an excellent post

Here is a very thoughtful post: "So long, sola". Nic Paton argues that the modern way of holding the doctrine of "sola scriptura" is amiss. He says that it's at odds even with the intention of Luther and the rest who coined five "solas" as pillars of the Reformation, and he makes rather eloquently the point that the whole structure of the epistemology surrounding scripture is itself, er, unscriptural.

He mentions Wesley's "quadrilateral" in which truth is found in Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience; he even goes on to suggest that we might add to this Creation, intuition, and imagination. Wow.

I find these lines of thinking thrilling and liberating ... but also quite unsettling. It feels naughty, taboo, dangerous: am I really allowed to admit that the text of the bible, if taken as a single book (which it is not) has all manner of contradictions within it? Can I say that, rather than having to construct complex arguments about why it all means the same thing really? Can I happily repudiate those odd arguments that if two books, their authors separated by centuries and seas, use the same word in different contexts, they must be referring to the same thing? Is it ok to suggest, as I did last month, that "that was then; this is now"?

It feels like one is messing around with foundational ideas, with the fear that everything will come crashing down and nothing will be left. But as I write that, I'm reminded of Rob Bell's picture of doctrine not as the bricks in an edifice, but as a collection of springs surrounding a trampoline. Pulling out the one marked "scripture", and giving it a stretch to see what happens, seems like an excellent move.