This blog's author has long taken a three-pronged approach to refuting the doctrine of sola Scriptura: a Scriptural Approach, an Historical Approach, and a Logical Approach. If sola Scriptura is true, it must be supported by the text of Scripture, or else it is self-refuting; by the historical and traditional teaching and praxis of the Christian Church, or else it is a doctrinal innovation; and by logic, or else it is unreasonable and not even possibly true.
The logical refutation of sola Scriptura was laid out on this blog about two years ago, in an article entitled "The Argument from the Canon," in which a classic deductive argument against sola Scriptura using the 27-book New Testament canon was presented:
P1: Sola Scriptura means that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith for the Church.
P2: If there exists an infallible rule of faith for the Church that is separate from Scripture, then sola Scriptura is false.
P3: The Canon of the New Testament is an infallible rule of faith for the Church.
P4: The Canon of the New Testament is separate from Scripture (i.e. it is not found in the Bible).
C: Sola Scriptura is false.
Since then, this blog has not dealt with belief in "the Bible alone." Another article on this subject is long overdue. Therefore, let us explore a second prong: the Scriptural Approach against sola Scriptura.
Sola Scriptura must be taught in Scripture to be true
For sola Scriptura to be true, it must necessarily be taught in Scripture. As the Westminster confession of faith says, "all things necessary for [God's] own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down... or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture."[1] In other words, sola Scriptura teaches that all things necessary for faith and practice are either explicitly stated or implicitly deduced in Scripture. If sola Scriptura is not in Scripture, then it fails its own standard, refutes itself, and is false.
A few clarifications should be made: first, this is not to say that the Bible must say "Scripture is the sole, infallible rule of faith for the Church in issues of faith and practice." If the Bible teaches this doctrine in different words or if sola Scriptura is a logical consequence of other teachings (as is the case with the Holy Trinity), then that suffices. Again, sola Scriptura must be taught either explicitly or implicitly in Scripture itself.
The Burden of Proof
While it would be sufficient for our purposes to show that sola Scriptura is not taught in Scripture either explicitly or implicitly, such a task would be extremely difficult, if not practically impossible. In theory, one could comb through every jot and tittle of all 73 books of the Bible, closely examine each clause of each sentence, and show that there is no reasonable way to construe any of those as teaching sola Scriptura. That would conclusively prove that sola Scriptura is false.
The problem is that this would be impractical. It would take years, if not a lifetime, for one person to study each verse in their original language, go down the rabbit hole of all reasonably possible interpretations, and evaluate each one. This is the problem that comes with proving a negative. Even though the universe of material is theoretically finite and the resources are available to do the research, it's just not an efficient means of argumentation. Therefore, the burden is on the Protestant to prove sola Scriptura from Scripture.
However, while the disbeliever in sola Scriptura does not need to prove that the Bible doesn't affirmatively teach sola Scriptura, he can show that the Bible does teach something incompatible with it. If the Bible teaches that it is not the sole, infallible rule of faith, then the Bible cannot also teach soal Scriptura without being self-contradictory.
Enter the Scriptural argument.
First: Not all of the teachings of Christ were written down
We must begin this inquiry with the foundational question: "What makes Scripture unique?" Why is it different from all other books? Why is it, as Pope St. John Paul II said, "at the very origin of the theological process and referring to it all the acquired knowledge and conclusions gradually reached"?[2] The Catechism makes this clear for Catholics: we venerate Scripture because "[t]hrough all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely."[3] We venerate Scripture because it is the expression of Christ our Lord Himself. It definitively reveals Christ to us.
Scripture is not unique for arbitrary reasons: it is unique because it tells us who God, in the person of Christ, is and what He desires of us. What would follow, then, if something else contained the words and teachings of Christ? It too would be a unique source of truth that is not only worthy of veneration, but also deserves to be venerated in the same way that Scripture is venerated. After all, it would be unique in the same way that Scripture is unique.
Scripture itself gives us a hint at this. The final verse of St. John's Gospel tells us that Christ did "many other things," and that if "every one of them to be written... the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."[4] In fairness, the verse serves to make a rhetorical point that St. John is not giving an exhaustive biography, but only enough that his reader "may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God..."[5] However, that doesn't mean that we cannot draw other logical inferences from what St. John wrote.
