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The 5 Pillars of Biblical Christianity

by Dr. Andrew Corbett, originally written 15th October 2006 from Legana, Tasmania; updated, 21st September 2025 from Melbourne, Victoria

Denominations are generally waning in this “Post-Modern” era. Along with the rise of non- denominationally aligned churches has been a growing doctrinal vacuum as preachers become life-coaches and the emphasis is on making the Bible a “How to…” book. A casual reading of some of these churches doctrinal statements reveals some glaring departures with historic Christianity, which should cause us to wonder how, or why, they differ so much with the 5 Pillars of Biblical Christianity.

SOLA SCRIPTURA

Biblical Christianity commences with the authority of Scripture. Some might say that it commences with Christ. But without the revelation of Scripture we wouldn’t know that! Against the backdrop of a Papal Church usurping authority to lord it over those who would follow Christ, the Reformers protested that such usurping was contrary to what the Scriptures permitted.

When confronted with the option of obeying God’s Word or the contradictory commands of men, the early apostles stated –

But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him at His right hand as Leader and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.”
Acts 5:29-32

The Scripture asserts its divinely inspired authority in Second Timothy –

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Second Timothy 3:16-17

William Tyndale was one of the first reformers to defy the Papal church leadership and teach that the Bible was a higher authority than the Pope. For this stand he paid a terrible price (being burned alive at the stake). Not only did he teach this doctrine of Sola Scriptura he trained lay preachers (derogatorily referred to as Lollards which means ‘empty heads’) to preach it across England. He then worked on translating the Scriptures into the common language of the people and was able to do something that Wyclif over a hundred years earlier was unable to do: he published his English Bible by means of the newly invented printing press.

Tyndale died to make the English Bible available to the Spiritually hungry. I wonder what mixed emotions he would feel today if he could see the number of Bibles in the homes of Christians today and how little they were actually read! (Research shows that only 2% of Christians have read the entire Bible.)

Little wonder then that Christians are exhorted to be daily readers of God’s Word God’s Word (Note, Proverbs 8:34 and Acts 17:11). [One of the best Bible reading programs ever invented is to open the Bible atGenesis 1:1 and read as much as you can daily until you reach the last verse of Revelation 22:21.]

Sola Scriptura means that God has given us no higher revelation of His: will, ways and Word, than the Bible. We don’t worship the Bible, but we heed its message that God deserves worship. Neither does Sola Scriptura mean that God has not given us other reliable revelations of His truth:

¶ The heavens proclaim His righteousness,
and all the peoples see His glory.
Psalm 97:6 (Note Psalm 19:1)

For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:20

The expression, “the heavens” speaks of the night sky, that is, our earthly perspective of our vast cosmos, and in Romans 1 it speaks of God’s creation more generally. Thus, the Bible states that God’s glory is revealed through His creation and is perceptible to all people. The theological study of this ‘revelation’ is referred to as natural theology and also encompasses philosophy (what Aquinas referred to as ‘reason’).

Therefore, Sola Scriptura is not saying that Scripture is the only way of knowing the truth, but it is saying that Scripture is the highest authority of the truth. It was Thomas Aquinas who reasonably argued based on these Scripture passages that the truth of God is communicated via the created order (apprehended by ‘reason’) and the Scriptures (apprehended by ‘revelation’).

But while reason and revelation are two distinct sources of truths, the truths are not contradictory; for in the last resort they rest on one absolute truth — they come from the one source of knowledge, God, the Absolute One.
Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274)

It was Clement of Alexandria (ca.160 – ca. 215AD) who is credited with saying something similar to this first when he said, All truth is God’s truth wherever it may be found. But Sola Scriptura declares that Scripture has a unique authority for the truth. Therefore, while Scriptural revelation does not need to be established by the testimony of nature, its authority is most certainly confirmed by it. This means that archaeology does not “prove” Scripture’s authority, it merely confirms it. The same can be said for physical science. For example, cosmologists observe that the universe is moving (expanding) from a central starting point ( note Job 9:8, and Psalm 104:2 confirms what cosmologists now observe).

