The Protestant Scripture Principle remains an important reality for Protestants; or it should! It seems to me that there is a softening of adherence to this principle insofar as Protestants imbibe the theology of the scholastics, and Tridentine-like theology (the theology that is part and parcel with the theology of the Roman Catholic council of Trent). In other words, when Holy Scripture’s reality and interpretation becomes so contingent upon theological paradigms that are ‘extra’ or alien to Scripture itself, then the Scripture Principle suffers and no longer has the ecclesiastic-independence it was intended to have. When creeds and confessions become normative, whether those come from Catholics, Protestants, or even the so-called ecumenical councils of Patristic vintage, Scripture becomes a victim of a foreign invasion that has little to do with actual canonical content and more to do with discursive philosophies developed out of the geniuses of the doctors. The Scripture Principle is intended to quench even the doctors though. The Scripture Principle is intended to allow the alien reality of Scripture itself to have the space to confront its creation in the Church. In other words, the Scripture Principle is supposed to give Protestants space to hear the viva vox Dei (living voice of God) in contradistinction to their own. This is supposed to be the character of the churches who sit under the Scripture Principle: viz. they are to be churches who can hear God’s voice afresh and anew in Christ, and discern what He is saying over against what the Church may or may not be saying at any given time in her history. The Scripture Principle is intended to identify that there is an objective res or reality in Christ who speaks independent of our own voices (thus condemning subjectivism, even in its collectivist forms), and thus grounds the authority of the Church in the Church’s head, who is the Christ. This is the aim of the Protestant Scripture Principle, and I think it is being eroded away by Protestant thinkers who are so taken with the ‘Great Tradition’ of the Church that they are allowing that Tradition to be regulative and allowing it to supplant Scripture’s real reality in Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth writes:

What Catholicism has for the most part done is classically typical of all heresies. In the exposition and application of Scripture it thinks that outside of Christ and the Holy Spirit who can be received and works directly—He may sometimes go by other more secular names. He may even be identical with human reason or vitality or nature or historical consciousness. And where this happens, then Scripture, which is clear in itself and in subject-matter, becomes obscure, the demanded freedom in exposition and application becomes self-will, and a divergence of the various expositions and applications becomes inevitable. There is no more dangerous subjectivism than that which is based on the arrogance of a false objectivity. Not the fact that Holy Scripture as the Word of God is obscure and ambiguous, but the fact that is the Word of God for the Church on earth, and therefore a teacher of pupils who are lost sinners, is what makes the much deplored divergence in its understanding possible, and, unless the miracle of revelation and faith intervenes, quite inevitable. But this divergence can be avoided only by this miracle and certainly not by denying it in advance. It will not be avoided if, instead of accepting in faith the grace which meets them in Scripture, the pupils give way to their own sin, renouncing the relationship as pupils in which all their hope should be set, and each trying to be the teacher of Scripture or at least an equal partner in discussion. But even if in so doing they appeal to Christ and the Holy Spirit, even if ever so many of them should enjoy the finest consensio [consent] among ourselves—on this path they can only increase the fragmentation and make it incurable.[1]

We catch something of Calvin’s autopistis (‘self-attesting’) concept here in Barth’s bibliology. We get this sense, in particular, with his appeal to ‘miracle’ in reference to Holy Scripture’s reality and authority. In Barth’s mind Holy Scripture has objective reality and authority to speak over, against (often), and into the Church precisely because that is Christ! It is the miracle of God become human in Christ wherein, for Barth, Scripture receives its canonical context and force for the Christian. The Church can’t claim this same status since, for Barth, the Church gains her form from the reality mediated in and through the reality of Holy Scripture. For Barth, Scripture has special status because the reality it eventfully bares witness to is the risen and LIVING Christ; it is Christ’s voice that shatters through the human words of Scripture; the Church only becomes the Church, over and again, as she is given birth through contact with these words—and thus the Word therein.

You might be picking up on how instrumental Barth sees Scripture as; something like Calvin’s spectacles, but a little different too. But it is this that I think so many Protestants are losing sight of. Christ is no longer biblically hermeneutically regulative for many Protestants, instead Church Tradition is. These Protestants can no longer critically distinguish between Scripture’s reality and the Church’s tradition, as such they are one in the same for them. It is this that Barth above is railing against. When we conflate our ‘sinful’ selves with the reality of Scripture, or we hermetically seal off Scripture’s reality by collapsing that into the Church’s tradition, or consensus fidelium, Scripture can no longer put us sinners in our place; only our piety can. And our piety, as stellar as it might seem by sight, is only filthy rags before the living God. And so, with Barth, we ought to approach Scripture via analogy of faith, and understand just how it is miracle come afresh and anew as we encounter its ongoing and living reality in Jesus Christ. Herein we can constructively and critically listen to the past, listen to the Tradition; but only as we sit under Scripture, not allowing the Church’s tradition to become the regulator of all that is real in the Christian reality.

As a Protestant Christian, along with Barth, I am not slavishly held captive to the so called catholic Great Tradition of the historical Church. Nein, I am held captive to Scripture’s reality in Jesus Christ. There’s a difference between Christ and the Church. Christ is God in the flesh, the sole mediator between God and humanity in the hypostatic union of His singular person; the Church is not that mediator. We come into ‘contact’ with that Mediator as we dwell or inhabit Holy Scripture. Here we live in the ongoing occurrence of an absolute miracle; the miracle of resurrection where God’s voice speaks to us in Christ from beyond the tomb and from the Right Hand. The Church doesn’t have this as her direct reality, only Holy Scripture does. The Church becomes the Church afresh and anew as she is confronted with and fortified by the voice of the living Word of God who shines through in the canonical black and white of Holy Writ. I am Protestant in this sense; in the sense that I am committed to the Scripture Principle.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2§20, 101-02.