One inference we should take away is that St. John is not telling us everything that Christ said and that St. John's Gospel does not contain all the words of Christ. Neither do the other Gospels. In Acts 20, when St. Paul speaks to the Ephesian clergy, he exhorts them to "remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”[6] This quotation does not appear in any of the canonical Gospels. In fact, St. Luke records this saying in Acts but not in his Gospel. Not only are there other teachings of Christ not recorded in the Gospels, but the Gospel authors had come to know of other sayings of Christ and did not record them in their Gospels. What are we to do with this? Do we say that there are some words that God spoke that are unimportant? Do we say that we need not know the totality of God's revelation? Absolutely not. Divine Revelation is important because it is the words that God spoke to His people. Whatever form that takes is of utmost import.
Second: Scripture was written by the Apostles because they had Christ's authority
Scripture is unique because it reveals Christ to us. Now we must ask how these documents that make up Scripture came about and what makes them inspired. Why? Because that tells us not only about the Scriptures, but also about whether or not the written Word truly is the sole rule of faith.
To illustrate the point: if the Bible came about because the clouds parted, and the Hand of God placed it in the lap of the early Church, saying, "These are words of my Son, in whom I am well pleased: read them!" then it would be reasonable to require that kind of direct revelation for other sources of authority. If the Bible was written cover to cover by Christ, then we would reasonably say any other writings of Christ would be candidates for inspired works. We can and should look to the source of the Scriptures for other sources of revelation.
The way that the Scriptures actually came about, however, was much less dramatic than either of these hypotheticals. Tradition holds that the New Testament books were written either by the Apostles or their close companions. St. Peter wrote two Epistles; St. Paul wrote either 13 or 14 Epistles; St. John wrote a Gospel, three Epistles, and the Apocalypse; St. Matthew wrote one Gospel; St. James the Lesser wrote one Epistle; St. Jude wrote one Epistle; St. Mark, a companion of Peter, wrote one Gospel. St. Luke, a companion of Paul, wrote one Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. The authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is disputed, but is theorised to have been written by either Ss. Paul, Luke, Clement, Barnabas, Silas, Apollos, or Priscilla and Aquilla. Either way, all of the New Testament was written either by an Apostle or a close companion of an Apostle. They are all Apostolic in origin.
This is important because it tells us that the Apostles (and their close confidants) are a source of revealed truth. Surely, not everything they ever uttered was inspired. However, on issues of doctrine, we can be sure that they are authoritative. Not only is this reasonable because of Scripture's authorship, but it is also clear from the words of Scripture. Christ tells the Seventy-Two in St. Luke's Gospel that the "one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me." It's important to note that the seventy-two were not random followers of Christ who volunteered for the position but were appointed directly by Christ [7], and it is traditionally believed that all of these either became Apostles, clergy (overwhelmingly bishops), or martyrs after the establishment of the Church (see Codex Barrocianus, dating to the early 200s and traditionally attributed to St. Hippolytus). Christ says whoever hears the leaders of the early Church hear Christ. Their teaching authority becomes bound up in his.
This is seen on Pentecost. After St. Peter and the rest of the Twelve baptised and converted the three thousand Jews, the new believers "devoted themselves to the apsotles' teaching..." [8]. Notice two things. First, Acts does not say they were devoted to the Apostles' teachings (plural). Rather, they were devoted to a single, unified teaching of the Twelve Apostles. St. Luke does not speak of each Apostle's personal doctrine or interpretation, but to the public revelation emanating from them. [9] Second, Acts does not say they were devoted to Christ's teaching. It doesn't need to. The Apostles' teaching is Christ's teaching.
St. Paul builds upon this by unequivocally teaching that the Apostles are central to the Church, saying that the household of God is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone." [10] A cornerstone is the first brick in a building project placed as the reference point, to which all other bricks must conform. The foundation is the stone that supports the main structure. Christ, therefore, is the reference point from which all authority derives. This however, does not detract from the fact that the Apostles are the support structure of the Church and are extenstions and Christ's authority. This is the fundamental reason they were given the ability to write inspired Scriptures.
This synonymity of the Apostles' doctrine led St. Paul to praise the Thessalonians for their reception of St. Paul and his companions when he went to evangelize them because the Thessalonians "received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God..." [11].
Third: Scripture teaches of an Apostolic oral tradition
What form did the Apostle's teachings take? We know for certain that they took a written form. Was this, however, the only form of their teachings? Were the Apostolic teachings merely confined to the written word?
The answer is easy. No. The teachings of the Apostles were not simply written, but also oral. How do we know? For starters, we know because the written tradition tells us so. St. Paul tells the Thessalonians, "So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter." [12] St. Paul very plainly taught the Thessalonians both by epistle and by spoken word. This should surprise no one because long before the Apostle wrote epistles he went to each of these regions and established churches there, preaching the Gospel to them by his spoken word. When St. Paul went to Corinth and established a Church there, he preached to them and gave them the word of God through oral tradition before he ever wrote to them. When he eventually did give them a written tradition, he commended them because they "remember[ed] [him] in everything and maintain the traditions even as [he] delivered [it] to [them]." [13] The oral tradition was therefore of incredible import because that was the first encounter the early converts had of the Gospel. We even see this from the above quote from 1 Thessalonians: the people "received the word of God, which [they] heard from [Paul]," and accepted it as the Word of God. The Word of God is, therefore, not merely written, but oral as well.
