Sola Scriptura
There is some good evidence that it was a *transcendental* or *occult* memory system which Peter Ramus and the Puritan divines rationalized into their dichotomous, "plain-style" visual logic by replacing the old systems of mnemonic images with printed pages of visual classification. By means of this visual rationalism the dynamic depth-dimension of the ancient contemplative traditions could be flattened out and mapped down, symbolically objectified in the form of printed text on a page. It has been suggested that "sola scriptura" reflects this drive to move away from traditional imagery to carefully prescribed text.
Of course, this seeming iconoclasm, or rejection of visual images was itself the choice of another form of visual imagery, namely the "Puritan plainstyle" (which has been inherited by groups such as the Plymouth Brethren and Evangelical Fundamentalists, generally little aware of the *occult memory system* of Peter Ramus which is sedimented therein). This pattern of a neoplatonic-like gnosis which informed Ramist Puritanism is described on pages 238-242 of Frances A. Yates, _The Art of Memory_, University of Chicago Press, 1966: "It is an `ancient wisdom' which Ramus is reviving. It is an insight into the nature of reality through which he can unify the multiplicity of appearances. By imposing the dialectical order on every subject the mind can make the ascent and descent from specials to generals and vice versa...And it begins to appear not dissimilar in aim from Camillo's Theatre which provides the unifying ascent and descent through arrangements of images, or from Bruno's method in *Shadows* of seeking the unifying system by which the mind may return to the light from the shadows."
Imagination, especially transcendental-reflective imagination, such as that of the Hermetic philosopher and magician, Giordano Bruno, was, understandably, a major concern to the Puritans. And to move as far away from this as possible, the idea is that they reduced the classical rhetoric (contra Calvin), and ancient memory systems from the ages prior to the printing press, to the form of their *commonplace books*. "Sola scriptura" for them became Bible interpretation according to the printed pages of these *commonplace books* organized according to the principals of Peter Ramus's dichotomous visual logic.
John G. Rechtien can therefore sum up "sola scriptura" this way: "With the rise of the visual rationalism of which Ramist method was an early symptom, logic swallowed up rhetoric and became silent... Both Ramus and the Puritans based their theology upon "Scripture alone". Whether citing Aristotle or Scripture they depended upon written and printed texts to justify their thought. Thus, the Protestant concern with "Scripture alone" which governed Perkins rules and examples -- indeed, the entire Protestant and even Renaissance desire to return to the sources -- manifests a need to strengthen the memory, to establish a visual recovery tradition...The slogan of "Scripture alone" thus points to more than an ecclesiology which opposed Catholic insistence upon Scripture and tradition..."(John G. Rechtien, _The Visual Memory of William Perkins and the End of Theological Dialogue_, JAAR, XLV/1 Supplement (March, 1977), D:69-99 (pp.69,87,90)).
April 1996
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