We've considered various Sola Scriptura camps that are found wanting in their claims as well as briefly touching on some of the groups that esteem Scripture down to those who functionally despise it.
We must weigh all of these versus a genuine Biblicist rendering of Sola Scriptura. For some this is an impossibility, for others Pandora's Box that can only lead to chaos.
These risks are of course real but we also must ask this - is the Church and its authority retained and maintained by man-made forms (such as traditions, confessions and denominations) or is it by the Holy Spirit? The answer is obvious as well as the fact that for all their efforts in resorting to man-made means, their efforts have failed and in fact these means (given that they are man-made contrivances) only result in further division and even schism.
Detractors will argue this is a false dilemma as these are not mutually exclusive. While forms play an important role in ecclesiology and even soteriology, they are God-ordained, not man-made. This is the difference. The Scriptures frown on tradition and authoritative (and binding) confessions cannot be found in Scripture. Denominations are condemned. This is not a false dilemma.
Like Fundamentalism in some respects, this call to Biblicist Sola Scriptura is a 'back to the Bible' call as well as a demand for 'plain reading' and even 'literalism'.
And yet it is unlike Fundamentalism in that such Biblicism (we'll embrace the epithet) must reject its tendencies toward minimalism (or reductionism) and anti-intellectualism.
At the same time, an apostolically-rooted Biblicism retains a sceptical view of human capacity and philosophy. As such it leads to textual submission in the face of seeming incoherence and as a consequence, a willingness to embrace mystery and duality. This is the difference between embracing and apprehending doctrine as opposed to crafting and seeking to flesh out a comprehensive theology.
Despite its claims, Fundamentalism's literalism is in the end selective and not representative of a true Sola Scriptura position. And at other times its literalism is so wooden and mathematical that it betrays its true allegiance to Enlightenment-era epistemological categories.
Evangelicalism claims to elevate Scripture and hold it in the position of authority. These claims are found wanting and when it comes to ecclesiology, ethics, and Christian living - absurd. For most Evangelicals, Scriptural authority is completely divorced from the notion of Sufficiency - reducing Scripture to a starting point. This reduces the concept of authoritative revelation and exchanges it for a philosophical axiom. And with Evangelicalism it's often not even that, as the movement easily falls prey to cultural gimmicks and worldly-wise strategies.
And while some Confessionalists such as Keith Mathison will argue that a distinction must be made between Sola Scriptura and 'Solo' Scriptura - these arguments are also found wanting, and sometimes disingenuous and even farcical. Additionally, if Confessionalists want to venture down the 'Charism' argument of authoritative tradition, they will find it self-defeating. Further a study of the said 'tradition', harking back to the theology of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, one finds a completely different epistemology at work. Those Confessionalists who start down the path of the Chain of Being and/or Aristotelian logic often land somewhere other than Geneva or Wittenberg - and I certainly don't hear of any Confessionalists arguing for a return to Galen or Ptolemy. They too reject a massive sweep of not only Medieval thought, but whole categories which were intricately woven into the theological matrix under which Medieval Roman Catholic Christendom operated.
For figures like Mathison, Sola Scriptura is understood in conjunction with a Confessional tradition. In other words Scripture is read through that lens and forced into conformity with it - his T2 position, is in reality the Sola Scriptura of Confessionalism. His T2(Trent) and T3(Vatican I) contrast is a distinction without a difference.
I realize they reject such characterizations but I stand by them and will argue that this is in fact the reality. This is what led me to abandon Confessionalism over twenty-five years ago. The Mathison concept of Sola Scriptura also rests on a kind of Progressive Orthodoxy which in turn is tightly wed to a historical narrative - one that I find wanting if not completely false. The Magisterial Reformation was not a return to or repristination of New Testament apostolic Christianity. Not even close. In many respects it was unable to even move past the catastrophic shifts that took place during the time of Constantine.
Once this narrative is dispensed with, the argument that doctrinal progression should cease with the formulation of the Magisterial Protestant Confessions in the 16th and 17th centuries collapses - as their Mainline detractors will happily point out to them. My argument here is not to argue for the continuation of progressive orthodoxy post-1647, but to dispense with the entire Confessionalist project. These largely fine but certainly flawed documents are helpful guides, but when granted authority and when tied to subscription they take on deutero-canonical status. Additionally Confessionalist denominational bodies utilize 'church orders' and the like which also represent a blatant denial of Scriptural Sufficiency - replacing it (and the wisdom of local elders) instead with what is tantamount to canon law.
Sola Scriptura in a Confessional framework is a misnomer. In reality it is at best a Prima Scriptura position. Scripture is authoritative, but this is understood within a framework of philosophical scholastic theology (reason) and tradition.
