Gregory, Brad S. 2017, "Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts that Continue to Shape our World."

This is just an example of the problems with Brad Gregory's recent book: "Rebel In the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts that Continue to Shape our World."

Gregory identifies the root of all modern problems with Luther's Sola Scriptura.

Page 108: "Urging the average layperson to determine Christian teaching from the scriptures is like asking someone who's never worked a blacksmith's forge or operated a bellows to hammer out some horseshoes."

Well, Dr. Gregory's words are more fitting if made as an assessment of the poor condition of the teaching of the church at that time.

Assume that the common layperson were required to attend church at least once a week, more often than that would not be too presumptuous for the late Middle Ages. The comparison would be more accurate if likened to asking someone who has been required by church law to be instructed every week for his whole life by a blacksmith, shown how the tools work, and given personal instruction in the use of those tools, the hammer the bellows, the forge--someone who has even been shown by hand how to make a horseshoe and physically lead through doing the process by the blacksmith.

Why then should the layperson be unable or unqualified to make such a determination? I wouldn't assume that they were unqualified, unless, of course, the blacksmith was teaching them incorrectly or misleading them all those years about what it means to be a blacksmith.