The scripture principle (of sola scripture) was the foundation of the Protestant Reformation, and allowed a period of discovery and theological advancement that was achieved by using the Holy Scriptures to challenge the long standing traditional doctrines of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, this dangerous idea of the Reformation resulted in a thorough study of the scriptures by modern theologians that revealed that the biblical writers had disagreements with each other on matters of theology, history and science, that has made it very difficult and almost impossible to say any theological doctrine today is biblical due to the divide not only between the biblical writers, but also between the differences the biblical writers understood their world in their ancient age and the way modern theologians know the world today. In the words of Wolfhart Pannenberg, "The dissolution of the traditional doctrine of Scripture constitutes a crisis at the very foundation of modern Protestant theology." [1] 

Background to the Scripture Principle of Sola Scriptura

Sola scriptura was the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation, because it allowed the reformers to assert their theological doctrines against the traditional theological doctrines of the Catholic Church's magisterium. Sola scriptura (or by scriptures alone) teaches that the Holy Scriptures are "the ultimate norm of theological doctrine" and is therefore the basis of all five sola and all Protestant theology.

The Catholic Church had affirmed that the scriptures had priority over its traditions for centuries before the reformation, and so the reformers and the Catholic Church were in agreement about the priority of the scriptures over tradition but they were in disagreement about how the scriptures were rightly interpreted. (It is Protestant myth that sola scriptura began with the Reformers or that the Catholic Church placed its traditions above the scriptures.)

The real disagreement in the Reformation wasn't over the scriptures, but upon the interpretation of the scriptures. The Catholic Church believed that it held hegemony over all christian doctrine due to the divine authority of its church tradition, but the reformers demonstrated that they could correct the Catholic Church's magisterium with the scriptures, and this allowed the reformers to establish their new theological discoveries against the traditional interpretation of the Catholic Church's theological doctrines.

Wolfhart Pannenberg summarizes the background to the scripture principle of sola scripture as follows:

"Luther and the other reformers shared with the patristic and medieval tradition the conviction that Holy Scripture is the ultimate norm of theological doctrine. The meaning of this conviction, however, had already shifted in the course of the Middle Ages. Up to the fourteenth century, orthodox theology in the West felt no contradiction between Scripture and tradition. Although the priority of literal exegesis of Scripture over all moral and allegorical construction had been stressed ever since the Scripture research of the school of St. Victor in the twelfth century, there was a strong conviction that, in the last analysis, this literal sense of Scripture had itself to be decided by the teaching office of the church. For the authority of Scripture was based on the belief that the biblical books of the prophets and apostles had been verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit. Who, then, could be better equipped to interpret the literal sense of the Scripture than the teaching office of the church, to which the gift of the Holy Spirit had been imparted?" [2]

The Crisis of the Scripture Principle in Modern Theology

The scripture principle (or sola scriptura) had the immediate utility in the Reformation of allowing theological discovery to occur that was previously constrained and censored by the ancient opinions and traditions of the church. The Reformers were able to discover new theological ideas and recover old ideas, as the scriptures say "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (Matthew 13:52).

Initially this was a very fruitful time for the reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and their successors. However, in later tradition two problems arose, the first problem was born out of scholasticism when sola scriptura created fertile soil for a naive biblicism, that made no distinction between the human words of scriptures and the word of God witnessed in them, reducing the bible to a paper pope, such as in mechanical dictation theories of inspiration like biblical inerrancy today and represented by the arrogance of people who "read their bible for themselves" apart from all church tradition. (I've discussed the error of biblical inerrancy that arose in the Post-Reformation period in the past). Wolfhart Pannenberg explained the demise of biblical inerrancy happened when "Scrutiny of the various tendencies among the New Testament writers threw the differences between the individual writing into bold relief. Thus, the old conception of the biblical writings free from contradiction, collapsed. It was found necessary to distinguish between the attested events themselves and the tendencies in the reporting of the individual biblical writers." [3]

The second problem occurred with the rise of modern theology, and its discovery that scripture itself is not a homogeneous word or flawless syllogism, and that the biblical witnesses disagree and contradict each other, and also contain historical and scientific errors as well. The scripture principle created a vast and impassible divide between the biblical writers in their ancient context, and modern theologians in our contemporary western context today.

Wolfhart Pannenberg summaries concisely the difference between Modern theology (Post-Reformation) and older Reformation and Historical theologies in his essay:

"The modern view of the relation of theology to the biblical writings differs from Luther's in two respects.

First, for Luther the literal sense of Scripture was still identical with their historical content. For us, on the contrary, these two matters have become separated. The picture of Jesus and his history which the various New Testament writers give us cannot, without further qualification, be regarded as identical with the actual course of events.

