led him to advocate moral reform in the church, Zwingli's study of the Bible led him to affirm sola scriptura, the formal principle of the Reformation. One historian described the relationship this way. By 1516, Zwingli had embraced Erasmus' principle that Christian belief and worship should be based upon the word of God itself. From there, it was a short but pivotal step to the more radical assertion that you must leave all human learning and learn the meaning of God purely from his own simple word. Zwingli took this one small step for man, this one giant leap for mankind's reform, through his preaching at Great Minster in Zurich in 1519. Everything was to be judged by scripture. The Bible formed the centerpiece of Zwingli's reform efforts in Zurich and in his own worldview. All of life, personal and communal, according to Zwingli, was to be normed by scripture. Zwingli made this exceedingly clear after the famous affair of the sausages. A dozen hungry printers in Zurich feasted on sausage in violation of the rules of Lent in March of 1522. Zwingli dined with them, smelled the aroma, but did not himself eat the forbidden meat. When the scandal became public, Zwingli preached a sermon where he challenged the church's right or its authority to impose regulations which lacked biblical support. As the debate widened, Zwingli questioned the biblical basis for clerical celibacy, fasting, and the intercession of saints. The fundamental issue at stake in the Zurich disputation which followed was whether God's word or human tradition would be the authority in the church. Zwingli prepared the 67 articles for the Zurich debate. The first 15 of the articles defend the Bible as the source of truth, the full and final authority. Article 1 reads in part, quote, all who say that the gospel is nothing without the approbation of the church, err and slander God. Article 15 says, whoever believes the gospel shall be saved. Who believes not shall be damned, for in the gospel, the simple truth is clearly contained. The town council of Zurich provided Zwingli with his greatest victory. when they granted their formal support of the principle of Sola Scriptura. In this brief history of Sola Scriptura during the Reformation, I chose to begin with Zwingli because I wanted to identify the formal principle of the Reformation in a formal creed, the 67 Articles. Next, we will examine Martin Luther in three stages. His exposure to the doctrine, his belief, and finally, his advocacy of Sola Scriptura. We cannot pinpoint the precise date of Luther's discovery of the doctrine. He encountered it in a monastery at Erfurt, but he most likely began to accept it in his first year of teaching at Wittenberg in 1508 and 1509. At this date, Luther knew very little Greek, and even less Hebrew. He still used the Latin Vulgate when he compared the texts of Augustine and the Scholastics. Luther did not promote the doctrine of Sola Scriptura until he learned the biblical languages, exegeted the texts, and examined the doctrines of sin, grace, penance, and salvation. By 1517, 1518, Luther had mastered Greek and Hebrew. It's no coincidence that the time of Luther's public notoriety parallels his mastery of the biblical languages. When Luther took his public stand for scripture alone at Worms in 1521, he could stand unmoved come life or death because of his uncompromising trust in the clarity and sufficiency of scripture alone. Luther's earliest statement on solo scriptura dates from 1520 in the assertion of all the articles wrongly condemned in the papal bull. He further developed his teaching of solo scriptura in his attack on the sacramental system of Rome and the Babylonian captivity. He rejected sacerdotal theology because it lacked a biblical foundation. His affirmation of sola scriptura is actually stated in negative terms. Quote, what is asserted without the scriptures or proven revelation may be held as an opinion, but need not be believed. The Roman Church responded to Luther with a papal bull of excommunication, ex surge domini, signed June 15th, 1520. It contained a preface followed by 41 articles of condemnation against Luther's teaching. Like all other papal bulls, the title comes from Psalm 73, 22. Arise, O God, judge thine own cause. The preface continued, quote, a wild boar has invaded thy vineyard. Luther had indeed invaded the vineyard and armed with sharp clippers, he continued his root and branch pruning of the Roman kudzu. Once Luther had determined the strength of his biblical position, he bowed to no one, including or perhaps especially the Pope. He said of the pontiff, quote, the pompous pontiff, pleasingly pompous pontiff. You know, when you read Luther in the originals, He has such a pedestrian vernacular that you really have to be careful what you quote from him. Here's what he said of the Pope. The stupid dolt wrote such wretched stuff that I had to laugh. Since then I've never been frightened. It is interesting that the Augsburg Confession of 1530 contains no statement on scripture. How is it that Luther, whose conscience was captive to the word of God, at the Leipzig debate in 1519 could ignore the formal principle of sola scriptura? There are several answers for this. Luther, of course, was not present. There was a price on his head. He had to stay in Wittenberg. His trusted disciple, Philip Melanchthon, represented him in Augsburg. But that's not really the answer. Actually, Luther's high view of the inspiration of scripture did not differ from the scholastic theologians. Luther's chief contribution to the doctrine of sola scriptura was its Christocentric foundation. Christ is at once the center of Scripture and the Lord of Scripture, Luther said. In a now famous statement, Luther wrote, quote, in the words of Scripture, you will find the swaddling clothes in which Christ lies. Simple and little are the swaddling clothes, but dear is the treasure, Christ, that lies in them. For Luther, the recovery of Scripture alone was the recovery of Christ alone. I wanted to read some excerpts from the University of Paris, Sorbonne, who after the