“The sacred and inspired scriptures are sufficient to declare truth” – Athanasius

I am joined for the October episode of Echo Zoe Radio by Pastor Mike Abendroth of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Mike also hosts a radio show and Podcast called No Compromise Radio.

This episode marks the third installment in the series on the Five Solas of the Reformation, this one on Sola Scriptura. (For the first two, see Dr. James White: Sola Gratia & Sovereign Grace, and Phil Johnson: Sola Fide.)

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An outline of our discussion is as follows:

• The history of Sola Scriptura. The doctrine arises from the debate over authority that took place early in the Reformation. The Reformers argued that the Scriptures alone carry the authority of God in all things relating to the Christian Faith.
  • Sola Scriptura is the formal principle of the Reformation. (Sola Fide being the material principle.)
  • Without Sola Scriptura, everything else falls.
  • In fact, if you listen carefully, you will notice that the real authority for Rome is neither Scripture nor tradition, but the church. What is Scripture and what does it teach? Only the church can tell you. What is tradition and does it teach? Only the church can tell you. As the Roman theologian John Eck said “The Scriptures are not authentic, except by the authority of the church.” As Pope Pius IX said at the time of the First Vatican Council in 1870, “I am tradition.” The overwhelming arrogance of such statement is staggering. But it confirms our claim that, for Rome, the only real authority is the church: sola ecclesia. – W. Robert Godfrey, Sola Scriptura, page 43
• The role of tradition in the Protestant Church.
  • The creeds and confessions (the London Baptist Confession of 1689, the Westminster Confession, The 39 Articles of the Anglical Faith, etc.) carry much weight in the Protestant Church, and summarize what we believe, but they are subordinate to Scripture.
• How do we define the Scripture?
  • The Roman Catholic Church will say that they selected the Canon of scripture, so they know what it contains, and what it lacks.
  • Jesus affirmed the Old Testament Canon by quoting from it, and taking it as it at face value. He never quoted from the Apocrypha, and neither do the New Testament writers.
  • The Apocrypha was added to the Catholic Bible approximately 30 years into the Reformation.
  • Mike recommends that people read the Apocrypha.
• How do we rightly interpret scriptures?
  • “You have Scripture for a master instead of me; from there you can learn whatever you would know” – John Chrysostom
  • Mike goes by what he calls the “blue-collar hermeneutic”, which is to say that blue-collar workers, then as well as now, were the primary audience, and the Bible was written such that they could understand it.
  • Scripture is illuminated to the believer by the Holy Spirit.
  • Men are gifted supernaturally with the gift of teaching to better understand the Scriptures.
  • Scriptures must be interpreted in light of authorial intent.
• We discussed the contemporary Protestant application of Sola Scriptura, and where Evangelicals diverge from the application of Sola Scriptura in the Church today.
  • When people begin to add internal machinations such as “God told me,” “God revealed to me,” “God gave me an impression,” “God gave me some intuition,” “God told me something and His Spirit testified to my spirit,” etc. they do the same thing Catholics do by putting their tradition at an equal standing, or above the Scriptures.
  • The idea that God talks to people today is a functional denial of Sola Scriptura.
  • Blackaby’s “Experiencing God,” Beth Moore’s Contemplative Prayer, etc. are other contemporary examples of a functional denial of Sola Scriptura
• How do the cults abuse Sola Scriptura?
  • They approach scriptures in one of two ways:
    • They use their own book, outside the Bible.
    • They use the Bible, but add to it with their own writings and/or teachings.

Scriptures Referenced

• 2 Timothy 3:16
• Acts 17:10-12
• 1 Thessalonians 5

Additional Resources

• Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible – R.C. Sproul, Joel Beeke, et. al. [Aff.]
• What Do We Mean by Sola Scriptura? – by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey
• Scripture Alone (Video)
  From R.C. Sproul’s teaching series What is Reformed Theology?
• The Sufficiency of Scripture – John MacArthur (two audio sermons)
• Why Evangelicals are Returning to Rome: The Abandonment of Sola Scriptura as a Formal Principle – Bob DeWaay
• Thoughts on the Sufficiency of Scripture: What It Does and Doesn’t Mean – John Piper
• Sola Scriptura – A.A. Hodge

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For the September episode, my friend Dick Kuffel, an elder at Twin City Fellowship in St. Louis Park, MN, joined me to discuss Ephesians 5:25 – Husbands, love your wives. Dick is preparing to present this material in a pair of adult Sunday School lessons later this month.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:47 — 41.3MB)

An outline of this month’s episode is as follows*:

