Expert: Andrew Foley - 1/5/2008

Question
could you briefly define why you believe sola scriptura is unbiblical

can you give scriptures that support your belief that sola scriptura is unbiblical


thx
s

Answer
Hello and thanks for writing. Sorry I didn't respond sooner. I never got the email alert for your question and only noticed it when I came to the allexperts web site to answer another question.

I don't believe in Sola Scriptura because it's unhistorical, illogical, unscriptural and because its fruit is bad.

It is unhistorical because the Early Church did not believe in Sola Scriptura, and it wasn't until the Reformation that large numbers of Christians began to believe in it. The Early Church didn't even have a Bible, per se, let alone believe that we should all interpret it for ourselves. We know that the Bible didn't fall from heaven to the foot of the cross, leather bound, footnoted and translated into King James English. It was written by men, over time, with the last book of the New Testament only being composed around 90 AD. In the next few centuries, there were many early "gospels" and letters, apart from those that would later become our New Testament, circulating through the Christian world which many people thought should be treated as Scripture. The debate over the New Testament canon wasn't finally settled until the late 300s and early 400s by the decisions of Popes and councils of bishops.  So, between the Ascension of Christ and the canonization of the New Testament almost 400 years later, what was the ultimate authority for Christians, most of whom were illiterate at that time anyway? It was the properly appointed and anointed leaders of the Church, as God intended. What else could our authority be, in the period before the Bible was even written, and even after that time when there was no consensus on exactly which of the many early Christian writings should even be considered Scripture? Surely, even a Protestant wouldn't question the Church's divine guidance in choosing the canon of the New Testament, otherwise the entire basis of his belief system is called into question. So after God directly used the Church and its authority to establish the Bible, are we to understand that after that point its divine guidance was taken away and thereafter each man was supposed to interpret it as he saw fit? I don't see any warrant for that belief, and neither did the Christians of that time. You should read the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, a student of John the Apostle, who was martyred in the year 107. His letters give an excellent sample of what the early Christians believed in the way of authority and doctrine. The early Church had no concept of Sola Scriptura.

Sola Scriptura is illogical because it just doesn't make sense without a human authority, speaking with divine guidance, to interpret it. A book can't interpret itself. Words, as fallible human instruments, are ambiguous and malleable, and can be twisted to mean anything its interpreter wants them to mean. Our own booklet-sized Constitution was written just over 200 years ago, by one group of men, in our own language, and yet we have as many interpretations of its meaning as there are lawyers to argue over it. That's why we have a Supreme Court to act as an ultimate authority of interpretation. So much more complex and confusing is a much larger book, written between approximately 3000 and 2000 years ago in varying styles by many different people in languages and dialects that are no longer spoken. Obviously, the Protestants do not ascribe infallibility to any particular Church organization, so to whom do they turn to interpret the Bible? Themselves? That was the idea the first Reformers tried to teach- that the Holy Spirit would guide the individual to the proper interpretation. When the number of varying interpretations started multiplying like rabbits, the Reformers had to abandon that idea at risk of being laughed out of town. The evidence obviously showed that it wasn't the Holy Spirit who was inspiring so many contradictory interpretations. To date, there are around 25,000 different Protestant denominations. The Protestant cannot honestly claim that the Holy Spirit guides the individual believer to know the correct doctrine, so all the Protestant is left with is the power of his own mind to understand Scripture. I don't think God intended for us to sit around puzzling over the meaning of the Bible until the end of time, like some insoluble philosophical riddle. I think He established a faith "once for all handed down to the saints" (Jude 1:3) which it was the Church's duty to safeguard in purity and pass down to us. It's not up to us to have to figure it out and study it like some scientific problem. So unless the Protestants can agree on one church or person to whom they ascribe infallibility in doctrinal interpretation, then their Bible is no real authority at all. Also, as an added thought, Sola Scriptura is self-contradictory because, as was pointed out, Scripture doesn't tell us what books should be in the Bible. It was an extra-Biblical authority- the Church- which decided what books should be in the Bible. The Bible itself points to the Church as the ultimate authority in matters of morals and doctrine when it is described as the "pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim 3:15).

