Month: June 2025

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Theology by Scripture Alone Alongside the Church Alone

The supreme authority for Christian theology is the Triune God and the Holy Scriptures through which he speaks. The Lutheran Scholastic theologians, beginning with Johann Gerhard, spoke of theology’s “principle of being” (principium essendi) and principle of knowledge (principium cognoscendi). Theologians in the Protestant tradition often speak of Holy Scripture as the supreme authority in Christian theology. This is not incorrect. But it should be qualified by recognizing along with the Lutheran Scholastics that although Holy Scripture is the inspired Word of God, its authority ultimately rests on the authority of the Triune God who through it addresses humanity. 

Affirming that Holy Scripture is the foundation and source of all true Christian theology does not rule out the reality that God speaks through other mediums. Indeed, Luther speaks of all creatures as God’s masks, channels, and created words through which God addresses humanity.  The eighteenth-century Lutheran philosopher Johann Georg Hamann spoke of humanity as enveloped by God’s address through creation. 

Nevertheless, we must make a distinction between God’s auditory and visible words. God acts on his creatures through the physical mediums of the whole of creation. However, God only tells humans how they are to know him in these physical mediums through his auditory Word. God’s auditory words were revealed to the prophets and the apostles and written down in the Bible. We know that the Scriptures are the inerrant Word of God because Jesus Christ affirmed their authority and proved his own by rising from the dead.  

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Justification in Jesus Christ is the Center of Theology

Theology is centered on, yet not exhausted by, the message of justification in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ offers a unilateral and unconditional promise of salvation. Therefore, the distinction between law and gospel is also central to the enterprise of Christian theology.

The central problem of human life is the question of justification. Social psychologists have demonstrated that across culture and times, humans are driven on by status seeking behavior in their relationships with other humans.  A given cultural group sets standards of behavior, and humans compete with one another to see who can best embody them. The ultimate goal of this competition is gaining a status of proper recognition before others (i.e., social justification).  In religion, this principle also holds true. Whatever the ultimate goal of salvation is in a given religion, adherents will invariably achieve it by performing a set a works (be they moral, ritual or both). Another option might be to mystically dissolve the self to escape the relentless demand of the gods or God. Even modern atheism embodies this impulse, since by pretending that God and his law do not exist, one is free from the need to justify oneself before God, or at minimum, religious authorities. Rather, the self dissolves upon death.

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Theology is Always Contextual, but Never Relative

The practice of theology is always embedded within the concrete world of history and creation. As a result, it is always contextual, yet never reducible to mere relativity. The Bible is the Word of God to humanity. Yet, as centuries of biblical scholarship has demonstrated, an individual author composed each book to address a specific crisis and context.  Similarly, in each generation, the ministry of the Church catholic interprets and proclaims the Word of God within a specific context.

This may involve applying the implications of an objective Christian doctrine in relation to a contemporary cultural or civilizational challenge. Invariably, the theologian must also interpret the Word of God within the matrix of any given era’s scientific, philosophical, and general cultural beliefs. This interaction may involve the theologian demonstrating the coherence of the Word with these beliefs as articulated within the dominant epistemological paradigm.  Indeed, in order to make the Word of God intelligible to people in a given era, every theologian consciously or unconsciously adopts an ancillary philosophy.

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Theology by Grace Alone through Faith Alone

Theology is fundamentally about knowing and confessing the Triune God through faith in his Word (Rom. 10:9). God the Holy Spirit works to create saving faith through the Word. Such faith is in no way the byproduct of human will or activity (Rom. 10:17, 1 Cor. 2:14-16). Scripture does allow that a natural knowledge of God accessible to all people exists (Ps. 19, Rom. 1-2). Yet, this philosophical recognition of God and his reality is not theology in its proper sense. At best, the natural knowledge of God is a partial, garbled knowledge that the sinful human heart will manipulate according to its own purposes. Since God saves by faith through grace alone, so too the theology that gives rise to that faith comes by grace alone.  

In this vein, the early Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard (1582 – 1637) spoke of theology as a “practical habitus” that God implanted in the human heart and mind.  In the Aristotelian philosophy of the day, a “habitus” was an aptitude for developing a habitual behavior, such as a virtue. Gerhard argued that God’s grace made theology possible by means of the Holy Spirit working on the heart and mind of the theologian. This divine action enables readers to fully apprehend the truths present in the text of Scripture. Of course, the theologian might still draw on his own humanly acquired knowledge when studying Scripture. However, only God’s Spirit and the gifts that he bestows allows the theologian to properly apprehend the content and unity of the Faith. Such a divinely given “aptitude” is “practical” because its ultimate end is the proclamation of the grace of God in Christ through Word and Sacrament. 

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

Cover image from: Tom Nash, “What Are Inspirations of the Holy Spirit?,” Catholic Answers, accessed June 23, 2025, https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-are-inspirations-of-the-holy-spirit; other image from Chantal LaFortune, “Sacred Scripture Unveiled,” Holy Apostles College & Seminary, December 8, 2023, accessed June 23, 2025, https://holyapostles.edu/sacred-scripture-unveiled/.