It must be stated that literalism (as it is being argued for here) is not absolutized common sense. This leads to the kind humanistic confidence and even hubris we see in historic Pelagianism which is also on display among some in the Stone-Campbell movement, Wesleyan-Holiness circles, Fundamentalism, and among some Anabaptists. I'm sorry to report it's certainly to be found in the teaching of David Bercot who despite this has nevertheless produced some fine work on the nexus between Patristic teachings and the New Testament.
This kind of thinking results in a practical negation of the Fall in terms of moral capacity and reason - both of which the New Testament represents as hopelessly tainted by the events in Eden, if not decimated.
These debates are further complicated by the fact that we also see this tendency (of a reduced view of the Fall) in other circles (such as the Mainline) but they are arrived at by means of different roads. Strange as it may seem to some given the emphasis on Total Depravity, this error can even be found in some Reformed circles wherein commitments to Dominionism and its reliance on philosophical speculation and deduction as well as a commitment to the 'goodness' of creation and the charge to redeem, sanctify, and thus covenantalize all spheres of human life and culture - the result is a high view of man's capacity for reason and morality. This is also seen in the American tendency to sanctify the ethics of capitalist economics. God's thinking and categories are equated with the limited human capacity for coherence and subject to finite and fallen man's ability to grasp them. Such Kingdom models also rely on synergistic models in which the Holy Spirit works alongside unregenerate mankind to 'advance' culture and society. One thinks of Kuyper's framing of Common Grace. Pelagianism (or at least Semi-Pelagianism) enters by means of the back door but in the end becomes just as dominant as in the systems in which it is openly advocated and championed.
To argue against what I've just said, they will often split theological hairs and make a distinction between 'Total' Depravity and my view which they would cast as the error of 'Utter' Depravity.
Biblicism implies submission to the authority of Scripture - the Oracles of God and in particular the New Covenant writings of the apostles which are essential to rightly interpreting and understanding the fulfilled but still relevant Old Covenant writings.
We do not subject the Scriptures to finite and fallen epistemological categories whether limited by sense experience, so-called laws of logic, or coherence tests. It involves an embrace of duality (unresolved tensions, antinomies, and the limiting of concepts) which is not the absolutizing of dualism. In fact the dualities that exist are the result of the Fall - the presence of death, the groaning creation, the present age being described as evil, the Adversary called the god of this world. These are dualities and dualism but they are not inherent or absolute as seen in Manichaeism. They are not something that emerged with creation but rather with the Edenic Fall.
The eternal realm is largely closed off to us but not in the way someone like Kant suggested. We have revelation. The Scriptures give us glimpses such as the visions of the prophets, the heavenly host revealed to Elisha's servant at Dothan, and the many images in the Apocalypse that unveil reality as it exists in planes or dimensions that are fully real and yet not accessible to us. We cannot predicate on the nature of these entities and how they in turn relate temporally or corporally to our order.
As such revelation implies the world as we know it is one of mystery and we are largely blind apart from revelation. Modern materialist mankind thinks he is unlocking the mysteries of the universe as he tinkers with physics, electromagnetic currents, and artificial intelligence. These are surface level inquiries - though I admit some realms of exploration are starting to venture into deeper and more metaphysical questions, which in turns opens up some rather (and potentially disturbing) avenues of inquiry and discussion. Science tinkers with the material world but erroneously thinks this is all there is and thus the answers are found in man's experience of the material even though man cannot account for ontology, teleology, and the like. Meaning, purpose, value, and the very nature of reality still elude scientific inquiry and always will. It's the wrong tool wielded in great hubris at that.
Biblicist epistemology is limited, and lacking the ability to penetrate the metaphysical realm, we cannot hope to form or formulate the coherences necessary for actual knowledge. At best we deal with hints and analogies. The theologians of Christendom have (for the most part) embraced notions of philosophical theology and then debate over nature, induction, and the nature and role of logic. Some are dubious of fallen man's ability but believe that once faith is present, epistemology is redeemed, allowing such thinkers to rightly employ philosophy in the realm of theology and in order to flesh out a larger unified theory - the worldview required for culture building.
The Biblicism advocated here rejects this. It rejects Scottish Common Sense Realism, Thomism, and the Anselmian-Augustinian notion of faith-empowered understanding.
It is fundamentally a sceptical epistemology, dubious of man's ability to understand reality or formulate truth and wholly dependent on what God has revealed. We are surrounded by the truths of nature which though fallen still communicate heavenly-eschatological ideals - though we cannot hope to properly understand them. We can speculate and ruminate, but the minute we start to draw conclusions, formulate dogma, or flesh out a larger body of extra-Scriptural doctrine, we run the risk of falling into error and idolatry. We must simply submit to the these truths in faith.
