…. worship the Bible as a text, I found this small passage from a book I have to be of interest.
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One of the most enduring descriptions of Protestantism comes from the English theologian William Chillingworth (1602–44). In his The Religion of Protestants the Safe Way to Salvation (1637), he famously declared that “the Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants.” This is perhaps one of the most familiar statements of one of the slogans that emerged from the early Reformation and is characteristic of Protestantism as a whole — the Latin phrase sola Scriptura (“by Scripture alone”).1 At its heart, Protestantism represents a constant return to the Bible to revalidate and where necessary restate its beliefs and values, refusing to allow any one generation or individual to determine what is definitive for Protestantism as a whole.2
This might suggest that Protestantism is a text-centered religion like Islam. It is important to appreciate from the outset that this idea can be misleading. There are indeed parallels between the two, particularly in relation to how texts are interpreted and the problems that arise through an absence of centralized authority figures and structures. While some very conservative Protestants do treat the Bible as if it were the Christian Qu’ran, the majority are clear that the Bible has a special place in the Christian life on account of its witness to Jesus Christ rather than its specific identity as a text. For Martin Luther, the purpose of scripture was to “inculcate Christ,” who is the “mathematical point” of the Bible.
The real contrast is thus actually between the Qu’ran and Jesus Christ, not the Qu’ran and the Bible. When the first generation of Protestants spoke of the “authority of the Bible,” this was to be understood as “the authority of the risen Christ, mediated and expressed through the Bible.”
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(I often wonder, when reading some posts online, how much that may have changed in some people's minds.)
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One of the most enduring descriptions of Protestantism comes from the English theologian William Chillingworth (1602–44). In his The Religion of Protestants the Safe Way to Salvation (1637), he famously declared that “the Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants.” This is perhaps one of the most familiar statements of one of the slogans that emerged from the early Reformation and is characteristic of Protestantism as a whole — the Latin phrase sola Scriptura (“by Scripture alone”).1 At its heart, Protestantism represents a constant return to the Bible to revalidate and where necessary restate its beliefs and values, refusing to allow any one generation or individual to determine what is definitive for Protestantism as a whole.2
This might suggest that Protestantism is a text-centered religion like Islam. It is important to appreciate from the outset that this idea can be misleading. There are indeed parallels between the two, particularly in relation to how texts are interpreted and the problems that arise through an absence of centralized authority figures and structures. While some very conservative Protestants do treat the Bible as if it were the Christian Qu’ran, the majority are clear that the Bible has a special place in the Christian life on account of its witness to Jesus Christ rather than its specific identity as a text. For Martin Luther, the purpose of scripture was to “inculcate Christ,” who is the “mathematical point” of the Bible.
The real contrast is thus actually between the Qu’ran and Jesus Christ, not the Qu’ran and the Bible. When the first generation of Protestants spoke of the “authority of the Bible,” this was to be understood as “the authority of the risen Christ, mediated and expressed through the Bible.”
******************
(I often wonder, when reading some posts online, how much that may have changed in some people's minds.)