Sola Scriptura is unscriptural. There is more to our Faith than the words written in the 27 books of the New Testament, although most of our major beliefs are touched on, at least by inference. Even the Bible notes that there were so many other things that Jesus did that weren't covered in the Bible, that the whole world couldn't contain all the books that would be needed to describe them (JN 21:24). Do you think that all the people- particularly the leaders of the Church, the Apostles- who witnessed these things and heard His words forgot them? Or did they tell other people about them, who in turn told others, with the teaching being passed down to the next generation? One small example of that kind of oral transmission is found in Acts 20:35 where Paul admonishes his listeners to "keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus who himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" That phrase in nowhere to be found in the Gospels or anywhere else in the Bible. People heard Jesus say it and then spread it orally to other Christians, from whom Paul heard the teaching. That is an example of a teaching of Jesus or an Apostle being passed down orally, i.e. by Tradition. We know that in addition to the very minuscule number of letters and treatises contained in the New Testament, the Apostles preached the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Do you think that they told their followers to disregard their teachings unless they were given in written form? That would be ludicrous. Paul himself told the Thessalonians to "...stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours." (2 Thess 2:15) Paul encourages the Church to keep to those traditions (Strong's Concordance # G3862) again in the same letter (2 Thess 3:6) as well as in 1 Cor 11:2. Paul exhorts Timothy (2 Tim 2:2) to pass along his oral teachings to others who will in turn pass them on orally to others, when he writes to him, "And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well." The Bible's own writers make it clear that the Faith of the Early Church that was practiced and passed down from one generation of Christians to another is transmitted in both written form (the Bible) and oral (Tradition) and that neither form of transmission is in any way superior to the other.

The Early Church certainly didn't practice Sola Scriptura when it overturned the Old Testament's clear dietary laws in Acts 15:28. The Council of Jerusalem was guided by the Holy Spirit in its decision, as Jesus promised. (JN 16:13) As we noted earlier, Scripture doesn't interpret itself. Peter himself noted in 2 Peter 3:16 that Paul's epistles contained "...some things hard to understand that the unlearned and ignorant distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures." When Phillip asked the Ethiopian whether he understood the Book of Isaiah, he correctly replied "How can I, unless someone instructs me?" (Acts 8:31) Peter again contrasts Apostolic teaching with that of freelance teachers when he says that "...there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation..." (2 Pet 1:20) So from where should we get the proper teaching? Paul specifically speaks of the apostles, pastors and teachers Christ left us so that "...we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery..." (Eph 4:11-16) Jesus assured us that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church (MT 16:18) yet Protestants would assert that that is exactly what happened for more than 1000 years until the Reformation. He told the Apostles (not the general mass of Christians) that those who listened to them listened to Him (LK 10:16). There are many other Biblical citations and arguments to be made about the preeminence of Church authority as seen in the New Testament, not to mention extra-Biblical historical sources, but I wanted to simply cite a few verses making the point that the Early Church did not believe in Sola Scriptura and in fact regarded the Church as the divinely appointed guardian and interpreter of the Faith, which includes Scripture.

Sola Scriptura bears bad fruit because, as mentioned, there are over 25,000 Protestant denominations with each one claiming to have the correct interpretation of Scripture and many claiming to receive direct communications from God. Such division only serves to make Christianity seem ridiculous to both Christians and non-Christians. In contrast, consider the relative unity of Islam. How many "denominations" do they have? Two, with perhaps a few minor sects? Their relative unity makes our Faith look like the intellectual plaything of arrogant fanatics, which in fact is what Sola Scriptura has made of it. Every man who has an opinion can form his own "church" and be Pope, priest and dictator all rolled into one. Every man with an opinion can, in effect, be his own "God" who- under the banner of Sola Scriptura and individual interpretation- manipulates the Bible to echo his own views of the universe.  Most Protestants will, at some point in their lives, go church shopping until he finds one suitable to his tastes, needs, comfort or opinions. Such a system only instills the attitude that Christian truth is just another commodity on the market, like soap or toothpaste. Jesus prayed that we would all be one (JN 17:21). That will only happen when Christians accept the Faith that was "once for all handed down" to us by Jesus, and reject any Faith based on our own opinions or intellect. That Faith, or Church, will reflect what is found in the Bible and will teach what has been taught throughout history by the Church since the Ascension of Christ. I believe that Faith is found in its total divinely-protected purity in the Catholic Church.