AARON > Recent Status Updates

[5/5]
Soli Deo gloria (glory) : all local bodies pursue the unity of one Christ and canon. Interpreting Scripture is this way a shared task between churches in "various historical forms"—their differences intended by God for the enrichment of the whole body. Vanhoozer calls on M. Bakhtin’s work on dialogue/textual understanding: neither party "absorbed into the other..." yet come to realize the text’s full meaning

[4/5]
Solus Christus means all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Jesus Christ. Vanhoozer outlines how Christ shares that authority with His church and its officers receive "the keys" which Luther considered "not a conferring of power but a proclamation of the gospel, the communication of a promise" given to the whole priesthood of believers (Matthew 18:18–19)

[3/5]
Scripture alone (sola scriptura) means Scripture as the supreme norm: the Spirit guides its meaning and uses the church, councils and tradition—quoting Bavinck on tradition, “the method by which the Spirit causes... Scripture to pass into the consciousness and life of the church"—in its social and historical expression for attaining Christian maturity and shared understanding grounded in apostolic teaching.

[2/5]
Faith (sola fide) is the means by which right-minded interpretive communities help us arrive at a better understanding of Scripture within a “modest testimonial foundationalism,” a rationality defined by Plantinga’s (via Calvin) epistemology that explains why it is rational to trust apostolic testimony: faith comes by the Spirit impressing the truths of the gospel upon our hearts as believers read Scripture.

[1/5]
Vanhoozer emphasizes how the Bible reads us (Luther), like the glow of a light, that’s grace (solo gratia): how God communicates within the Trinity and toward us, creation as an act of grace, God "speaking" it into being—entering the world as the Light and Word of God. That Word, expressed in Scripture, carries/is God’s Word to us, illuminating us, our reading is a spiritual luminescence

[Intro]
Vanhoozer is arguing that retrieving the Reformation’s five solas provides a framework to guide biblical interpretation