Okay--so some of you wonder about some of the words in the quiz. Don't worry about them too much. For the purpose of the quiz, if you don't know what it is you probably neither strongly agree or disagree ;-D
But anyway, someone specifically asked about Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is Latin for Scripture Alone. And bascially it says that Scripture is the authoritative revelation of God and can be understood by a rational reader on its own (in other words you don't need the church tradition to tell you what it says). This was one of the founding principles of the Protestant reformation along with four other "solas":
Sola gratia--grace alone--we are saved by God's grace alone
Sola fida--faith alone--justification is by faith alone
Solus Christus--Christ alone--all salvation comes through Christ
Soli Deo Gloria--Glory to God Alone--All this is God's gift alone and no one else (saint or otherwise) is worthy of God's glory.
I suspect Wesleyans will argue over whether we actually believe in Sola Scriptura. Many of us hold the Wesleyan Quadrilateral as our point of reference and it says we rely not only on Scripture (although scripture is primary!) but also on experience, reason, and tradition.
2 comments:
Thank you. That was my confusion about sola scriptura. They said it was a Protestant founding principle and yet the the WQ took other things into account.
Well, Methodism like the Church of England is the Via Media (the Middle Way) between Protestanism and Catholicism. We don't mention it much because Frontier Methodism is much more "Protestant" than Wesley. Thus the confusion.
Of course, Outler is the one who actually defined the Quadrilateral based on Wesley's writings. And Wesley was drawing on Hooker's three legged stool for the Church of England--scripture, tradition and resason. Wesley add the importance of experience to it (how post-modern of him!).
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