We can learn from the councils, we can learn from the tradition, but they can't bind the conscience,

and nor can they create new doctrine.

A peasant armed with one verse of scripture has more authority than a pope or a church council

who does not have scripture to back up what they're saying.

In the book of Acts, we're told that the Bereans were more noble than others. Why? Because they examine the scriptures to see if what they were being taught was accurate. Welcome to the

Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind, as we consider several

essential gospel truths that we must not compromise if we are going to be faithful to the

historic Christian faith. Well, today, R.C. Sprawl will help us understand where we must turn

if we want to know what God has said. And the answer is the same

as it was for the Bereans in Acts and as it was for Martin Luther in the 16th century. Here's Dr.

Sprawl.

We're going to continue our study now on the Solas of the Reformation. We've already looked at Sola Fides, Sola Grazie, and Solis

Christus. And so today we're going to begin with the Sola called Sola Scriptura. And if you

will recall when we started this, we looked at the doctrine of justification

by faith alone, and I mentioned then that church historians often distinguished between the

material cause of the Reformation and the formal cause of the Reformation, the material cause being that which was front and center.

It was the basic stuff or matter about which the dispute was carried on.

But underlying that surface issue was another very serious matter, which had to do with the question of authority.

And so the principle of Soliscriptura became the formal principle of the Reformation, and it means in simple terms

that the final authority by which the conscience of the Christian is bound is Scripture and Scripture alone.

Let me just read a statement from the 17th century Protestant confessional to Westminster

Confession of Faith, which reads as follows, the supreme judge by which all controversies

...