Sola Scriptura

I know I haven’t posted in such a long time and there is truly no excuse for it.  Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things here and post some interesting stuff to keep people more involved with the blog.

 

So for today’s post, I want to discuss something of a pet peeve/favorite of mine: Sola Scriptura; this is the belief, held by Protestants, that the Bible is the sole infallible authority that Christians can and should use for the purpose of salvation.  With most Protestants, this is not to say that church fellowship and leadership are not important, or that history should not be considered; it simply says that despite the importance of those things and others, only the Bible is capable of being used in an infallible (i.e. unerring) light; the Bible and the Bible alone should be the final authority when it comes to Christian Doctrine, Teaching, and so on.  This is believed for numerous reasons.  One example is that Protestants believe the Bible itself says and proves that it is the only infallible authority; in other words, the Bible proves the Bible’s authority.  You can get a more detailed look of it here.

There are various arguments Protestants use to prove this, and I will bring some of them up later.  Needless to say, it is a very bold and very important statement to make that drastically affects the Christian way of life.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that there are very few topics of conversation more important than this one.  Is the Bible truly the only infallible authority?  Do arguments in support of it hold water?  The answer to these questions means a great deal to anybody and everybody that professes to be a Christian, for it affects the way we approach nearly every other Doctrine and every other belief.   

 

Ultimately, I believe that Sola Scriptura is a doctrine that is untenable and unsustainable, and I will argue so in this post.  But before I do I would just like to say that, like everything posted on this blog, this is not meant to be an attack towards or some form of hatred towards Protestants.  Just the opposite, in fact.  I have many friends who are Protestant, and they are some of my closest friends.  They have helped me to come closer to God in ways I never thought possible.  They are truly Christ-centered and I am blessed to have them in my life.  They are the definition of friends.  And it is because of that that that I want to speak honestly about the errors of Sola Scriptura.  I want to support my friends and other Protestants with the Truth.

 

So what is that truth?  Well, as a Catholic I agree with my Protestant brothers and sisters that the Bible is an infallible source of authority.  The disagreement comes in the idea that the Bible is the only infallible source of authority.  I believe there are two others: Sacred Tradition (the oral Word of God (the Bible being the written Word of God)) and the Magisterium (the teaching authority/interpreter of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition). 

 

It is beyond the scope of this post to prove the Catholic position of the infallible Trifecta (yes I did just make that name up).  I bring it up merely to show the difference between the Catholic and Protestant faith.

 

So why is Sola Scriptura ungrounded?  There are a few answers that philosophers and theologians have given over the years.  But there is one in particular that I would like to focus on because I believe it is one that many Protestants have not considered before, and that is the question of the Canon of the Bible.

If Sola Scriptura says that Sacred Scripture is the only infallible authority for salvation, then it is perfectly logical and necessary for one to ask: what constitutes as Sacred Scripture?

“Well the Bible does,” a Protestant might say.  “The 66 books that make up the Bible are the ones that are authoritative.”  Sidestepping the issue of how many books truly belong in the Bible, how do we truly know that it is those books and those books only that make up Sacred Scripture?  There is no infallible list of books, no infallible ‘table of contents’ as it were.  So how do we know with any degree of certainty what books belong in the Bible?

 

One response to this might be that certain books may very well claim inspiration from God.  Even if that is the case that cannot be our sole criteria for determining what books are Sacred, for there were many books a couple of millennia ago that claimed the same status and yet would not be considered today as Sacred Scripture, such as the Gnostic Gospels.  I could write a book now and say somewhere within it that it is completely infallible, God-breathed, and is part of the Canon of Scripture; but that in no way makes said book part of the actual Canon.

The only way to get around this is to say that the Scriptures are different because they are the books that are actually inspired by God.  The problem with this form of thinking is that it assumes the very conclusion that one is trying to argue for.  This is what is known in logic as ‘begging the question.’  To ‘beg the question’ is to assume the very point one is trying to prove.  So for the statement ‘I know what is in the Canon of Sacred Scripture because the Sacred Scriptures say they are Sacred Scripture’ to work it must already be implying within the argument itself that the Scriptures as we understand them now should be part of the Canon; but that is the very issue that one is trying to prove.  As a result, the argument actually ends up not working at all.

 

Thus one must have more to their argument than the notion that ‘we know Sacred Scripture is solely authoritative because the books claim to be.’  You cannot say that you know that a particular writing is scripture based on the notion that it claims to be scripture, for it would only work if you already assumed that it is Scripture to begin with

Another response might be that the early Christians knew what books belonged in the Bible.  Even barring the fact that this is not the case, though, even if it were true that the early Christians knew what books belonged in the Bible, a) it is unknown as to why this criteria is a truly valid reason to accept these books and b) this argument actually contradicts the very Doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

It is B that I want to focus on in particular. 

If the early Christians, or any source outside of the Bible for that matter, deciding what books belong in the Bible is the reason we have the books in the Bible that we currently have, then wouldn’t that ultimately put the early Christians or other outside sources up on the level of or above the level of Sacred Scripture?  After all, one can say all they want concerning Scripture being infallible and unerring, but seeing as how, as has been shown above, that it is illogical to prove from Scripture alone exactly what books make up Scripture, you have to use some sort of outside source (early Christians, one’s church, etc) to determine what books should be considered as Sacred Scripture.  However, if something other than Sacred Scripture determines what is Sacred Scripture then that something has power that Scripture does not have; in fact, not only does it have power that Scripture does not have, but it has power that, in a sense, controls Scripture; it controls it in the sense that it is ultimately the determiner of what is to be considered Scripture and thus determines the fate of this outcome of infallible books.  It would be, as Tom Brown in his article on the same topic called it, a ‘canon above the canon’ of Scripture. 

