I’ve read quite a bit about the 5 solas, even a whole book. There’s stacks of stuff on the internet, though some sites are a bit dodgy, especially the Hypercalvinist ones that think missionary activity is highly overrated.

The solas are

Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone

Solo Christo
[sometimes Solus Christus] - Christ Alone
[sounds like a good title for a song!]

Sola Gratia - Grace Alone

Sola Fide - By Faith Alone

Soli Deo Gloria - The Glory of God Alone

I think this set of slogans is terrific, and, properly explained, is also biblical.

But, in all of the stuff I’ve read, you get told these are Reformation principles, but never who put them together. I’m wondering how old this systematization is, because it seems to be later than Luther and Calvin, and I’ve never read it put this way in the few things I’ve read from the Reformation writers.

Does anyone know who put it together, or is like TULIP [not the 5 points, which came from the Synod of Dordt] but the actual organising of it in that flowery way, which would appear to be a 20th century thing, and may have been invented by Loraine Boettner, or others of his era.

Also, it seems clear that Luther’s version of Sola Scriptura is different from the way it is taught today, because he made rude comments about Esther and Ecclesiastes in the OT, and James, Jude, Revelation and Hebrews in the NT and clearly had a little canon within a canon.

Any takers?

Hmmm...our church is doing a series on 4 of the solas at the moment, pointing out the differences between Catholicism and Reformed Christianity. Check it out here -

http://www.christiansinthemedia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=206&Itemid=136

I came across the following occurence of “Grace Alone” in Calvin just this morning -

http://www.the-highway.com/Calvin_Gal2a.html

Hi Craig.
Yes, but I’m interested in the provenance of the 5 as now articulated.

This is partly because of the way recent statements or collections can be attributed to others, such as:

Martin Luther: If I knew Christ was coming tomorrow, I’d still plant a tree today. [except that this has been traced back to no earleir than the 1940s]

Voltaire: I may not agree with what tyo usay, but will defend to the death your right to say it.

[except that it is a 20th century comment ABOUT Voltaire, but not by him.

St Francis: Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace

[except that it was found by an American Catholic bishop in Italy and attributed to William the Norman]

While the five solas may seem like great slogans, in the original Latin some of them are crying out for more words around them to make them unambiguous.

At a time when the Reformers were working very hard to explain clearly what they were saying to their intellectual contemporaries , it seems to me highly unlikely that the Reformers themselves would have used such short and potentially ambiguous slogans.

One small point:
The form solus Christus can be translated Christ alone.

The form solo Christo is not correctly translated as “Christ alone” -
it would need to be something like by Christ alone
depending on the context and the other words in the sentence.

Hi Terry.

I have often heard the solas rendered with the preposition, though not so much the first one:

Scripture Alone
By Christ Alone
By Grace Alone
By Faith Alone
To the glory of God alone

I would love to have your knowledge of Latin. It was taught in First form at our school [Year Seven], which is all I did, and all I can remember is the boys giggling at the pronunciation of MENSAS and
Amo
amas
amat
amamus
amatus
amant

We were permitted to do Latin in Second to Fourth Form [Years 8 to 10] but discouraged from doing it in the senior years. Maybe the teacher wasn’t up to it, or preferred teaching French.

My brother studied Latin in the Junior school, but I was busy doing History, French and Music.

Every so often you get a Latin quote in a book, and puzzle over what it means.

The latest one I saw, which is also supposed to be a Reformation slogan was in the preface to volume 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism which says

… for the editors of this volume, and doubtless for many of its readers, Scripture remains norma normans sed non norma normata

Hi David,
I am conscious that my Latin is rusty and there are much better Latin scholars around, so I try to be cautious before posting in that area.

David wrote:
The solas are

Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone

Solo Christo
[sometimes Solus Christus] - Christ Alone
[sounds like a good title for a song!]

Sola Gratia - Grace Alone

Sola Fide - By Faith Alone

Soli Deo Gloria - The Glory of God Alone

I think the following is the appropriate way to translate the “five solas”.
One proviso, as I said before, is that another preposition other than “by” may be more appropriate if we had a particular full sentence.

Sola Scriptura => Scripture Alone OR By Scripture Alone

Solo Christo => By Christ Alone
Solus Christus => Christ Alone

Sola Gratia => By Grace Alone OR Grace Alone

Sola Fide => By Faith Alone

Soli Deo Gloria => Glory to God Alone

[Technically this could be “By Glory to God Alone”,
but that would make significantly less sense.]

