What are the Five Solas?

Question 7087.

The Five Solas are the five Latin slogans that summarise what the Reformers recovered from Scripture in the sixteenth century: Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, and to the glory of God alone. Every one of them is a statement of exclusion, which is the point of the word sola, and the exclusions are what gave them their force.

As a Baptist who is not Reformed in soteriology, I am sometimes asked whether I hold them. I do, wholeheartedly, and I want to explain why they are the common property of all evangelical Christians rather than the badge of one party within us.

Where the Five Solas came from

The phrases were not published as a numbered set by Luther or Calvin. They emerged as shorthand for the Reformation’s central convictions and were gathered into a group of five much later, largely in the twentieth century. That history is worth knowing, because it means the Five Solas are a summary of a movement rather than a creed anybody signed.

What each one does is deny a specific addition that the medieval church had made. Scripture plus tradition. Faith plus works. Grace plus merit. Christ plus priests and saints. God’s glory plus the church’s institutional standing. Remove the additions and you have the Five Solas.

That structure explains why they still matter. The additions have never gone away; they simply change costume, and every generation of the church has to strip them off again.

Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone

Scripture alone is the final authority for faith and practice. Tradition, reason, experience and church councils have real value, and none of them can override the text. 2 Timothy 3:16 grounds this in the nature of Scripture itself: all of it breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness.

Note what sola Scriptura is not. It is not the claim that we may read the Bible in isolation from the church’s history, which is a modern distortion and a recipe for eccentricity. Luther and Calvin quoted the fathers constantly. It is the claim that when tradition and Scripture conflict, Scripture corrects the tradition.

I would add the companion principle of tota Scriptura, the whole of Scripture. A theology built on a favoured handful of texts while quietly ignoring the rest is unfaithful even if every text quoted is genuinely there. Of the Five Solas this is the one that governs the others, because it is the ground on which the rest are argued.

Sola Fide: faith alone

We are justified by faith alone, apart from any contribution of our own works. Romans 3:28 says a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law, and Paul spends four chapters establishing it against every objection an experienced Jewish debater could raise.

Faith here is not a work we perform to earn favour. It is the empty hand that receives, which is why Paul can set it against works so absolutely. The moment faith becomes something meritorious we have lost the whole argument and reinvented the system the Reformation was protesting against.

James’s insistence that faith without works is dead is not a counter argument. He is asking how a living faith is recognised, not what makes a person right with God, and I have worked that through in the article on justification.

Sola Gratia: grace alone

Salvation is by grace alone, God’s unearned favour, with no contribution from us at any point in the transaction. Ephesians 2:8 and 9 states it as compactly as it can be stated: by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The Greek word is charis, and its logic is exclusive by definition. Paul argues in Romans 11 that if it is by grace it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. There is no partial grace, no grace supplemented by effort, no grace that leaves room for a small contribution to be recognised at the end.

This is the sola around which the most heat is generated, because Calvinists and non Calvinists both affirm grace alone and mean somewhat different things by how it operates. I hold that grace is entirely unearned and genuinely resistible, that God draws and enables without compelling, and that faith precedes regeneration. Nothing in that position dilutes grace alone; it disputes a particular account of how grace works. The article on Calvinism sets out where I differ.

Solus Christus: Christ alone

There is one mediator between God and men, and no other. 1 Timothy 2:5 is the text, and it excludes priests as necessary intermediaries, saints as intercessors, Mary as co redeemer, and any human system that positions itself between a sinner and Jesus.

This was in some ways the most practically revolutionary of the Five Solas. It meant an ordinary believer could approach God directly, read Scripture in his own language, and receive assurance without ecclesiastical permission. Hebrews had said it all along: we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, so let us draw near with confidence.

It also excludes the modern versions of the same error. Any teacher, movement or experience presented as necessary for real access to God is competing with Christ alone, however evangelical its vocabulary.

Soli Deo Gloria: to the glory of God alone

The last of the Five Solas is the conclusion the other four require. If Scripture is the authority, if salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus with no contribution from me, then there is nothing left for me to take credit for, and the glory belongs entirely to God.

Paul reaches exactly this destination at the end of Romans 11, breaking into doxology after eleven chapters of argument: for from him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory for ever. The doctrine produces the worship. That is always the order.

It also reorders everything else. If God’s glory is the end of all things, then work, family, money and leisure are all conducted with reference to it, which is why the Reformation produced a doctrine of ordinary vocation as well as a doctrine of justification.

What the Five Solas do not settle

Here I want to be careful, because the Five Solas are sometimes deployed as though they settled the whole Calvinist debate. They do not. They are Reformation slogans against Rome, not intramural Protestant arbitration, and every evangelical body that has ever existed affirms all five while disagreeing sharply about election, atonement and perseverance.

I affirm the Five Solas as a Baptist who holds to unlimited atonement, genuine human freedom, faith preceding the new birth, and eternal security grounded in God’s faithfulness. None of those positions touches any of the five, and anyone who tells you otherwise has widened the slogans beyond their historical meaning.

For the broader picture of what the Reformers taught about salvation, see the article on the Reformers and salvation, and for the doctrine of grace itself what grace is.

Why the Five Solas still matter

It would be easy to treat these as historical curiosities, the slogans of a quarrel settled centuries ago in a language nobody speaks. I think that would be a mistake, because each of the additions the Reformers rejected has modern successors that use evangelical vocabulary.

Scripture alone is challenged whenever a personal prophecy, a favoured author or a movement’s culture functions as an authority the text cannot correct. Faith alone is challenged whenever assurance is made to depend on a level of performance. Grace alone is challenged whenever we speak as though God helps those who make the first move.

Christ alone is challenged by every ministry that positions itself as the necessary channel of blessing. And the glory of God alone is challenged constantly by the platform culture of modern Christianity, where the name on the poster is larger than the name of the Lord. The Five Solas remain useful precisely because the additions keep returning in new clothes.

A Baptist reading of the Reformation

I should be honest about where I stand in relation to this heritage. As a Baptist I owe the Reformers an enormous debt and I am not their theological descendant at every point. They retained a state church, infant baptism and, in places, the persecution of those who differed, and my own spiritual ancestors were on the receiving end of it.

So I hold the Five Solas as recovered biblical truth rather than as loyalty to a party. That is the right way to hold them, since they are offered as summaries of Scripture and must be judged by Scripture like everything else. Sola Scriptura applied consistently will occasionally correct the men who coined it, and they would have said so themselves.

So, now what?

Test yourself against each of the five in turn, because the additions creep back in quietly. Is Scripture actually my final authority, or does a favourite teacher get the last word? Am I resting on faith alone, or has some private performance become part of my confidence? Am I treating grace as a gift or as an arrangement?

The Five Solas were recovered at enormous cost by people who were burned for them, and the least we can do is understand what we have inherited. Which of the five have you allowed to slip, and what has quietly taken its place?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)