Fourth: The Apostolic oral tradition is not wholly found in the Apostolic written tradition
It may be accepted that, in the beginning of the Church, there was an oral tradition, but with the caveat that this oral tradition does not differ in any meaningful way from the written tradition. In other words, while the Apostles preached, the contents of their preaching are contained in Scripture, so we don't need to know the exact words of their preaching.
There are two issues with this. First, while this is possibly true, the person making the claim bears the burden of proof. If our protestant friend wants to make this claim, he has to show that the content of the oral tradition is the same, at least materially, as the written tradition. This is a very high bar. If there is even one thing in the oral tradition that the Apostles taught that is not in Scripture, then the oral tradition is distinct enough from the written tradition that it disproves sola Scriptura. This is because sola Scriptura states that all revelation in confined to the written Word. If a single teaching is not, the doctrine is false.
The second problem is that Scripture, again, gives us reason to disbelieve this. In his Second Epistle, St. John concludes his writing by saying, "Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete." [14] Let's examine this piecemeal.
First, St. John says he has much to write. Writing, here, is in the context of Scripture. The things he has to write are of the type of things that belong to Divine Revelation. This sentence indicates these things are additional material because he uses them as a way to explain why he cuts his letter short: "Though I have much to write to you." Second, he says he would rather not use paper and ink. Not only does he have more to say, but he would rather not write it down (in Sacred Scripture, mind you). Third, he hopes to talk to the addressee of the Epistle face to face instead of writing it. This shows a bias in favour of oral transmission: word of mouth is St. John's preferred method of transmitting teachings. From this, we see that there is not only reason to believe that St. John taught more than his writings contained, but there is reason to believe that he taught more by teaching orally than by writing because that is his preferred method of teaching.
Another example of this is in 1 Corinthians 11. Here, St. Paul instructs the Corinthians on the reception of Holy Communion. He concludes his teaching by saying, "So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another— if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come." [15]
The interesting part that is of concern for our inquiry comes in verse 34: "About the other things I will give directions when I come." First, he says "about the other things." "Other things" is rendered in English from the Greek, loipa. Loipa, according to Strong's Concordance, means "the rest, the remaining." Simply, it means what it means in English: things not included here. Other things. Second, he says he "will give directions" about these other things "when [he] come[s]." This is in the broader context of St. Paul's teaching on the reception of the Eucharist, which is an important practice of the faith upon which our salvation depends. [16] St. Paul not only has more to teach regarding the reception of the Eucharist but he will convey this to the Corinthians when he meets with them in person. In summary, St. Paul tells us that he will give them additional definitive teachings, not included in his epistle, when he comes to preach orally to them again.
From this, we have a strong argument from Scripture that the content of the oral tradition is distinct from the written tradition.
Conclusion: Scripture contradicts Sola Scriptura
From these premises, we conclude that sola Scriptura is false. If sola Scriptura teaches that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith, and Scripture teaches that there is a distinct infallible rule of faith other than itself, sola Scriptura self-refuting: the sole infallible rule teaches a second infallible rule.
Admittedly, this conclusion can be avoided with a clever reworking of the doctrine at hand. If the argument is that there was once an authoritative oral tradition, but that this either became lost or fell out of use by Christians, then this argument doesn't disprove sola Scriptura. To be clear, for this argument to fail, sola Scriptura must be viewed as prescriptive rather than descriptive. It must be viewed as an expedient way of approaching truth, rather than a definitive belief binding on Christians. At best, sola Scriptura is a belief Christians can, and maybe should, believe, but not something they must believe. This formulation still has some serious flaws, but those will have to be examined at a later date.
We have now addressed two of the three prongs against sola Scriptura: the Logical Approach and the Scriptural Approach. That leaves the Historical Approach. Deo volente, we will address that soon.
Notes:
[1] Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 1 art. 6
[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church par. 102
[4] St. John 21:25
[6] Acts 20:35
[7] Acts 10:1-12
[8] Acts 2:41
[9] The Greek, didache, is in the singular.
[10] Ephesians 2:19-20
[11] 1 Thessalonians 2:13
[12] 2 Thessalonians 2:15
[13] 1 Corinthians 11:2
[14] 2 John 1:12
[16] See id. v. 23-32
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