The origins of Christianity came with quite a few conflicts. One of the first came through the disagreements and opinions between the Jews who made Jesus as their Messiah (with many Hebrew customs associated with Him), and the Gentiles who had none of those sorts of customs.
In the same way as the Gentiles destroyed the institution of the Jews (and eventually created the Catholic Church), Protestants destroyed the institution of the Catholic Church by not honoring the sorts of customs the Catholics honored.
At its core, Protestants have 5 Latin-based philosophical assertions, known as “solae”, that distinguish their theological differences with the Catholic Church:
- Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) — The Bible, and no other text or human statements, has final authority.
- Sola Fide (faith alone) — Faith in Jesus, not any other pathway, leads to salvation.
- Sola Gratia (grace alone) — God’s grace saves us as sinners, and not our works.
- Sola Christo (Christ alone) — Jesus is the only one with a role in our salvation.
- Soli Deo Gloria (to God’s glory alone) — the purpose of absolutely everything is only for God’s glory.
For simplicity’s sake, here’s the stripped-down version of the same 5 Solae within the lens of their historical context:
- If the Bible doesn’t say anything about it, neither the Pope nor the priesthood has any authority.
- You don’t need to do anything except trust Jesus to enter heaven. Other activities (e.g., paying indulgences to your priest, attending mass weekly or yearly, taking Eucharist at mass) aren’t necessary for salvation.
- We can’t do anything to earn God’s grace, and must simply have a personal relationship with Jesus.
- The saints and Mary have nothing to do with our salvation.
- If you disagree with any of this, especially #4, you’re impeding God’s reputation and at risk of sinning.
It’s not common knowledge, but the 5 Solae were originally the first 3, but it truly all stems from the first assertion: if Scripture alone has the only true authority, then human institutions are only optional.
Naturally, this was offensive to the then-only Church at the time. This caused many conflicts that, among other things, created the Enlightenment-era value systems that fashioned Western thought (and, naturally, the post-modern afterbirth we presently live under).
Philosophy has tremendous value when used properly. In the case of the Solae, their historical basis tends to override the more prominent meaning attached to the ideas themselves.
So, without the distraction of historical setting, the Solae allude to much deeper conflicts any theologically inclined Christian (and Church leadership) must wrestle with.
It’s worth noting the Solae are not matters of salvation, and believing either way on the matter does not bar someone from going to heaven. Their future position in the Kingdom may be up for debate, but that shouldn’t matter to us in our daily journey anyway (Luke 22:24-30).
A. Sola Scriptura
The first Sola has the most profound significance because it defines how much authority non-Bible-specific things have for moral guidance.
“Scripture alone” itself is more of a spectrum:
- Scripture alone is the only true authority for nearly everything.
- Scripture alone is the dominant authority for nearly everything.
- Scripture alone is the dominant authority for most things.
- Scripture alone is not the dominant authority for some things.
- Scripture alone is not sufficient authority for most things.
Parsing the concept further shows several moving parts from how much the Bible actually covers any given subject:
- When Scripture says something about a matter, can cultural considerations add or modify the idea?
- When Scripture is vague on a matter, are we safe to clarify any spiritual authority on it?
- When Scripture doesn’t address a matter, can there be any spiritual authority whatsoever about it?
Human culture across the lens of geography and history is vast, and it’s very likely God purposely omitted information to permit our interpretation to prevail. The best laws are written in the same spirit: rules stay fair when they omit context and transcend culture to apply to all people.
Problem 1: Vagueness
God loves variety (as evidenced by His vast array of life, celestial objects, and physical structures), so open-ended statements are logically consistent with His nature. This results in God intentionally framing the Bible with few to no verses about many subjects.
This vagueness does provide freedom (Galatians 5), but we can easily overstep into error:
- We mustn’t modify Scripture to accommodate cultural considerations beyond what the Bible plainly says. For example, there’s no way to interpret God seeing tax evasion (Mark 12:17) or homosexuality (Romans 1:26-27) as a good thing.
- If we make clarifications of vague passages, our faith in God creates that (and not necessarily the collective of Christianity), and we must accept our interpretation of the matter is only one way to see things.
- We can’t make absolute rules where Scripture is completely silent. We can make personal rules toward our spiritual development, but enforcing those rules is poor boundaries with others and a type of sin.
- In particular, church leaders must be careful what they forbid and how they do it within their domain of influence.
Every Christian believes in the spiritual authority of the Bible, but the Church’s authority certainly isn’t as clear:
- Most Catholicism and Anglicanism treat the Church as having equal footing with Scripture: 100% Bible + 100% Church.
- Most conventional Protestants treat the Church as having quite a bit of authority, but not completely: 100% Bible + 50-80% Church.
- Many newer denominations still assert some authority, but not very heavily: 100% Bible + 10-30% Church.
- In persecuted countries, the Church’s authority is constantly under attack and suppressed, so their authority is practically nonexistent: 100% Bible + 0-10% Church.
- When a church starts losing their relationship with God, the Bible starts taking a secondary role: 70-100% Bible + 50-100% Church.
It’s entirely a political question, and the authority of the Church shouldn’t matter as much as everyone abiding together in the spirit of love (John 13:35) and that there’s at least some sense of order (1 Corinthians 14:26-32).
Problem 2: Which Scriptura?
