Many of us are deeply saddened by Jason Stellman's recent denial of
Sola Fide and
Sola Scriptura and his apparent departure to Rome or Eastern orthodoxy. I graduated with Jason at WSCAL, and I always appreciated our friendship. I have lost lots of sleep over his recent departure, and while I'm thankful for his honesty in stating his position forthrightly, I grieve over the confusion he has caused for so many. What troubles me the most in reading through Jason's reasons for his departure is the underlining assumption that he has come to some kind of dead-end that Protestants have never figured out before. Jason writes,
...unless the church’s interpretation of Scripture is divinely protected from error at least under certain conditions, then what we call the “orthodox” understanding of doctrines like the Trinity or the hypostatic union is reduced to mere fallible human opinion. I have searched long and hard, but have found no solution within the Sola Scriptura paradigm to this devastating conclusion.
I stand a bit aghast at such a statement because it assumes that Protestants have never answered this so-called devasting conclusion. Jason is asserting that unless "the Church" (assuming the Church of Rome and supposed succession from Peter) is given full power to be protected from error, one can never really be sure his doctrine is true, it's reduced to mere subjective opinion. Said another way,the church must have all supremacy of power and judgment on earth for us to have any kind of certainty of truth from the human opinions of men in their private readings of Scripture.
