Reading the Bible with the Church
Why sola Scriptura never meant “just me and my Bible.”
Introduction
While it has become a well-known phrase amongst evangelicals, Sola Scriptura may be one of the most misunderstood phrases of the Reformation. To be sure, most people use it simply to uphold the authority of the scriptures; they fail to understand how it connects to the authority of the church and tradition. On one side, the Roman Catholic understanding is tempted to elevate the tradition over the scriptures; the Protestant can be tempted to overcorrect and to discount tradition altogether.
To be clear, the idea of sola Scriptura does not mean that the scriptures should be read apart from the church, where the reader comes to the scriptures as though they are the first to ever read them. Instead, it means that scriptures are to be understood as being the authority that stands over the tradition of the church.[1] As the 2nd London Baptist Confession puts it, the scriptures are the only inspired, infallible, and final authority for the church.[2] However, this is not to say that the church has no other authority. Rather, as Carl Trueman explains, while there are other authorities for the Christian, it is the scripture that norms, or rules over, all other authorities.[3]
If both Scripture and tradition have authority, how do we keep them in the right order, so that one does not fall into the ditch of the Roman Catholic view of tradition above scripture, or the Biblicist view of only scripture? To answer this question, one would greatly benefit from using what Tyler Wittman and R. B. Jamieson call biblical reasoning.[4] In short, the argument is that Tradition is not something added after Scripture. At its best, it is the church’s faithful reading of Scripture that is “from Scripture, with Scripture, and to Scripture.”[5]
What Is Sola Scriptura?
As previously mentioned, sola Scriptura means that the scriptures are the supreme norm or rule over the life of the Christian, because scriptures alone are given by the inspiration of God (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It is important to notice, however, that even within this foundational argument for Scripture alone, there is the assumption that doctrine will flow from the Scriptures as the man of God uses them. The argument that Paul is making is that while the scriptures are the only word that has come directly from God, the responsibility has been given to the servants of God to clearly teach what has been said to those who will come after. This is made clear in Paul’s exhortation for Timothy to hold fast to the pattern of sound words he had received (2 Tim. 1:13). Paul also reminds Timothy of the faith that had been handed down to him through his mother and grandmother (2 Tim. 1:5), showing that the apostolic faith was not received in a vacuum, but had been handed down through the faithful teaching of those that had come before him. Rather than treating tradition as something that stands over the Word, Paul’s instruction assumes that all teaching must remain accountable to the Scriptures. This is why Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for using tradition to make the Word of God of no effect (Mark 7:8), while the Bereans were commended for testing even the apostolic teaching by the Scriptures (Acts 17:11).
This is important because even in the pages of the Bible, we can find this Biblical Reasoning, which does not jettison tradition but sees it as subservient to the scriptures. To be clear, sola Scriptura does not mean that scripture and tradition are rivals, but that they are friends with an ordered authority structure.
What Sola Scriptura Is Not
While phrases like “No creed but Christ” sound extremely spiritual and hold tightly to the reformation principle of sola scriptura, they are in practice nothing more than private interpretation and often individual tradition with no real accountability. As Trueman argues, “no creed but the Bible” does not actually get rid of creeds. It just replaces public, testable confessions with private and often unspoken ones.[6] In other words, everyone has an authority that they have placed over themselves and that they have drawn from the scriptures. The question is whether or not these authorities are public and open to correction. Matthew Barrett explains that this is precisely the reason that the reformers did not use phrases like “only authority,” but rather the only infallible authority.[7] While this distinction may seem small, it is the difference between what has been called sola Scriptura and solo scriptura. As Barrett points out, one is historical Protestantism, and the other is spiritualized individualism. [8] This is important because solo creates a false choice between “just me and my Bible” and “me connected to the church.” Every person who reads the scriptures will be doing the work of theology, but the question is whether they are doing so correctly and faithfully. Wittman and Jamieson are helpful here by reconnecting the work of theology and tradition with the Bible, by explaining that the creeds and confessions of the church are simply the grammar of the scriptures.[9]
So, if we are refusing to jettison tradition completely, what is the role that it serves? The argument has been previously made that tradition is meant to be the servant of Scripture, but what is meant by this? To use biblical language, scripture is the revelation of God to man, whereas tradition is the witness of the church to what the scriptures teach. This means that functionally, tradition is the great gift of the church of the past to the current and future church. As Trueman argues, confessions are useful because they provide clarity, accountability, and doctrinal boundaries, and without them, churches become unstable, and worse, they become vulnerable to overreach.[10]
Roman Catholic and Protestant Views of Tradition
This overreach is where the Roman Catholic and Protestant views part ways most clearly. Rome understands Scripture and Tradition as one unified divine revelation that has been entrusted to the church to be authoritatively interpreted by the magisterium. In this system, the church functions as the final interpreter of the scriptures, instead of the teacher of the scriptures. As a result, Scripture is not rejected, but it is never allowed to stand alone as the sole infallible authority apart from the church’s interpretive authority. In that system, Scripture is authoritative, but it is not the church’s sole infallible authority.