In many cases truths are apprehended but because we lack the larger comprehensive truth, any conclusions or applications we derive will more likely than not become skewed, partial truths mixed with error or omitting essential elements we are unaware of. The end result is a malformation, a distortion of the truth, which if built upon can degenerate into error on a colossal scale.
The New Testament reveals Christ is the Truth and this is found not just in His words and deeds but in His very Person. He is the 'bridge' as it were between the heavenly-eternal realm and this fallen present evil age. Christ is revealed as being the central focus of the entirety of Scripture - it's organizing principle as it were. As the logos (John 1:1), he is the Word that is central to all Divine knowledge. Sadly, some have reduced this logos concept to mere human logic - equating Christ and God with logic and reason. In actuality John is revealing that regenerate reason rests on faith in the mystery of Christ-centered knowledge (or epistemology) - a point echoed and elaborated by Paul (Romans 16:25, Ephesians 3:4-9, Colossians 1:27, 2:2, and 4:3).
Some err in thinking the Incarnation affirms this age or sets it on a path of redemption but this is not what the Scriptures teach. This age is contrasted with the age to come. The Last Days are a time of persecution, apostasy, and growing darkness. This is a martyr age, a time of cross-bearing, a time of God's mercy and longsuffering as those united to Christ proclaim doom to the thrones and principalities and seek the lost in the midst of their domains.
This groaning age is doomed to burn and be destroyed. It is subject to futility and thus our hope is not here and we are fools to construct an epistemology on the basis of this age's dying reality - just as those who follow through on New Testament teaching are reckoned as fools by the traditionalists, academics, and confessionalists of Christendom who think godliness is gain.
The Incarnation reveals that those who are in Christ inhabit a duality - we are redeemed yet not yet redeemed. We are saved, being saved, and yet to be saved. We are adopted and yet waiting for the adoption and the redemption of our bodies.
We have a hint of what our redeemed and resurrected bodies will be like, but the Risen Christ was only here briefly, ascending to the right hand of the Throne of God. With that authority He is due to return and judge, but has delayed the completion of the Parousia (splitting it seemingly into two parts) in order that some might be saved and that we might bear witness.
This existence, this hope also shapes our thinking and understanding of reality. We know that the eternal is the real and the temporal (being fallen) is (by definition) temporary and thus contingent (or less than real). Such is the knowledge of this world. It is fleeting, it is changeable, it is therefore not truth, but a temporary perceived understanding of reality. This is not to say the world is not real or mere illusion as some have wrongly argued. It's very real but it's very broken and thus doomed. The real world we look for is one that is also comprised of a New Earth and one we will inhabit with true resurrected bodies.
The tensions of redemptive-history revealed in the Scripture are keys to understanding not just doctrine in its proper context but the very nature of epistemology itself. The Scriptures contain an internal logic that relies on eternal and eschatological references. Temporal logic and reasoning relies on spatial, quantitative, and temporal references, the contrasting relations necessary in order for things to have meaning - to say something is something and not something else. The spiritual referents we're given are not accessible to the lost and thus for the Christian, regenerate epistemology is of a different faith-based order.
This also reveals that apart from these true referents, human knowledge is necessarily not only partial, but ultimately false. We must be sceptics when it comes to the knowledge of this age. The fact that man can travel to the moon does not mean that man actually knows anything properly or of actual eternal value. He is dust playing with dust. He can form the dust and utilize it to some end but this is a low existence if it is in fact all there is. Man is called to higher things and we can experience them in Christ.
Biblicism calls us to recognize the spiritual and metaphysical nature of reality. As such, to understand what things are, as well as causality, and often context is something that eludes us. We can approach the truth but if we're partially wrong - then our deductions certainly are and are likely to multiply. This is one of the key lessons found in the book of Job.
This holistic framing of epistemology along with a recognition of metaphysical primacy is certainly Platonic-like but heartily rejects its coherence-driven epistemology, turning away from rationalist-deductive methodology and is instead dependent on revelation. Knowledge is holistic, but since we are unable to attain such comprehensive understanding, our ability to attain knowledge is fundamentally limited and thus flawed. This latter point is critical. Partial or incomplete knowledge is perilous and indeed fatal leading to idolatry. The worldview project (in reality a Babel-like attempt at constructing a unified theory) is doomed to fail and rests on coherence, not Scripture as well as relying on speculation and questions the Scripture never asks and does not seek to answer.