protestant

I have recently come to hear William Chillingworth’s famous statement, “The Bible alone is the religion of Protestants.” Can Protestants agree with this statement? It is difficult to answer this question at face value, for what is needed is a definition of terms before one can conclude in agreement or disagreement.

First, what does the “Bible alone” mean? For the Bible is never alone, in that an interpretation must always be made. With regard to the general Protestant era (Luther up to the present), we have a variety of ways to interpret the Bible. Do we interpret as Luther did with differentiating between the literal and historical and the spiritual and prophetic? Or do we side with Zwingli and attempt to find a natural sense of Scripture? Or should we use modern rational approach, historical approach, sociological approach, or literary approach? Whichever way one goes, there is always an interpretation of the Bible to go along with the words of the Bible. While unlikely, if the by the “Bible alone,” interpretation of the Bible is to be included, we must then look at the next term: “religion.”

So what of this term? Is by religion meant the works of man to merit the righteousness of God? Or is it meant the structure of the Christian faith that the Protestants have built? Or is it simply the faith of Christ followers? If by “religion” is meant the faith of Christ followers, then to answer our question we still have one more term to examine: “Protestant.”

It is historically plain to see that there is no one “Protestant” faith or religion. If the mainstream Reformation wing is meant, then one can find tradition (as in the traditional method of interpretation), reason (as in the basic human faculty of thinking), and experience (as in theology interpreting our inner experience) all impact the faith of Christ followers. Only in the radical wing of the Protestant reformation do you find a total rejection of tradition.

It seems then the only way Protestants can agree with this statement is to define the Bible alone to include its interpretation, religion to simply mean the faith of Christ followers, and Protestant to mean those denominations derived from the radical wing of the Reformation. Otherwise the Bible alone is not the religion of the Protestants.