However, some Charismatic/Pentecostal churches in practice do not subscribe to Sola Scriptura. Rather than applying the instructions in First Thessalonians 5:20 and First Corinthians 12:10 to “test” what some claim to be prophecies, there is a blind untested acceptance of ‘prophecies’. Too many charismatic Pentecostals have attributed personal prophecy to the status of Scripture. Most however don’t realise they are even doing this. Yet when a person prophesies that God is about to pour out His Revival Spirit, how many people realise this is counter to what the Scripture instructs as the commissioned way to disciple people to Christ?

SOLO CHRISTO

“Christ Alone!” The cry of the Reformers was that salvation was revealed in the Scriptures alone (Sola Scriptura) which is based on the work of Christ alone. When someone is spiritually bling, they are “veiled”. Note how this blindness and veil can be only removed according to Second Corinthians 3:14.

But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.
Second Corinthians 3:14

When we say ‘Christ alone’, we are emphatically stating that Scripture reveals salvation in and through no one other than Christ (John 17:3; Acts 4:12). Solo Christo is not primarily a declaration of Christ’s uniqueness – although He is altogether unique (unlike any other who may only be unique in personality and appearance). Note –

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty, and then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He had nothing to do with this world except the naked power of His divine manhood. While still a young man, the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth while He was dying – and that was his coat. When he was dead He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today He is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that One Solitary Life.
James Allan Francis (1864 – 1928), “One Solitary Life”, pp. 1-7

According to John 14:6 Christ is unique among the world’s other religious leaders. It declares that there is no other way to be reconciled with God, than through Jesus the Christ. The Reformers, who had protested to their Roman Catholic Church authorities that the Catholic Church’s teaching about salvation was contrary to Scripture. That message was that salvation was through membership with, and obedience to, the Church. But this is not the message that Christ, the apostles, or the New Testament books, proclaims.

There is an error which almost sounds like Solo Christo, referred to as “Jesus Only”. This is an ancient heresy which asserts that Jesus was His own Father, and is now the Holy Spirit. That is, it claims that there is one monolithic God – who was God the Father in the Old Testament, then He was God the Son in the New Testament, and now He is God the Holy Spirit. This error is also referred to as Modalism. We can see from the Scriptures that this is a false view about God from the account of Christ’s baptism that when He came up from the water the Holy Spirit  came upon Him, and then God the Father spoke from Heaven –

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3:16-17

The “Jesus Only” / Modalism error completely undermines the work of the Cross (since Christ gave His life as a ransom [payment] to His Father for the sins of the world. It also makes a mockery of Christ crying out to His Father when He was dying on the Cross as if He was just maintaining a charade of an imaginary relationship. And it makes the baptismal ‘formula’ given by Christ in Matthew 28:19-20 a cruel hoax.

When we say Solo Christo we are stating our belief that salvation (the forgiveness of our sins and a new and right relationship with God) is possible only by the work of Christ being merited to us. Salvation is not through the Church, Mary, the Saints, or our own efforts!

It is only through Christ that we are saved. For some, this salvation includes the composite of all God’s grace towards us (healing, provision, deliverance). That is, for some, salvation is not just about spiritual new birth. For those who regard the Atonement (the death of Christ on the Cross) as the full expression of God’s grace, they are likely to view eternal life as just one of those graces made possible through the atonement. To express this, such phrases as “healing is in the atonement”, “prosperity is in the atonement” (or the misquoted Scripture- Jesus became poor to make us rich), “the baptism in the Spirit is in the Atonement” are employed. It is highly doubtful that this is what the Reformers ever intended the expression Solo Christo to mean.

When the Reformers cried Solo Christo they not only declared that it was His exclusive work of atonement on the Cross that provides the basis of our spiritual regeneration through the Holy Spirit’s agency, but that it had to be Christ who died to provide that atonement. No angel. No created being. No mortal. Christ alone. “He alone is worthy.” (Rev. 5:12). If Christ be not God in the flesh, then there would eternally be the doubt that God was “beatable”. But since Christ has conquered death there is no longer any doubt that God is supreme over every foe.

