One of my favorite arguments against the doctrine of sola Scriptura is an argument that I like to refer to as the Argument from the Canon. This argument is neither new nor original to me, but it is a very powerful argument.
The Argument from the Canon runs as follows:
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 which 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.
Let's examine each point more thoroughly:
Premise 1: Sola Scriptura means that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith for the Church.
This is perhaps the least contentious premise in the argument. The Westminster Confession of Faith states that:
The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.... Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word; and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and the government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. (ch. 1 art. 6)
This definition of sola Scriptura is used because it is the most historical understanding of the doctrine, it is an easier position for adherents of the doctrine to defend, and it is what most educated Protestants mean by sola Scriptura. The only other alternative definition would be that Scripture is the only rule of faith for the Church, which would exclude the use of Creeds, Ecumenical Councils, confessions of faith, catechisms, and so on. While this particular view of sola Scriptura is held by some Protestants (such as those from the Restorationist traditions), most Protestants do not hold to this definition. In fact, many Protestants decry this definition as a perversion of the authentic historical doctrine. As Pastor Jeff Durbin of Apologia church said in a sermon on sola Scriptura:
Sola Scriptura does not teach us that there aren't other rules of faith possible... It does not teach us that we cannot learn from Church history. When we say "Scripture alone," we are not saying... that we have just us and ourselves under a tree with our Bible... that's not sola Scriptura even in history.
If we used the "Scripture only" definition of sola Scriptura, we would be arguing against a straw man. Thus, in the spirit of truth and charity, we must adhere to the definition given in Premise 1.
Premise 2: If there exists an infallible rule of faith for the Church which is separate from Scripture, then sola Scriptura is false.
This premise is necessarily true given the above definition. If there exists an infallible rule of faith apart from Scripture, then the statement "Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith for the Church" is necessarily false. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries not only makes this very point in a 1993 debate with Patrick Madrid, but he presents it as a sufficient argument against his position.
Premise 3: The Canon of the New Testament is an infallible rule of faith for the Church
Out of all of the premises, this is the one that is the most hotly contested. Let us, therefore, demonstrate this point. To start, the Canon is undeniably a rule of faith. A rule of faith, simply put, is a statement that informs adherents of a particular religion as to what they should believe. The Canon is just that: it is a statement detailing what Christians should believe about the contents of the Bible.
To illustrate the importance of the Canon as a rule of faith, it needs to be pointed out that having a Canon is a prerequisite to making use of Scripture. St. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy that "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (3:16-17). However, what good does this teaching do if we do not know what Scripture is? If we do not have a list of books that constitute Scripture, what prevents us from decrying some inspired books as man-made while revering non-inspired (and even heretical) books as God-breathed? In fact, this happened in the early Church before there was a set canon. Some canonical writings (such as St. James' Epistle) were considered uninspired in some dioceses, and other non-inspired writings (such as 1 Clement) were held as canonical in other dioceses. If you don't know what Scripture is, then you can't make use of Scripture.
Further, it is necessary that the Canon not only exists but that it is infallible, for the same reason that it is necessary to have a Canon in the first place. If we don't have a Canon, we don't know what the Bible is, and if we don't know what the Bible is then we practically don't have a Bible in the first place. Now, if we have a Canon, but this Canon is fallible (meaning that the list of books could theoretically be wrong), then we might as well not have a Canon in the first place. The whole purpose of a Canon is to clarify with certainty what can be used and what cannot be used for establishing right doctrine and right conduct. If there is no certainty, then the Canon is reduced to a mere educated guess which is open to debate. You may conclude that all 27 books historically considered to be the New Testament are, in fact, the New Testament. I could say that, along with these books, 1 Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and Ignatius' Epistles make up the New Testament. Someone else could say that, because modern scholars disagree on the Apostolic authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, 2 Peter, James, and a couple of others, none of those should be considered inspired. One could even say that, along with all 27 traditional books, 1-4 Nephi are part of the New Testament, and a good argument in favour of it would make this guess just as good as yours or mine.
The late Reformed pastor and apologist R. C. Sproul is often quoted as having said that "the Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books." But we see from the above that this is insufficient. If the Canon is not itself infallible, then his Canon is just as good as anyone else's, and there is no way to determine with certainty who is right and who is a heretic. If the argument is that the Church merely recognized the infallible character of the books, we need to ask a) by what process did it do that, and b) how do we know that the process will lead to the true conclusion? To reiterate, if we have no Canon, we have no Bible, and if we do not have an infallible Canon, we have no Canon at all.
