The Word and the Word Alone as the Fount of all Christian Doctrine and Experience

Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics is a really great resource, and I keep finding these beautiful quotes in it.

It is sheer delusion to make the Christian “experience” take the place of Scripture. It is a delusion, because without Scripture there can be no Christian experience. Needless to say, there is a Christian experience. Without the personal Christian experience there can be no Christianity. Everyone who is a Christian has experienced, and daily experiences, both sin and grace. He knows and realizes that on account of his sin he is subject to eternal damnation. And he knows and realizes that on account of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction his sins are forgiven. But this twofold experience of the Christian is wrought solely through the preaching and teaching of God’s Word, of the Law and the Gospel—certainly not through his experience. In order to create this experience of repentance and forgiveness of sins, Christ commands that repentance and remission of sins be preached in His name among all nations (Luke 24: 46), and Paul, by Christ’s command, proclaimed to Jews and Gentiles “that they should repent and turn to God” (Acts 26:20). This Word, the Word of the Law and the Word of the Gospel, the Church has in the recorded Word of the Apostles, and when the Church preaches this Word, which is God’s own Word and pronounces God’s own verdict in re “sin” and “forgiveness of sins,” men learn to know what repentance and forgiveness of sins is (66)