• How the topic came to be:
  • It’s totally a guy thing – From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 26, 2011
  • Dick’s Ad Agency experience
  • Dads in ads today
  • Husbands need help
• Our ideal in Christ – the perfect husband
  • Ephesians 5:18b-33
• Back to the beginning: The vows
  • Remember how this started? This thing called marriage?
    “to have and to hold,
    from this day forward,
    for better for worse,
    for richer for poorer,
    in sickness and in health,
    to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
  • There are no “if” statements in there!
• She is a treasure, and she has to know it – Every Day!
  • Alistair Begg — “there is no more precious gift entrusted to a man than the treasure of his wife. She is to be admired and prized above all others. She is to have first place in his heart, mind, and affections. She is to be given special care and attention that leaves no doubt of her husband’s esteem”.
• Begg breaks it into four topics:
  • Ears for her alone
    • Communication
    • Face-to-face
    • Eye-to-eye
    • Listening and engaged – because you care
    • It’s an act of love
    • Helen Keller would have chosen hearing if given the opportunity to be able to hear or to see. Lack of sight kept her from things, whereas lack of hearing kept her from people.
  • Eyes for her alone
    • If she is a treasure—she must know that you have only ‘eyes for her alone’; Not the magazines, Not victoria’s secret, Not compared to other women, and Watch out for website porn!
    • James Dobson interviewed Ted Bundy, who stated that his psychotic behavior began with pornography.
  • Lips for her alone
    • Limit compliments about others
    • Never compare
    • Do not comment on appearances
    • Avoid flirting
  • Hands for her alone
    • Men often see casual touching as friendly, but women may see it differently
• Husbands are responsible to lead
  • Poor leadership causes conflicts
  • The husband’d authority to lead is God given, limited, and active
  • There are purposes to the husband’s leadership role:
    • To show how God leads His people
    • To develop humility and obedience in all concerned
    • To guide the family in righteousness
    • To give a sense of order and stability in the home
    • To provide what is needed for the family
    • To protect the family
    • To accomplish ministry for God more effectively
    • To help family be a good witness to the world
• Our idols often get in the way, that which is in our hearts: our thoughts, intentions, beliefs, desires, and attitudes
  • Security
  • Material things
  • Knowledge
  • Control
  • Wealth/job/work/success
  • Ourselves
  • Good health
  • Other gods, gods of the cults
  • Another person
• Share the household workload
• Protect your wife
  • Physically:
    • Provide a safe home
    • Be chivalrous
    • Take care of her car
    • Care for her personal health
  • Emotionally:
    • Protect her from the stress of overworking
    • Protect her from unnecessary worries regarding finances and your family’s well being
    • Protect her from the emotional strain of harmful people
  • Spiritually:
    • Make time to nourish her spiritually
    • Pray with her
    • Read the Bible and solid Christian books with her
    • Block out devotional time with her
    • Talk to her in everyday conversations about Christ & His promises of grace
    • Enjoy Christian music together
    • Get involved with a local church
  • To do this, you must know her!
• Guard your finances
  • Follow key financial principles:
    • Give to God first
    • Spend less than you earn
    • Develop a budget
    • Have emergency cash reserves
    • Don’t finance pleasure items
    • Protect your family’s finances with adequate life insurance
  • Be aware that most family debt comes from the husband
    • Women generally fear debt
    • Women take on debt in small, incremental amounts
    • Men take on large sums of debt at once
  • Develop a budget and keep it

*Note: This outline is adopted from Dick’s presentation notes, much of which was taken directly from his source materials: the books by Begg, McCall, and Scott that are listed below under “Additional Resources”.

Scriptures Referenced

• Ephesians 5:18b-33
• Psalm 119:2
• James 4:1-3

Additional Resources

• Dick’s Adult Sunday School class on the subject.
  • Loving Your Wife – Part 1 (mp3)
  • Loving Your Wife – Part 2 (mp3)
• Why Honoring My Wife Matters So Much – Brandon A. Cox
  (This came to me in the form of a tweet from another believer, which he sent out at roughly the same time we were interviewing. While I endorse this particular article, I don’t necessarily endorse other works by the author.)
• Lasting Love: How to Avoid Marital Failure – Alistair Begg
• Loving Your Wife as Christ Loves the Church – Larry E. McCall
• The Exemplary Husband: A Biblical Perspective – Stuart Scott
• The Fulfilled Family: God’s Design for Your Home – John MacArthur

Disclosure: links to book on Amazon are affiliate links. Echo Zoe Ministries receives a commission on sales generated via these links. Your purchase provides financial support for Echo Zoe.

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Sign up for email notifications of new episodes of Echo Zoe Radio, and follow me on Twitter, and/or Facebook! Note that if you’ve followed Echo Zoe on Twitter in the past, you are probably now actually following my personal Twitter account, and will need to re-follow @EchoZoe for the blog and podcast.

