Theopedia

Five Solas

Definition

The Five Solas are five Latin phrases summarizing convictions the Protestant Reformation raised against the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century: Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), Sola Fide (faith alone), Solus Christus (Christ alone), Sola Gratia (grace alone), and Soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone). Each names a single source the Reformers insisted was sufficient by itself, with nothing else needed alongside it: Scripture alone against Rome’s Scripture-and-tradition system, faith alone against faith completed by merit, Christ alone against the saints’ intercession, grace alone against human cooperation, and God’s glory alone against any rival end.

Historical Development

Sola scriptura and sola fide are, in Reformed usage, the Reformation’s formal and material principles. Sola scriptura names Scripture’s sole final authority, the formal principle by which every doctrinal claim is tested; sola fide, justification by faith, is the material principle, the substantive doctrine that gave the Reformation controversy its content and was, in Louis Berkhof’s words, “very much in the foreground” of the Lutheran Reformation in particular.1 Rome’s Council of Trent answered both directly: its Fourth Session (1546) declared that Scripture and the church’s unwritten traditions are to be received “with an equal affection of piety and reverence,”2 and its Sixth Session (1547) allowed that faith is only “the beginning… the foundation and the root” of justification, not its sole means.3

The Five Solas

Each sola has its own dedicated article covering its confessional statement, biblical basis, and history in full; this article only summarizes what each names.

Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”) holds that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, the final authority every other claimant, church tradition, council decree, or private opinion must be tested by.

Sola Fide (“faith alone”) holds that a sinner is justified, declared righteous before God, through faith alone, apart from any works of his own, because that faith receives the righteousness Christ himself accomplished.

Sola Gratia (“grace alone”) holds that a sinner’s entire salvation, from the first movement of faith to final glory, comes from God’s unmerited favor alone, not from any foreseen merit, cooperation, or condition the sinner himself supplies.

Solus Christus (“Christ alone”) holds that Jesus Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, so that no other person or work may share his office of reconciling sinners to God.

Soli Deo Gloria (“glory to God alone”) holds that God’s own glory, not human happiness or any other creaturely good, is the highest end of creation and redemption alike.

Related Doctrines

Further Reading

  • Terry L. Johnson, The Case for Traditional Protestantism: The Solas of the Reformation (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2004).
  • Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016).

References

  1. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 404: “In the Lutheran Reformation the doctrine of justification by faith, often called the material principle of the Reformation, was very much in the foreground.” ↩

  2. Council of Trent, Fourth Session (1546), as restated by the 1870 Vatican Council, quoted in Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 4, “Inspiration of the Bible”: the church “receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament… as also the said traditions.” ↩

  3. Council of Trent, Sixth Session (1547), “Decree on Justification,” chap. 8, quoted in A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 513. ↩