SOLA GRATIA

“Grace alone!” Perhaps the most abhorrent and repulsive summary of the most sublime news anyone could ever herald. Abhorrent? Indeed. We are so conditioned to earn every merit or reward that comes our way that the concept of someone else paying our debt with no thought of seeking any form of payment is truly abhorrent. Repulsive? Certainly. The attitude of “I got myself into this mess and I’ll get myself out of it!” is so entrenched in most people’s thinking that the notion of another exhausting all their resources to rescue us- and then making no demand for any kind of repayment is indeed repulsive! Yet that which most find abhorrent and repulsive is the core of the Gospel: God’s grace.

So alien is the genuine concept of God’s grace that there is no analogy to compare it to. So used to the thinking that gifts are given to procure to some favour from the recipient that when sincere Christians began to teach if God has saved us, we should repay Him by serving Him, that no one for several centuries ever challenged it. Not until this teaching was carried through to its logical conclusion – that we are saved by what Christ has done for us and how we respond to that gift determines whether we are saved or not (this is known as “Semi-Pelagianism”, faith in Christ plus our religious efforts=our salvation).

Benefiting from God’s grace is not necessarily the same as experiencing God’s grace. An experience of God’s grace where it grips your soul in total wonder and amazement and leaves you in perfect restful peace causes you to relate differently to people- especially those who have offended (indebted themselves to) you. Gracious living is perhaps the hallmark trait of someone who has experienced God’s grace of salvation. It is therefore not to be understood as that which causes God to be gracious (this thinking betrays the condition of a soul who has not experienced God’s grace).

Someone has said that ‘religion’ is spelt: D – O, while
Christianity is spelt: D – O – N – E!

Since we all benefit from God’s grace in some way theologians like to distinguish saving grace from God’s general grace. The grace from God that allows us the awesome privilege of living on this planet, enjoying the pleasures of life, giving and receiving, working, playing, and expressing ourselves is referred to as “Prevenient Grace”. Everybody benefits from this grace, but only a few go on to experience saving grace.

It’s imperative to distinguish between what saves us and what happens when we are saved. One is the reason we are saved the other is the result of our salvation. Therefore two people can be living out the commands of Scripture for totally different reasons.

This understanding of grace has caused some to think that God doesn’t care how we live after we’ve accepted His grace because we are already forgiven.

We are not saved by belonging to, or attending, a church, being water-baptised (‘baptismal-regeneration’), or making “a decision” for Christ (‘decisional-regeneration’). Salvation by grace is something that the New Testament consistently says we must simply “accept” or “receive” (note Mark 4:20; 1Cor. 2:14; Mark 10:15). When C. S. Lewis was confronted with the grace of God to save his soul he looked for any other way to find peace for his soul. But none was to be found in what would in reality be derived from his own mental, physical, material, or spiritual efforts. He said something like, I was left with no other option but to simply fall into the hands of God’s grace.

When the Reformers cried sola gratia they were countering the Pope’s teaching that salvation was achieved by Christ’s work combined with our work. But grace is not limited to prevenient grace, or saving grace. There is another aspect to God’s grace.

SOLA FIDE

“Faith alone!” Against the backdrop of a State Church, which taught that salvation was earned by a person’s righteous efforts, the Reformers reaffirmed the Biblical position that salvation was received by faith, not works. We note that the Bible makes a distinction between faith and belief. Even demons believe there is a God – but they do not put their faith in this God.

Many people claim to ‘believe’ in God, yet they have never received the gift of faith from God. Therefore, simply believing certain facts does not give us the means of being regenerated. After all, James 2:19 says that even demons believe in God! (And they are not regenerated!) In Old Covenant times the word “faith” rarely (if ever) occurs in the same way that it does in the New Covenant. The Old Testament uses the word faithful rather than the word faith (note Hab. 2:4).

