Back of the Envelope

God blogger Mathetes argued in his contribution to the last God or Not Carnival that sola scriptura was illogical:

A question that has always been at the forefront of all of my endeavors with sola scriptura or, strictly text-based religions, (i.e. religions that take their meaning, truth, guidance and importance from scripture; religions like Judaism, Islam and protestant Christianity) is the problem of interpretation. The problem, as it pertains to Islam and protestant Christianity, goes something like this:

1.There are many interpretations of the Qur’an/Bible
2.Islam and protestant Christianity claim to be absolutely true (in most cases)
3.Therefore one interpretation of the Qur’an/Bible is the correct interpretation
4.There is no authority under either Islam or protestant Christianity that tells which interpretation is correct.
5.Therefore the Absolute truth claims of Islam or Christianity are either
a. false, because they are wrong
b. irrelevant, because the correct interpretation under the presuppositions of the two positions is impossible to be known leaving us skeptics.

This is most certainly a big question for Muslims and protestant Christians alike. If they do not have a correct interpretation of the Qur’an/bible, they don’t have truth. How would a protestant Christian or a Muslim go about finding an answer to this? I hope to be able to show what resources, faculties and thoughts both Muslims and Christians might begin to use to examine this argument.

I believe that this is an incorrect interpretation of what sola scriptura means. From, of all things, the Wikipedia definition:

Sola scriptura reverses the order of the Church's authority, as it is understood in the Catholic tradition: Instead of the Catholic Church's teaching authority being the interpreter of Scripture, sola scriptura makes Scripture the interpreter of tradition. For this reason, it is called the formal cause of the Reformation.

Sola scriptura did not originally signify a radical rejection of all authority of the Church to interpret the Scriptures, but rather represented a claim that the teaching authority of the Church is regulated by the Bible, constrained by Scripture in both a limiting and a directing sense. As John Wesley stated in the 18th century, "The Church is to be judged by the Scriptures, not the Scriptures by the Church." The Reformers argued that the Scriptures are guaranteed to remain true to their divine source, and thus, only insofar as the Church retains scriptural faith is it assured of all the promises of God.

Sola scriptura holds that the Bible is the most reliable source of authority on the Christian faith. It is not, however, the only source of authority.

If I believed that the tradition of the Church (not referring narrowly to the Catholic Church, but to the broad family of believers throughout history), other historical sources, archeology, and reason had no authority, then indeed I would be hard pressed to find a non-circular reason to believe in the Bible's authority. However, these things do have authority, and even though none of them have the same authority as the Bible themselves, they do affirm its greater authority. You may wonder how a greater authority can be derived from lesser ones. It is basic inductive logic, the same as is used in science all the time. No particular experiment has any great authority, but the sum of them allows us to derive the scientific laws which have great authority.

The same principle is used in interpreting scripture. While none of these things are the ultimate authority in interpreting scripture, they each can contribute to our understanding. The ultimate authority in scriptural interpretation, though, is the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Spirit works to teach us truth when we study the Word of God with humility. But what should we make of the wildly different conclusions reached by Christians about various theological points, such as free will and predestination? I would argue, and I think most Evangelicals feel this way, that those points of contention which Christians have argued over for hundreds of years may not be as important as we think they are. Our specific beliefs about the details are a lot less important than an active faith that lives out the clear teachings of Jesus.