Qutoes from Sola!

I recently finished Sola! by Leann Luchinger and Heather Choate Davis. Here are some quotes:

sola is Latin for alone, and that the three solas are considered foundational principles of Protestantism...sola gratia (grace alone), sola fide (faith alone), and sola scriptura (Scripture alone).

Not grace plus works or worthiness or effort or intention or money or remorse. Grace alone!...It is an all or nothing proposition, with God doing all, and us doing nothing.

Because the Cross of Christ is where sin and grace kiss. Not just once but daily.

His Law (God's wisdom for living) reveals our sin (all the ways we reject that wisdom). His Gospel then assures us that we are not to sit around beating ourselves up about it but rather to keep following Him, trusting that "for freedom Christ has set us free"...This balanced tension between Law and Gospel serves us in every season, keeping us humble through the highs, hopeful through the lows, and trusting that it's all on Him, regardless.

God's gift of faith is not faith in ourselves, our families, or our traditions, nor in science, reason, the universe, or karma, but faith in the one who says, "your faith has healed you; go in peace...Because it is not really, actually, in fact our faith that saves us, but rather the perfect faithfulness of God.

the original three identifying marks of the Reformation were actually 1) justification (salvation) by grace through faith 2) Scripture alone, and 3)The Priesthood of All Believers.

The conflict between Luther and James is rooted in how each man was hearing the word works.

We are anxious because we've taken God out of the picture and, as a result, are carrying around burdens we were never intended to bear.

Luther unwittingly planted the seeds for a new and totally subjective criterion for truth...So although sola scriptura had all the makings of a prophetic call to the Church--corrective, idealistic, hopeful, and deeply rooted in the Word of God--the wisdom of time has delivered a compelling blow: "the result of sola scriptura has been doctrinal chaos.

There is simply no ancient manuscript in history that is more reliable than the New Testament scriptures.

Luther saw Scripture as "the manger in which Christ lies."

Faith alone gets a bit trickier, calling into question the matter of participation. In other words, how are we to live from the moment of conversion until we depart this earthly life. In every church in every era for the past two thousand years, the pendulum has swung between faith that requires nothing and a faith that requires something.

Grace is a gift from God alone both in spit of and in response to sin...Faith is in Jesus Christ alone because He alone embodies perfect faithfulness...Scripture alone is God's living and eternal word for all mankind.

It is the AND's that we fight over most fervently. Maybe that's because the AND's are tied, primarily, to practices--baptism, communion, worship styles, the role of women...

Survival of the fittest is not a strategy that's compatible with the Gospel. If we're spending more time guarding walls than helping people find a way in, we need to face the fact that we've lost our way.

Whenever these trusted ones choose to ignore His righteousness, they seek to establish their own.

What if our lifelong discipleship process was simply to learn and live out and perpetually rediscover the truth as captured not in the words of man but in Holy Scripture...