Your translation of Soli Deo Gloria as “The Glory of God Alone” is technically incorrect.

Note that Soli Deo Gloria is actually a shortened form of the Latin for
a New Testament phrase (slogan?):

In the “Vulgate”, the major translation of the Bible from the Greek and Hebrew into Latin done around 400AD:

1Timothy 1:17 says:
.....soli Deo honor et gloria......
.....honor and glory to God alone....
or as most English transations of the NT put it
.....honor and glory to the only God......

Hi Terry.
Thanks for the lesson.
In my study of J S Bach, in preparation for being a contestant on The Einstein Factor, I have come across the fact that Bach often wrote SDG for Soli Deo Gloria at the end of his compositions.

I wonder if it will come up in the questions?

You can only hope.....

At my RC primary school we wrote AMDG in the top corner of each page of our exercise books:
AMDG = Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam => For/To the Greater Glory of God

Wikipedia suggests JS Bach may have used the AMDG form too....

... and also JJ
Jesus help, I’m told. Forget the Latin

It is interesting to see that the “five solas” do date from the Reformation times as phrases in full sentences.
[I know this doesnt answer David’s question as to who first used the “five solas” as a set of slogans]

I understand the Formula of Concord, from 1576 in German and 1584 in Latin, is a highly respected confessional document in the Lutheran Churches.

The Epitome (short version) of the Formula of Concord contains four of the five phrases or a grammatical variation of them:

sola gratia : 3 times

sola fide : 3 times

soli Christo : once (a different grammatical case)
Christus solus: once

sola Sacra Scriptura : once (= by Holy Scripture alone)

Plus, as I said before, soli deo gloria is based on 1 Timothy 1:17

I should also add that sola fide was supposedly in the writings of Luther himself around 1520, but I havent found the direct reference.

All five of the solas are certainly there as specific written phrases in the Reformation period.....just waiting for someone to turn them into slogans later.

Thanks Terry. I am interested in the provenance of these terms, and I have not seen anything that linked them to the Formula of Concord, until today.

Now, I need to file this somewhere!

Terry wrote:
I should also add that sola fide was supposedly in the writings of Luther himself around 1520, but I havent found the direct reference.

sola fide is used in Luther’s 1520 work in Latin
De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae ;
the title in English is “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church”

sola fide is also used in Luther’s 1520 work, published in both Latin and German,
De libertate Christiana ;
the title in English is “Concerning Christian Liberty”

An English translation of this one can be found here .

The following is a relevant extract from Luther’s “Concerning Christian Liberty”:

Martin Luther wrote:
But you will ask:—“What is this word, and by what means is it to be used, since there are so many words of God?” I answer, the Apostle Paul (Rom. i.) explains what it is, namely, the Gospel of God, concerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, risen, and glorified through the Spirit, the sanctifier. To preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it free, and to save it, if it believes the preaching. For faith alone, and the efficacious use of the word of God, bring salvation. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Rom. x. 9.) And again: “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. x. 4); and “The just shall live by faith.” (Rom. i. 17.) For the word of God cannot be received and honoured by any works, but by faith alone. Hence it is clear that, as the soul needs the word alone for life and justification, so it is justified by faith alone and not by any works. For if it could be justified by any other means, it would have no need of the word, nor consequently of faith.

Miles Van Pelt ‘s very positive review of Graeme Goldsworthy’s Gospel-Centred Hermeneutics refers to Goldsworthy’s admitted presuppositions in his hermeneutical method, which are that Christ is the key to the Scriptures and the solas of the Reformation.

* “The principle of ‘grace alone’ points us to the ontological priority of God” (47).

* “The principle of ‘Christ alone’ points us to the soteriological and hermeneutical priority of the gospel of Christ” (48).

* “The principle of ‘Scripture alone’ points us to the phenomenological and material priority of Scripture” (49).

* “The principle of ‘faith alone’ points us to the ontological inability of the sinner and the epistemological priority of the Holy Spirit.” (50).

If the biblical story is true, Christ is the only saviour for humankind and there is room for no other way to God. If the story is true, Jesus Christ is the interpretative key to every fact in the universe and, of course, the Bible is one such fact. He is thus the hermeneutic principle that applies first to the Bible as the ground for understanding, and also to the whole of reality. Interpreting reality correctly is a by-product of salvation. Thus we must assert that the person and work of Jesus Christ are foundational for evangelical hermeneutics . . . Christ interprets all facts, since all things were created in him, through him and for him (Col. 1:16). As the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5), Christ mediates the ultimate truth about God in all things and thus about the meaning of the Bible (page 48).