Leipzig debate also issued its own condemnation and judgment of Luther. Let me read a few of the excerpts. There are ten principles here. Number one, the scriptures are obscure. The scriptures cannot be used by themselves. The scriptures must be interpreted by masters, especially the masters of Paris. The fathers are obscure. The fathers cannot be interpreted by themselves. The fathers must be interpreted by masters and especially the masters of Paris. The sentences of Lombard are obscure. The sentences cannot be used by themselves. The sentences must be interpreted by masters and especially by the masters of Paris. Therefore, the University of Paris, Sorbonne, is the chief guide in matters of scriptural interpretation, for its decrees against Luther and Melanchthon are clear and can be understood by everyone. Like Zwingli, John Calvin used the humanist tools and methodology to become a master exegete While he studied law at Orleans and Borgia, Calvin came into contact with scholars trained in the humanist method. He developed a love of humane letters and in 1532 self-published his commentary on Seneca's De Clementia. At this point in his career, he cited as his authority Cicero and Aristotle, not the Bible. We are unable to attach a precise date to Calvin's conversion to evangelical doctrine. Nicholas Copp's famous rectoral address at the University of Paris in 1532 is filled with biblical references and it's thought that Calvin assisted in some role in the writing of this address. By May of 1534, Calvin surrendered his clerical benefices which had helped finance his education. Through contacts with evangelical humanists and intense study of the Bible, God, in Calvin's words, subdued my heart to docility, teachableness as it's often translated. Calvin wrote no formal treatise on sola scriptura. His commentaries in the institutes, however, attest to the highest reverence and authority Calvin ascribed to the holy scriptures. The late John Gerstner has assembled a list of excerpts from Calvin's writings about scripture. It is, Calvin wrote, the sure and infallible record, the unerring standard, the pure word of God, the infallible rule of his holy truth, the certain and unerring rule. to read just a few. Calvin contributed to our understanding of Sola Scriptura by showing the relationship between word and spirit. He emphatically rejected the monopolistic practices of Rome as the interpreter of Scripture. The Catholic Church argued that it must be the Lord of Scripture because the Church made the Scripture inasmuch as the church determined what book should be included in the canon of scripture. In clear language, Calvin subordinated this heady role of Rome. When the church receives it and gives it the stamp of her authority, she does not make that authentic, which was otherwise doubtful or controverted, but acknowledged it as the truth of God. She, as in duty bound, shows her reverence by an unhesitating assent." Calvin's dependence upon the Holy Spirit as the interpreter has even earned him the title, the theologian of the Holy Spirit. This designation is much more flattering than the observation by Roland Bainton Bain says, one notes that Luther appealed to the spirit to validate and interpret scripture, Zwingli added philology, and Calvin adduced plain common sense. The Institutes contains Calvin's most eloquent testimony of the spirit as our interpreter. For as God alone is a sufficient witness of himself in his own word, so also the word will never gain credit in the hearts of men till it be confirmed by the internal testimony of the spirit. It is necessary, therefore, that the same spirit who spoke by the mouths of the prophets should penetrate into our hearts to convince us that they faithfully delivered the oracles which were divinely entrusted to them. I want to move to the Counter-Reformation and beyond. The Reformers' assertion of sola scriptura became an effective apologetic against the Roman Catholic dependence on scripture and tradition. After losing the loyalty of entire nations, Rome finally took the offensive. Here again, the label chosen by the historian betrays their sympathy. Was it the Counter-Reformation or the Catholic Reformation, which stifled the advance of Protestantism? The Roman Catholic Church finally fought back with three weapons. The Inquisition, the Index, and the Council of Trent. For our purposes, the ecclesiastical Council of Trent is most significant. From 1545 to 1563, an assembled hierarchy of churchmen met sporadically at the border town of Trent to achieve three goals. End the schism, combat heresy, and reform the church in head and members. The fourth session of Trent formalized Rome's position on scripture, tradition, the papacy, indulgences, the sacraments, purgatory, and the invocation of saints. Scripture, according to Rome, was not the only source of authority. The article reads, quote, all saving truths are contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions received from the mouth of Christ himself or from the apostles themselves. With the phrase, the written books, Rome meant the canonical books and all the books rejected by Protestants as apocryphal. Further, it endorsed the Latin Vulgate as the only reliable and authoritative translation and gave Rome the exclusive patent on interpretation. From a Catholic perspective, the Council of Trent succeeded. Rome regained significant territory and at the very least stopped the hemorrhaging. It is undeniable that Trent promoted a Catholic reawakening. The two ideological combatants eventually became armed combatants until the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. The two sides had clarified the issues. Though overly simplistic, we can say that the fundamental issue of the sufficiency of scripture was championed by Protestants and emphatically rejected by Rome. Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican branches of the Reformation supported the principle of Sola Scriptura. While time does not allow us to examine the Church of England and the Elizabethan settlement, we should know that the 39 Articles, 1559, explicitly affirm the sufficiency of Scripture. Article 6 reads, the Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation. So that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." It goes on to list the canonical books and explicitly rejects the apocryphal books. There is a fourth branch or wing, if you will, of the Protestant Reformation, the Anabaptists or Radical Reformers as they're sometimes called. Luther used his own more colorful language to describe the Anabaptists. I purposely identified them as a wing of the Reformation because they represent the polar opposite of Rome on a theological continuum. Thus, Roland Bainton can write, quote, that of all the parties in the Reformation, the Anabaptists were the most scriptural. When they said the Bible alone, they really meant it. Their motto, no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, is of course a creed. They do, however, win the trophy for minimalism. When the Vicar of Constance pressed Zwingli about the implications of Solus Scriptura, Zwingli could not provide a good answer. Could Zwingli affirm Solus Scriptura and the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed? Wondered the vicar. The Anabaptist leader, Conrad Grebel, found this an easy question. He responded, what we are not told to do in clear words and example in scripture, we're to consider forbidden as if it were written thou shall not. If we use Heiko Obermann's helpful paradigm of tradition one for the single source view of the process of reformers, and tradition two for the dual source scripture and tradition view of Rome formalized at Trent, then it follows that the Anabaptists are tradition zero. I cannot conclude without offering some of my own research about the Scots reformer John Knox. On the face of it, it appears that he fits nicely into the reformed box. The Scott's Confession of Faith in 1560, of which Knox was the principal author, clearly states the principle of sola scriptura. As we believe and confess the scriptures of God sufficient to instruct and make the man of God perfect, so do we affirm and avow the authority to be of God and to depend on neither men nor angels. One biographer called Knox's dependence upon scripture alone his, quote, master principle. The list of Knox's affirmation about the sufficiency of scripture is long, yet he simply doesn't fit into tradition one category with the other Protestant reformers. The problem stems with Knox's prophetic consciousness. Knox saw himself standing in tradition of the Old Testament prophets. Knox not only held the ability to foretell with great power and great eloquence, he also claimed on occasion the ability to foretell events. He made numerous predictions, and in his history of the Reformation in Scotland, Knox, at the appropriate time, would remind his audience of his prediction and its apparent fulfillment. His predictions went far beyond the simple deductions of forewarning that sinful activity would lead to God's judgment. Knox preached a sermon at St. Giles Church, Edinburgh, August 19th, 1565, and claimed that God had given him prophetic powers of insight. Here's what he said on that occasion. I decree to contain myself within the bounds of that vocation whereupon I was called. I dare not deny, lest that in so doing I should be injurious to the giver. that God has revealed to me secrets unknown to the world. And also to forewarn realms and nations, yes, certain great personages of translation and changes, when no such things were feared, nor were yet appearing, a portion whereof cannot the world deny to be fulfilled. Knox does not claim to be perfect prophet, but a prophetic vessel nevertheless. Knox also on one occasion prayed in thanksgiving to God for the insight, quote, thou hast given me above the common sort of my brethren. For these and many other reasons, I'd like to offer another category which will make no one happy. I would assign Knox into tradition 1A, He's not defending the authority of tradition, and he's not promoting extra-biblical revelation. He's not a 16th century charismatic, for this would violate his belief and his defense of Sola Scriptura. He's simply inconsistent on this point, and we can't force him into the theological box which satisfies our own preconceptions. Knox simply does not fit consistently into the tradition one category with the other Protestant reformers. It's important that we who believe in sola scriptura know what we mean by that phrase. We do not mean nuda scriptura, that is barren scripture. We do not mean bibliolatry or the Bible alone mentality which disdains creeds and confessions. We are a confessional church and we do not wish to cut ourselves adrift from 2,000 years of church history. Our sovereign God is Lord over all of history and not merely certain decades or centuries. Our confessional standards, while enormously helpful, are of course subordinate to the only sure word of God. In closing, I want to offer one more caveat about the historical labels we sometimes encounter. These labels are not of our own choosing and appear complete with biases, prejudices, and hidden agendas. For example, I challenge the label of the so-called progressive era, 1890 and 1920, in American history, and the so-called European Enlightenment. In the book that I will never write, I will relabel the epics complete with my own set of biases and prejudices. I'll relabel them the regressive era and the European un-Enlightenment. We should beware of the label Renaissance, the rebirth of culture, and the Reformation, the revival of biblical Christianity. The prefixes re-, of course, mean again. And without knowing it, we are giving lip service to a cyclical view of history. A cyclical view suggests a giant turn of the wheel of fate and fortune. moving without purpose. A cyclical view of history, of course, is a pagan view, and to affirm it is an assault upon the sovereignty of God. The true use of the prefix re- is a reminder that the sovereign lord of history will, in his time, make all things new again. The scriptures alone ensure us of this truth. Amen.