Sola Scriptura and Context
Even as a very young child, when I started talking, apparently around the age of one, I knew there was a creator, since I would look up always and talk to God, laugh, smile. As I make my spiritual journey in my Christian faith, having grown up Catholic, but having moved away, and having always been rebellious on the spiritual front, in particular, I determined without really going into any in depth study in the faith I had been born into, the Catholic faith to go Protestant and go full throttle into the stance of Scripture and Scripture alone, no exception. I keep forgetting an two important points, context and timeline.
When I was in school, particularly high school and college, as well as when I was teaching ESL reading and writing I stressed context as key to both reading comprehension and also writing. Without context comprehension was not going to happen or happen properly, so context was crucial. Context, background is a major key to understanding anything that is happening because if you don't have that, you will make all kinds of wrong assumptions. The other thing is a timeline, as anything they wrote had to make sense, have a timeline, an order, back reference. I am now starting to think about the scriptures and the understanding of scriptures in terms of perhaps the same approach. This notion of Scripture alone would have been alien to the Jewish people and of Bible and Bible alone to the early Church, particularly as the Canon of Scripture was not existent until later on. Even when it initially was, the early Church fathers and even of the women in the early period of the Christian faith wrote poems for example, prayers, and books, inspired by the Holy Spirit. There are times when Jesus condemned tradition over scripture, and Paul as well, but we must understand in what way. For example, Jesus denounced a certain tradition when he said, "And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?" (Matt. 15:3; see also Mark 7:8-9). In this passage Jesus was condemning a particular Jewish practice of seemingly donating money to God while in reality sheltering it from being used to care for one’s parents. This was a tradition?but certainly not a sacred one?which broke the commandment to honor one’s mother and father. Jesus rightfully condemned it, but his condemnation was not meant to be applied to every tradition. Also, John tells us that there is much that Jesus did that was not written down and there is likely much he said that was not recorded, just because of the sheer volume would have made it impossible to write it all down. Some of it was very likely passed down orally and maintained in the homes, through families, then monasteries, and such, quite possible.
I keep being brought lately back to context, how context of scripture, and relationship to culture then and now is crucial, but never changing the basic precepts, concepts and laws of God, for those can not change. Still, one can gain incredible insight from the early church fathers and also from looking at the lives of those such as St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Hildegarde, St. Bridget, and others. The writing of Pope John Paul II on the whole person can I am sure offer insight as well, for one can not only look at the person as body, or mind, spirit or emotions. The person is all those and all those must be looked at in relationship to Christ, and how Christ views them in relation to his relationship to the Body of Christ. It is an intricate and beautiful relationship, a holistic relationship, never in isolation, not in God's eyes. Scripture is also not ever to be read or understood in isolation, but in terms of Covenant, of relationship and so much more, in context, in terms of history and culture, in terms of God's plan from the beginning for mankind, for the Church. There is so much context and there are so many beautiful layers to explore and I refused to explore them because I thought Sola Scriptura meant you only looked at the Bible as the source material for understanding the Trinity and what God wanted to say to mankind, to you. I am now having God point out to me that I need to re-think that because there is so much more to it than that, so much more and I have just begun to scratch the surface. This is going to be an interesting journey.
Shalom and Amen.
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