Sounds like a helpful book.

I think Sola fide would be the Latin translation of Luther’s German translation of Romans 3:28, allein durch den Glauben. 
(Bible Gateway and babelfish gave me the German phrasing.  Mein Deutsch nonexistent ist.  My Latin is rusty but will stretch this far.)

Luther added the “allein”, ‘alone’, because he wanted to bring out the meaning from the context.  IIRC, the reaction to that was what made him say, “They stare at it like cows at a new gate!”

From what I understand, Luther’s translation into German was fairly early, and discussion of his whole program of reform included discussion of this text.  So it would have been said early and often, I should think. 

It would have been translated into Latin because no-one in their right mind spoke German when they were having a serious theological discussion.  How very different the 1500s were…

Oh, and to indulge my taste for pedantry, it’s amo amas amat amamus amatis amant.  Amatus is you, David, if you have a significant other: the (masculine) loved one.

Hi Alan,

Alan wrote:
From what I understand, Luther’s translation into German was fairly early, and discussion of his whole program of reform included discussion of this text. So it would have been said early and often, I should think.

Actually Luther’s key writings challenging the Church hierarchy’s teachings and practises came a few years before his translation of the New Testament into German.

From at least 1520, Luther was writng sola fide in his Latin works and using the corresponding allein when there were German versions of those writings.

The use of Latin and/or German depended on the intended audience.

Luther did his translation of the New Testament into German in 1521 and 1522.

Of course, he also wrote numerous other works after his New Testament translation became available.

I have included part of a standard Lutheran chronology below to clarify this:

1511 - Transferred to Augustinian house at Wittenberg

1512 - Becomes doctor of theology

1513 - Begins lecturing on the Psalms

1515 - Begins lecturing on Romans; appointed district vicar over ten monasteries

1516 - Begins lecturing on Galatians

1517 - Begins lecturing on Hebrews; on October 31, posts 95 Theses on indulgences

1518 - At meeting of Augustinians in Heidelberg, defends his theology; in October, appears before Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, but refuses to recant; in December, his prince, Frederick the Wise, refuses to hand him over to Rome.

1519 - Understands the “righteousness of God” as “passive righteousness with which God justifies us by faith” [some scholars date this discovery earlier]; in July, debates Professor John Eck at Leipzig and denies supreme authority of popes and councils

1520 - Papal bull Exsurge Domine gives Luther 60 days to recant or be excommunicated; writes his 3 seminal treatises, To the Christian Nobility, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, The Freedom of a Christian; burns papal bull and books of canon law

1521 - Excommunicated by the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem; at Diet of Worms in April, on trial before Emperor Charles V and other leaders of church and state, he refuses to recant writings; an edict (in May) condemns him as heretic and outlaw; after the Diet of Worms, he is “kidnapped” by Frederick the Wise, and hidden at Wartburg Castle; begins translating the New Testament

1522 - in March, comes out of hiding and returns to Wittenberg, helping to reestablish order there; finishes New Testament translation, first published in September

1525 - Writes Against the Heavenly Prophets, contending against Andreas Karlstadt and Thomas Müntzer; marries Katherine von Bora in June; writes Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes, criticizing the Peasants’ Revolt; writes Bondage of the Will against Erasmus

His 1520 works “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church”
and “The Freedom of a Christian” = “Concerning Christian Liberty”
are the two I mentioned in an earlier post related to sola fide.

So far we have clarified that the five solas are genuine Reformation phrases in longer documents from the 16th centurty or earlier:
+ sola fide is in Luther’s writings as early as 1520;
+ its German equivalent was popularised in Luther’s New Testament translation (1522) of Romans 3:28;
+ four of the five solas are in the Formula of Concord;
+ the other one, soli deo gloria, is from the Latin “Vulgate” translation (about 400 AD) of 1 Timothy 1:17

But we haven’t progressed far in answering David’s origiinal question…

David wrote:
Does anyone know who put it together, or is like TULIP [not the 5 points, which came from the Synod of Dordt] but the actual organising of it in that flowery way, which would appear to be a 20th century thing......

So any ideas on who first used the five solas as a set of summary points or slogans?
As a set are they a 19th century formulation? 20th century?