To be fair, Rome is right to care about continuity and the history of the church. No Christian should act as if the church began in the 17th century, nor should they believe that their church’s or favorite internet pastor’s most recent statement of faith is the clearest expression of Christian theology. The problem is that in this grasp for continuity, Rome goes too far. Barrett explains that Luther rejected Rome’s “two-source theory” because it treated tradition as an extra-biblical and infallible source of revelation alongside Scripture.[11] Luther’s concern was not that councils or fathers were useless; his concern was that councils and popes can be in error while the Scripture cannot.
Trueman helps to draw the lines between the two most clearly when he explains that the scripture is the norming norm, while tradition, the creeds, and confessions of the faith, are normed norms.[12] To put this another way, Protestantism treats Scripture as magisterial and the church as ministerial, while Rome effectively reverses that order. To illustrate, Magisterial authority creates doctrine while Ministerial authority explains it.
Why This Matters Today
Trueman explains that this debate was not something that began or ended with the Reformation, but that is something that we must understand and be able to apply to our current spiritual and cultural contexts, stating that the church must have a truth that comes from outside of us.[13] If we do not, we open ourselves, not just to the dangers from those that are outside of the church, but to those inside, and to our own selves. If the church loses that correct understanding of sola scriptura, it will inevitably drift toward institutional overreach or interpretive chaos.
When Christians are cut off from the church’s historic teaching, they become easier prey for both private error and institutional overreach. This was the primary thrust behind the reformation, and the danger for those today is that they allow other leaders in the church to bind their consciences beyond what scripture actually says. Additionally, the danger on the other side is that every man, while rejecting all other authority because, in essence, he becomes his own pope. Augustine’s warning here is clear: when the authority of the scriptures begins to shake, whether being shaken by oneself or another, one’s faith will begin to shake, and when faith is shaken, love itself will begin to grow cold.[14] This is exactly what happens when Scripture is either replaced by human authority or ignored in the name of personal insight.
Conclusion
To be clear, Sola Scriptura is not a rejection of tradition; rather, it is the insistence that tradition must remain in its proper place. Scripture alone is the church’s final and infallible authority because Scripture alone is God-breathed. Tradition, creeds, and confessions all matter, and should not be rejected, but all of them are servants, not masters. Where the Roman Catholic view gives tradition too much authority, much of modern evangelicalism gives it too little. The historic Protestant view offers the better way: read Scripture with the church, with the creeds, and with the confessions that are under the word of Scripture.
[1] Montgomery, Travis. Lecture notes for (B01) Tradition and Scripture SP-26 M. Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, April 2026.
[2] The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2014), 1.1.
[3] Carl R. Trueman, The Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 26.
[4] Tyler R. Wittman and R. B. Jamieson, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), xx.
[5] Ibid., xviii.
[6] Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 61.
[7] Matthew Barrett, “Sola Scriptura in the Strange Land of Evangelicalism: The Peculiar but Necessary Responsibility of Defending Sola Scriptura Against Our Own Kind,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 19, no. 4 (2015), 19.
[8] Ibid., 19.
[9] Wittman and Jamieson, Biblical Reasoning, xx.
[10] Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 43.
[11] Barrett, “Sola Scriptura in the Strange Land of Evangelicalism,” 18.
[12] Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 26.
[13] Ibid., 26.
[14] Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson Jr. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958), 1.37.