The second difference is linked to the first. Luther could still identify his own doctrine with the content of the biblical writings, literally understood. For us, on the contrary, it is impossible to overlook the historical distance between every possible theology today and the primitive Christian period. This distance has become the source of our most vexing theological problems." [4]

Modern theologies discovery of the disagreements and contradictions in the biblical witnesses of the scriptures indicates that human words of scripture are not directly identical with the revealed word of God (pace. Karl Barth). So the material disagreement between the biblical writers, means that anyone who directly identifies their theology with the scriptures has committed an error naive biblicism. So we may celebrate Modern theology defeat of all naive biblicism, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer did when he said that Rudolf "Bultmann has let the cat out of bag, not only for himself but for a great many people (the liberal cat out of the confessional bag), and in this I rejoice."

The Scriptural Principle caused the end of the Scriptural Principle

"As I have already said, both aspects are intimately related. Both the distance of the New Testament documents from the events to which they witness and their distance from our present situation were discovered by the application to biblical exegesis of one and the same methodological principle, biz., the fundamental principle that the texts be understood out of themselves and, thus, primarily in relation to their contemporary environment." [5]

Wolfhart Pannenberg explains that the scripture principle has helped separate bad theology from the biblical writers in the scriptures like separating the wheat from the chaff, but at the same time it has created a vexing problem because it demonstrates there is a great distance from all theologies and the biblical writers. The more the scriptures are studied, the greater the differences are between the biblical writers, and even more so does the distance increase from the age of the biblical writers and modern theologians today. 

"Once it has become conscious of the depth of this gulf, no theology can understand itself any longer as 'biblical' in the naive sense, as if it could be materially identical with the conceptions of Paul or John. Nor is it possible to offer Luther's thoughts or those of the confessional writings without further ado as the solution to the problem of theology today, and to proffer a so-called reformation theology in such a sense." [6]

Pannenberg's Solution to the Vexing Problem of the Scripture Principle

The scripture principle of the reformation has resulted in a vexing problem, that it is extremely difficult to identify any theology as 'biblical' due to the multiplicity of biblical witnesses that disagree and contradict each other. Pannenberg admits that this scripture principle of sola scriptura has caused a crisis: "The gulf between fact and significance, between history and kerygma, between the history of Jesus and the multiplicity of the New Testament witnesses to it, marks on one side of the problem a theology of today." [7] Pannenberg does not believe that theology is a dead end, or that all Christian theology will suffer the same dreadful end of the quest for the historical Jesus, that essentially concluded that the historical Jesus of history is lost to us and inaccessible. Pannenberg says, believes that universal history provides us a binding point between historical events and the revealed word of god: "In contrast to the approach taken by the liberal quest for the historical Jesus, to keep in mind the connection between the figure of Jesus and the primitive Christian proclamation about him." [8]

Pannenberg's solution is worth mentioning, but it is not the only solution I prefer to the problems raised by the crisis of the scripture principle. Pannenberg believes that there is a universal history, and this means that time is not going on endlessly or in circles, but is moving towards a conclusion, and based on its path to this omega point in time, we may conclude that that the biblical idea of God is truly at work in the world, and recognizable in the holy scriptures, even if it is a vexing challenge. Pannenberg fully develops his concept of "Revelation as History" elsewhere, but the following quote is a helpful introduction to his solution to the vexing problem of the scripture principle:

"The hermeneutical problem of how to span the distance between the ages, and how text and interpreter can be connected by a common horizon, points to the question of a universal history. But universal-history thinking has its origin in the biblical idea of God. It was the biblical God who first gave rise to an understanding of the reality as a history of ever new, once-occurring events directed towards a final goal, in uniform order of events. The universal-historical theme of modern philosophy of history was inherited from Jewish apocalyptic and Christian theology of history. The difficulty of speaking of a goal of history as a whole makes it questionable whether universal history can be understood as a unity without the biblical ideas about God." [9]

Conclusion

I agree with Bonhoeffer that we are indebted to the discoveries of modern theology regarding the challenges of doing modern theology that have resulted from the scripture principle. There is no turning back to dictation theories of inspiration (such as biblical inerrancy) or mindless allegiance to church tradition, or diminish the bible to human words like in liberal Protestantism when faced by the vexing problems raised by the scripture principle of sola scriptura. What the crisis of the scripture principle has demonstrated is that the revelation of the word of God is not directly identical with the human words, or codified in a book, but is a real event of history in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the biblical witnesses have truly seen the risen Christ, and through their witness we too have seen the risen Christ, and may recognize this revelation in the history of the world despite the imperfections, disagreements and vexing challenges of studying the holy scriptures. 

Sources:

1. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology: Collected Essays, "The Crisis of the Scripture Principle", trans. George H. Kehm.  (Fortress Press, Philadelphia: 2008). p. 1.

2. Ibid. pp. 4-5

3. Ibid. p. 7

4. Ibid. p. 6

5. Ibid. pp. 6-7

6. Ibid. p. 9

7. Ibid. p. 8

8. Ibid. p. 7-8

9. Ibid. pp. 11-12