Sola Scriptura: How Reformers’ Emphasis on Scripture is Mirrored Today

Of all the changes that came about during the Reformation, few compare in impact than the transformation of engagement with the Bible. The transformation can be thought of in three main ways.

John Calvin and the Bible

• First, the Bible became more accessible. Before the Reformation, the Bible was only found in Latin, which was primarily studied by priests. Consequently, most Catholics had to rely on their priest to be their middle man with God. However, after Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, scripture study became something common Christians could take part in. Individuals “could now read the Bible in their own language… with features intended to help a person read and interpret the Bible for themselves." (Museumofthebible.org)

Ladies & Locke

As I looked over the talks given this weekend at General Conference, the broadcast given by the leaders of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for their members, I was perturbed. Out of twenty-six talks given that weekend, one was from a woman. I think we need to hear from women more often in the church; diverse perspectives will only strengthen it. We have come far from the days when women were expected to live to cook, clean, raise children, and look nice, but we still have a way to go before they are valued equally to men.

Locke believed women were fully rational, and had
particularly high praises for Damaris Cudworth Masham.

John Locke was actually an early supporter of semi-feminist ideas. He even used religion and scriptures to support his claims in his Two Treatises on Government. In his efforts to establish that monarchies did not have a divine right to rule, he ended up claiming that this extended to the "right" of dominion God supposedly gave to Adam over Eve. 

Locke claims that God punished Eve for disobeying him, but that he did not give the authority of a monarch to Adam as the Enlightenment monarchs often claimed. This meant that women did not owe their husbands obedience, and that their children owed equal subordination to both parents, not just the father. Locke believed that men only had power over women in their physical superiority—which was actually pretty progressive for his time.

The Rhetoric of the Divine

In class today, Professor Burton touched on the perspective of rhetoric among some of the first philosophers as being “amoral” and therefore “immoral.” As a Latter-day Saint I have seen the contrary to this statement because as a literary student, I have seen God use rhetoric and rhetorical devices such as kairos (“the contingencies of a give place and time”) and audience (“how an audience shapes the composition of a text or responds to it) to restore the Church of Jesus Christ as it exists today. Therefore, as silly as I feel writing it, rhetoric is divine and used even in the Lord’s communication with us.

With the invention of the printing press, communication, literature, etc. were mass produced and given to the public. This of itself is Kairos because it changed the way people thought and how were educated, especially with the mass production or the Bible. Their religious ideals were changed to accommodate the inevitable restoration of the Church that was going to occur a few centuries later.

Audience was important for the Lord as well leading up to the Restoration. The way He addressed Joseph Smith in the First Vision was most likely accomplished and successfully understood by the fourteen year old boy because the Lord new His audience and knew the audience that Joseph would first preach to after he was given instructions to restore the Church. This was all carefully planned, just as the rhetoric in a piece of literature is carefully planned according to the Kairos and audience of the situation.

Image: Joseph Smith's First Vision