The five solas

Five phrases, one gospel

Sola is Latin for ‘alone’ or ‘only’. The five phrases are less five separate principles than one gospel seen from five sides:

Their roots lie in passages such as 2 Timothy 3:16, Ephesians 2:8, Romans 3:28, 1 Timothy 2:5 and Romans 11:36. Grace gives Christ, faith receives Christ, Scripture shows us Christ, and so all the glory goes to God. Paul puts it in two sentences:

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

‘Alone’ is easily misheard. Scripture alone does not mean throwing away the creeds, the Fathers or the church's teaching, but setting them all under Scripture and testing them by it (see the sufficiency of Scripture). Faith alone does not mean a faith without works. As Calvin answered the Council of Trent, it is faith alone that justifies, yet the faith that justifies is never alone Calvin, Antidote to the Council of Trent. Wesley noted that faith justifies "not as it is a work, but as it receives Christ" Wesley.

Where the phrases come from

The Reformers used each of these phrases in their own writings. Luther, translating Romans 3:28 into German (1522), added ‘alone’ and defended it as Paul's meaning; Bach often wrote S.D.G., for soli Deo gloria, at the end of his scores. But gathering them as ‘the five solas’ is a much later summary, which became common in the twentieth century; some lists name only three, Scripture, grace and faith. It remains a faithful summary of the gospel the Reformers heard again in Scripture.

How the traditions see them

Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Methodist and Baptist churches, and most evangelicals, confess these truths. The Thirty-Nine Articles call justification by faith only "a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort" Thirty-Nine Articles, art. 11. Evangelicals divide, as Calvinists and Arminians, over how grace brings a sinner to faith, but both confess grace alone.

The Catholic Church also teaches that salvation is by grace and that Christ is the one mediator, but it does not accept ‘alone’ in the Reformers' sense. It teaches that Scripture and Tradition together form one deposit of revelation, interpreted by the Magisterium Vatican II, Dei Verbum, and the Council of Trent condemned ‘faith alone’ taken to mean that nothing else need cooperate Council of Trent, Decree on Justification. The Orthodox churches read Scripture within Holy Tradition, speak of salvation as union with God, and do not frame their faith in these Western terms. The Reformed Faith course takes the five in turn, from Scripture alone to Christ alone, glory to God alone.