 

So if I were to put this in syllogism form it would go something like this:

1.       Sola Scriptura, by definition, requires all sources and forms of authority other than the Bible to be subordinate to the authority of the Bible due to the Bible’s infallibility

2.       The Bible cannot determine, in and of itself, what books constitute the Bible

3.       Thus, another source or authority other than the Bible must be used to determine what books constitute the Bible

4.       Any source or authority that determines which books belong in the Bible must have equal or greater authority in order to do so

5.       Therefore, Sola Scriptura is false

 

Now the above example of early Christian acceptance is just one of numerous tests for the sole infallibility of the books of the Bible that Protestants use; others do exist, such as the idea that only those books attested to by the Apostles in one way or another are part of Sacred Scripture, or the idea that all the Old Testament books that are truly inspired are quoted in the New Testament.  But the point is that regardless of what those tests are  they all force Sola Scriptura to fall because they all, by their very nature, put themselves on equal footing with or above Sacred Scripture in relation to matters of salvation and authority. 

 

Logically speaking, there are only three ways out of this that I can see.  One of them is that if the Protestant says something like: “Well the way I know which books belong in the Bible is by the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit guides me to know what books belong in the Bible.”  Indeed, the Holy Spirit does truly move and act in us to turn our hearts closer to God.  And the argument does not fall into the same trap as other sources of authority because the source in this instance is God Himself.  So of course His authority is equal to or greater than that of the Bible, and that is completely acceptable since God is the author of Sacred Scripture.

 

There is one major issue with this line of reasoning, however: it is too arbitrary.  Yes the Holy Spirit does guide each and every one of us.  However, to suggest that this is adequate enough for an individual person to determine any Christian Doctrine, much less the Canon of the Bible, is not enough because anyone can use the same argument for a contradictory claim.  For instance, a Protestant might feel that the Holy Spirit guided him or her to understand that there are 66 books in the Bible, but a Catholic might feel that the Holy Spirit guided him or her to understand that there are 73 books in the Bible.  So which one is right?  Based on this argument alone we are left at a standstill.  We would ultimately have to result to other arguments to determine the correct answer.  But again, this poses a problem for the Protestant since those other ‘arguments’, if correct, would put themselves on the same level as or higher level than the Bible in relation to authority.  Thus the Protestant is right back at the same problem he/she originally started at. 

The second way to get around it is to say something like: ‘Okay, your argument makes sense.  But what if the Canon of the Bible is simply an exception to the rule?  All other doctrines and teachings can be figured out from Scripture alone, but simply not this one, but that’s okay because this is merely an exception to the general rule of Sola Scriptura.’

The problem here is that there is no good reason to justify it as being an exception.  If there is an exception to the rule then there must be a reason why the exception is an exception.  This is what is known as an ad hoc fallacy, where one simply states an exception or a change in the argument without having a justifiable reason for the exception or change, and this would be done only to avoid the conclusion laid out by the opponent.  In this case, there is no reason given as to why the Canon of the Bible does not or should not be included under the rules of Sola Scriptura like every other Christian doctrine and teaching; thus the person who posits such a position is doing so not because there is a good reason to do so but merely to avoid the conundrum that was just provided in the above argument against Sola Scriptura.

The third way to get around the conclusion is to ‘bite the bullet’ and admit, ‘Yes, I must agree that there is no way to know for certain which books belong in the Bible by Scripture alone; but all the other arguments that are not as authoritative as Sacred Scripture (i.e. prophecy, early Christian testimony, etc) can still help in determining which books should be part of the Canon; they just cannot determine for certain if the books truly belong in the Bible or not.  In other words we have ‘a fallible list of infallible books’’. 

 

Such a position is not unheard of, as it is held by the Protestant theologian R.C. Sproul for instance.  This position must certainly be praised for its consistency.  However, the major and obvious flaw in such an argument is that if we have a fallible list of infallible books then what does that do to our faith?  For it is entirely possible on this reasoning alone that all the books in the Bible are not really inspired by God, or that there are multiple books of the Bible missing that should be included in the Canon.  In other words, if anything should be and needs to be infallible it is not just the books themselves but the list of books as well, for without an infallible list the idea of having infallible Scripture becomes a moot point.

I cannot see a way out for the Protestant here.  Using the Protestants’ own beliefs, it is logically impossible to determine for certain what the Canon of the Bible is, at least not without outside help.  And without that the whole idea of Sola Scriptura, and with it the Protestant faith itself, is rendered illogical and unlivable.

 

So all Protestants, I ask you to truly consider this in your hearts: if some source outside the Canon of Sacred Scripture, as the ‘sole infallible rule of faith,’ must rely on something other than itself to determine what makes up the Canon, then doesn’t it make sense to conclude that Sola Scriptura is not enough to determine the very Canon on which such a doctrine relies upon and is thus an incorrect way to view the Scriptures?

Please read Tom Brown’s article, linked above, for a much more intelligent and detailed discussion on the same topic, for it is where I gained the insight and inspiration of most of what I wrote here.