God designed everything as a self-contained unit inside each of His books. Each book gives a unique perspective on Him and, as a result, gives us standards on how to live and behave (2 Timothy 3:16). However, all the books of the Bible have differing degrees of authority because they all contain different types of messages and concepts, even though they frequently carry very similar themes.
The books of the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon distill to a difficult decision between two extremes:
- It’s better to live according to something given by God’s authority, even if there’s a possibility of that authority being mistaken (the Catholic view).
- A relationship with God can become maligned through misunderstanding who He is (the Protestant view).
Both sides have merits, and many believers will go to heaven who believe or don’t believe those specific books as Scripture. God’s wisdom is greater than the books themselves, and a growing Christian will discover those same truths through other Scripture or revelation anyway.
B. Sola Fide
“Faith” is a unique word to Christianity, and takes on two uniquely separate meanings:
- Our belief in God, who God is, God’s nature, et al.
- Our specific trust that God will do something.
Trusting God takes far more work than simply believing in Him, and requires taking action more than simply understanding, and in whatever form the situation calls for.
The framing of Sola Fide implies a strong demarcation between our trust and God’s saving action. However, Jesus died for all our sins before anyone alive today was even born, so our amount of faith doesn’t have much practical use for daily life relative to God’s faithfulness and promises. If we trust God, we follow Him, and if we don’t, we won’t, and actions speak louder than words (Matthew 21:28-32).
The Sola Fide battle came largely out of an archaic conflict around the Catholic Church’s politics. Failing the Church’s standards will not banish us to hell, and nearly every Christian would agree with that now: God’s standards are where we find or lose salvation.
Nearly every heavy dialogue about Sola Fide is pedantic, and is a mostly meaningless division among the Body of Christ.
C. Sola Gratia
In a sense, talking about God’s grace is going farther than mere belief, since we must believe God did something for us (i.e., what the word “grace” even means).
Before the contention, one irrefutable reality to clear up is that God is always the one who saves us. Nobody can technically “believe” their way to heaven: Jesus’ sacrifice actually does anything to save a person, after all.
Some people get tangled up in talking about “being faithful enough”, but that’s placing far too much emphasis on humanity’s influence. While God acts in response to our decisions, His decision framework defines how we make decisions in the first place!
Faith will invariably create works, and James literally affirms this with Rahab as an example (James 2:25-26). To that end, asking whether our works or faith save us is somewhat the wrong question.
This entire debate of grace/works sprung historically from a long-standing disciplinary paradigm that goes back as far as St. Augustine, and likely longer. Most early Catholic thought was inspired by the Greek tradition of subdividing absolutely everything into atomic components. While it can increase understanding, we often lose sight of the big picture in the process.
Instead, we should ask better questions in light of this Sola:
- Does our individual faith directly reflect with our works?
- Are any of our works associated with sins, even through our motivations?
- Are we spending more time trying to gain understanding than doing things with that understanding?
D. Sola Christus
As obvious as “in Christ alone” sounds, the Protestant framework relies heavily on how you interpret the presence of other beings besides God in the realm of the supernatural.
There are several broad questions we don’t have precisely clear answers on:
- Where do we go after we’ve died? Specifically, before the “Great White Throne Judgment”, at the immediate time right after we die.
- Do other people (and, by association, possibly ourselves later) have any supernatural influence on this life?
- In light of the two above questions, how does that affect how we should live our lives?
Protestants simply answer #3 with “none” and carry on, but Catholics have a more nuanced metaphysical view. Roman Catholics have a fixed hierarchy where saints are very prominently differentiated from the Christian rabble, while Eastern Orthodox are much more open to a wide variety of interpretations.
The reality is, we don’t actually know. However, some not-universally-accepted books of the Bible allude to semiregular interaction between long-passed people and present people. They also allude to plenty of demonic and angelic influence beyond Job. There are also a host of other interpretations of spiritual beings (such as Nephilim).
So, what you think of the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha heavily define what you think of Sola Christus. This represents more as a spectrum than as a binary viewpoint.
E. Soli Deo Gloria
“Glory” is another nuanced word, similar to “faith”, with at least a few definitions:
- Influence, such as the ability to create consequences.
- Reputation, implied to be others’ opinions.
- Strength, which alludes to aptitude or limits.
So, the idea of “everything for God’s glory” can mean:
- Everything is or must be done for God’s influence, which implies our decisions against His influence limit Him.
- Everything is or must be done for God’s reputation, which is a more outward-facing implication that our decisions against his reputation limit Him.
- Everything is or must be done with God’s strength, which means only God will legitimately advance any actions taken by anyone else who isn’t God.
Technically, all of those are true, but the Bible itself doesn’t seem to use many words to define it. “Glory” in the Bible can be translated directly as “weighty reputation”, with some words implying good or fearsome elements to it.
Protestants are quick to believe God’s glory is diminished when people pray to other people (i.e., categorizes as idolatry) while Catholics believe God’s glory is unaffected because it’s part of the celestial hierarchy (i.e., like contacting a different department in a large government bureau).
Final Thoughts
These Solae are an archaic model of Christianity, though they’re a deep exploration of theology.
Their usefulness, however, is partially limited among Christians. As it stands, the things that divide Christians since the 19th century have become more cultural than ideological, offset by specific theological stances that severely divide core denominations (such as the spiritual scope of a Pope’s power).
The reality, though, is we see everything in a philosophical haze (1 Corinthians 13:12). Jesus doesn’t ask us to understand any of this, but instead to prioritize love over understanding (1 Corinthians 13:2).