This verse is cited in the New Testament (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38) but “faith” is now given a different meaning to that of the Old Testament. “Faith” in the New Testament is about: trust.

The kind of faith that saves is a gift from God. While we distinguish ‘belief’ from ‘faith’ there is a necessary connection between them. For faith to become acceptable the Gospel of Christ first becomes believable.

Belief therefore precedes faith.

The heart cannot accept as true what the head declares to be false. Removing obstacles to belief and giving reasons to believe does not necessarily save a person. But doing this may be a necessary in order for someone to accept Christ and His saving faith. In August 2006, former investigative journalist and Current Affairs anchor, Michael Willesee, spoke of how he began to investigate Christianity and became convinced of its truthfulness. If someone had asked him if he was a believer at this time he probably would have said yes. But as Willesee himself said, I still didn’t have the gift of faith. Not until he came to a point of surrendering to Christ, confessing his sin, and putting his trust in Christ did he experience what he calls conversion and received what he refers to as the gift of faith.

When God calls us to Himself by His all conquering grace and gives us the gift of faith to be saved through Christ He also converts us.

If faith is a gift from God, and its measure is determined by God (Romans 12:1-3), does it grow? Some people have taught that ‘faith’ in the New Testament always refers to the one thing: our ability to believe. In this paradigm of faith, faith that saves us from our sins is “beginner’s” faith or “small” faith, while the faith that can work miracles is “matured” or “great” faith. While some New Testament passages seem to lend support to this view, the weight of the New Testament seems to tip the scales toward there being different ways faith is referred to.

“Faith” is referred to as both a verb and a noun in the New Testament. On the one hand it is something we do- we believe. But on the other hand the New Testament also refers to faith as something- the faith. In this latter instance it seems to refer to the entire corpus of Christian doctrine (the framework of our belief). This seems to be how Paul uses it in 1Timothy 6:10. Some have suggested that the New Testament also alludes to the faith as representing the fellowship of believers (the church). When someone wanders from the faith (1Tim. 6:10) they not only turn their back on sound doctrine but the fellowship of believers as well (note Galatians 6:10). Therefore, we need to take great care not to embrace the dodgy doctrine that God will not answer our prayers because we did not have enough faith. Miracles and answers to prayer are the result of God’s grace not our ability to manipulate God with our ability to believe. The kind of faith that Jesus referred to as “great” was the kind of faith that led people to trust God enough to fully obey Him and acknowledge His supremacy in all things (eg. Matt. 15:28).

SOLI DEO GLORIA

The final statement in The Five Pillars of Biblical Christianity is Soli Deo Gloria – for the glory of God alone! The reason we are saved is so that we can glorify God. In one sense it is true that reason Christ died for us was to save us from our sins and just wrath of God for sinning. But the main reason Christ died to redeem us was for the glory of God (note John 5:44; 12:43).

God’s glory is described several times in Scripture (Exo. 16:10; 24:17; 1Kings 8:11; 2Chron. 7:1, 3; Ezek. 7:4). In this sense, God’s glory is a visible reality (a noun).

But in another sense glory is what we should give God. Therefore, living for the glory of God is a verb: it is something we should do. The real purpose of our salvation is not merely to avoid hell, but to give God glory! God has saved us for His glory.

The first article in the Westminster Shorter Catechism goes like this-

Q. 1 What is the chief end of man?
A. The chief end of man is to enjoy God and glorify Him forever.

Salvation is the doorway to being able to glorify God. We are saved to give glory to God. For some Christians this means what they do on Sunday in a church service.

Many people spend a great proportion of their lives searching for their life’s purpose. No matter what conclusions anyone comes to regarding this pursuit, one thing is certain: everyone’s purpose is to glorify God!

A SUMMARY OF THE FIVE PILLARS OF BIBLICAL CHRISTIANITY

Blessed be His glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with His glory! Amen and Amen!
Psalm 72:19

© Dr. Andrew Corbett, 15th October 2006; updated 21st September 2025.