Today the exclusive authority of the Bible is under heavy attack. This principle is known as sola scriptura. The charismatic movement pays lip service to it, it is ignored by liberalism, and it is attacked by the Roman Catholic church. But even the evangelical world cannot adequately defend the biblical teaching of sola scriptura since even the church has been compromised with competing authorities. In this book the reader will understand what sola scriptura is (and what it is not) and how to articulate it, defend it based on the Bible, and apply it to his life. An overview of the historical development of scriptural authority is provided. Several different philosophies will be examined in this book and will be compared with one another on how they relate to Scripture. These include the charismatic movement, liberal theology, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, dispensationalism, Open Theism, theistic evolution, and certain strains of evangelicalism. We shall see that the reason extra-biblical authorities are given currency is because the authority of the Scriptures themselves are cast into doubt.