Robert Bachtell is a friend and fellow member of our local church, Twin City Fellowship. He recently did a two-part Sunday School series on young-earth creationism entitled The Case for a Biblical Worldview. Robert believes that the key issue in the debate over origins, whether it’s the creation-evolution debate or the young earth-old earth debate, is how scripture is handled. His case is that if scripture is respected and interpreted carefully, it’s difficult to reach any conclusion but a young-earth view.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:07 — 40.9MB)

An outline of this month’s episode is as follows:

• We started off by describing why a Biblical worldview matters. Robert boils down the debate between Old and Young Earth Creationists to the question of Biblical authority.
• Robert describes the hermeneutical terms “eisegesis” and “exogesis”.
• Much of the discussion revolves around how one interprets the Hebrew word “yom”, which translates to “day” in English. Just like the English, there are three ways to interpret it:
  • A 24 hour period of time.
  • The portion of that 24 hour period which is between sunrise and sunset. As opposed to the night.
  • A historical period of time. “Back in my day…” or “I remember the day when…”
• Robert illustrates the importance of a worldview by telling a story of a magic show in which the magician makes his assistant disappear. As adults, familiar with how magic works, we know it is merely an illusion, slight of hand. However, a child witnesses the same magic trick believing the assistant actually disappeared. The proper worldview (that of the adult) leads to an accurate conclusion of what happened at the magic show.
• In discussing the differences between an atheistic, or secular-humanist worldview and a Christian worldview, the differences are black & white.
• Robert does one-on-one evangelism, and local Universities are his favorite places to go. Universities being popular places among those holding a materialistic worldview, Robert often has to break down the veil between their worldview and his in the process of sharing the Gospel with them. He illustrates to them that the existence of a building is proof of a builder. and likewise the creation, which is far more complex than a building, is proof of a creator.
• He can then invite the person he’s speaking with to step into Robert’s worldview for a moment, to show the implications of that worldview; the nature of sin and the necessity of a savior.
• Robert quotes geneticist professor and self-described Marxist Richard Lewontin:
  • “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

• Materialism relies heavily on science. However, science is merely a tool for developing an understanding of the world around us, and is not a worldview in and of itself.
• Scientific materialism relies on what is observable (seen) in order to understand the world. In contrast, Hebrews 11:3 says that “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”
• Robert believes that what is clouding the worldview of Old-Earth Creationists is a feeling of intimidation. Materialistic secular-humanists speak with a sense of authority in describing their worldview, which can be intimidating. Old-Earth Creationists attempt to explain their creationist worldview in light of a contradictory explanation that is found in scientific-materialism. Rather than seek out alternative explanations for evidence that seems to contradict their worldview, they surrender to it and revise their own worldview.
• The clearest reading of Genesis 1-2 will lead the reader to understand that the Earth and the Heavens were created in six literal 24-hour days. In addition, Exodus 20:8-11 leaves no room for anything but a literal understanding of the creation week.
• Robert uses the analogy of a sunken shipwreck with many gold coins on it to illustrate how we interpret evidence. If the newest coin found on the shipwreck is dated 1850, we know it couldn’t have sunk before then.
• Evidence of a young earth, and a relatively recent creation:
  • The salinity of the oceans. Based on the current salinity, and the rate at which the oceans get saltier every year, an old Earth is all but impossible unless the oceans were filled with freshwater until only recently.
  • The Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field of the earth is steadily getting weaker. If the earth is older than that suggested by the young-earth view, the magnetic field would have been too strong to support life based on the current rate that it is weakening.

• Much of the explanation of the evidence we see in nature for the age of the universe, or age of the earth, is based on assumptions. Many of these assumptions expose a world-view bias. Examples include radio-metric and radio-carbon dating methods. Radio-carbon dating is built on the assumption that levels of carbon 14 have always been constant, and have always decayed at a uniform rate. If there were ever smaller concentrations of carbon 14 in the atmosphere, or if it ever decayed faster than it does today, dating methods would result in a specimen appearing older than it really is. To complicate the issue, a cataclysmic global flood would result in a decrease in carbon 14 levels.
  • The assumption that material processes have always been the same throughout history is called Uniformitarianism.

Scriptures Referenced

• Genesis 1
• Hebrews 11:1,3
• Job 38:4
• Exodus 20:8-11

Additional Resources

• Robert’s original lectures from Twin City Fellowship:
  • The Case for a Biblical Worldview Part 1
    mp3 Audio | Power Point | Handout PDF
  • The Case for a Biblical Worldview Part 2
    mp3 Audio | Power Point | Handout PDF
• A young Earth—it’s not the issue! – Ken Ham
• Answers in Genesis: In the Beginning – Echo Zoe Radio episode 17, September 2009
• Steeling The Mind of America 2000 Conference #05 – One Blood: The Biblical Answer To Racism – Ken Ham MP3
  I mentioned my first experience with Ken Ham, and this was it, I attended this conference in Keystone, Colorado in August of 2000.
  * File courtesy of Firefighters for Christ
• Origins – Starlight and Time with Dr. Russell Humphreys (youtube)

Get Connected

Sign up for email notifications of new episodes of Echo Zoe Radio, and follow me on Twitter, and/or Facebook! Note that if you’ve followed Echo Zoe on Twitter in the past, you are probably now actually following my personal Twitter account, and will need to re-follow @EchoZoe for the blog and podcast.