So that no one doubts this point, we should reiterate that, prior to the establishment of a set Canon by the Council of Rome and the promulgation of the Vulgate, there was not a universal consensus as to the whole of the New Testament Canon. In fact, the first time the exact list of 27 books is found in history is by St. Athanasius in the fourth century. According to Eusebius' Church History, the books of St. James, St. Jude, 2 St. Peter, 2 and 3 St. John, and Revelation were all in dispute as to their canonical status (Church History 3:25:3-5). Eusebius also says that some churches outright rejected Revelation, but held the Gospel of the Hebrews as canonical. Likewise, we find other canonical lists that include the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of St. Peter, the Epistle of St. Barnabas, and 1 & 2 St. Clement. When we say that having a fallible Canon renders your guess at the Bible's contents just as good as mine, we're not saying that hypothetically. We're saying that because that's what it was like before there was a Canon.
For all of these reasons, the Canon of the New Testament is an infallible rule of faith for the Church. It is a necessary rule of faith because, without it, we would not even know what the Bible is. It must be infallible because, if it were not, then we would not have a guarantee that the Canon is true, which is to say that we have no Canon whatsoever.
Premise 4: The Canon of the New Testament is separate from Scripture
We have now reached the final premise. Given the previous three premises, if this one proves true, sola Scriptura is not only false, but it must be false. It cannot possibly be true. This premise is relatively uncontroversial until it becomes the final premise in the argument against sola Scriptura. Let us, therefore, make our case.
Let's first observe two passages of the New Testament. The first is 1 Timothy 5:17-18, which reads "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,' and, 'The labourer deserves his wages.'" Here, St. Paul quotes the Scripture which says "the labourer deserves his wages." This is a citation to St. Luke 10:7. So, from this passage, we see that the New Testament affirms that St. Luke is a part of Scripture. We have one book down, but we still have 26 more to go.
The second passage is 2 Peter 3:15-16, where the Prince of the Apostles writes "... count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures." Here we have St. Peter referring to St. Paul's writings as "other Scriptures." So now we have the Epistles of St. Paul.
Let's first take these two passages at face value and see where that gets us. If we interpret 1 Tim. 18 as meaning that St. Luke's Gospel is canonical, and if we interpret 2 Peter 3:15-16 as meaning that all of St. Paul's epistles are canonical, then we have between 14 and 16 of the 26 books of the New Testament accounted for (if we include Luke-Acts as one writing and if we assume Hebrews was written by St. Paul). If we are generous and say that these two verses prove that St. Luke, the Acts, and all of the Pauline Epistles, including Hebrews, are canonical Scriptures, we have accounted for approximately 55% of all of the words of the New Testament. Let me repeat: if we are as generous as conceivably possible, we only get 55% of the New Testament Canon out of the text of the New Testament itself. This is abysmal.
Now that this is established, let's give some pushback. Starting from a blank slate, let's say that 1 Tim. 3:17-18 says that St. Luke is canonical. Who cares? Why should I think that 1 Timothy has the authority to tell me what Scripture is? How do I know that it itself is Scripture? From there, we can go to 2 Peter 3:15-16 to demonstrate 1 Timothy's canonicity. Once again, who cares? Why should I believe that 2 Peter is even an authority on spiritual matters, let alone inspired Scripture?
Here we see a logical spiral that not only shows that the Canon is extra-biblical, but that it logically must be extra-biblical. Let's pretend for a moment that 2 Peter 1:1 began with the following words: "Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, writing a book of infallible Scripture which is the Word of God to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ..." If 2 Peter actually opened like this, we could then say that it is definitely Scripture, right?
No. Why would we believe that something is the Word of God just because it claims to be? If that were the case, we would have to believe that 2 Nephi is Scripture because it says "... if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ..." (2 Nephi 33:10). We would also have to accept Surah 2 of the Koran as canonical because it says "this is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah" (Qur'an 2:2). We cannot exempt these works from consideration on the face of it, because doing so would commit the fallacy of special pleading.
Finally, to try and argue for the Canon of Scripture from Scripture itself would create a circular argument: We have the Canon because the Bible gives us the Canon, and we have the Bible because the Canon gives us the Bible. Now, to be clear, we're not saying that this is the Protestant position. As we said in the beginning of this section, most Christians accept that the Canon is not found in Scripture. We only say this to show that the Canon is not only extra-biblical, but it is logically necessary for it to be extra-biblical, lest we commit circular reasoning.
Conclusion: Sola Scriptura is false
In deductive logic, an argument is valid if it is impossible for the conclusion to be false given its several premises. An argument is sound if and only if the argument is valid and the premises are true. If a deductive argument is sound, its conclusion is guaranteed to be true. It's not that it's possibly true, or that it's plausibly true, or even that it's probably true. A sound deductive argument simply is true.
The Argument from the Canon is a deductive argument. As we established at the beginning of the article, if the premises of the argument are shown to be true, then the argument is sound and sola Scriptura must be false.
Earlier in this article, we referenced a 1993 debate over sola Scriptura between Catholic apologist Patrick Madrid and Reformed Protestant apologist James White. When discussing the burden of proof in the argument, White made the following analogy:
Some might challenge me to demonstrate that no other rule of faith could possibly exist. To illustrate this, I call your attention to my pen... If our debate this evening was that... this was the only pen of its kind in all of the universe, how would I go about proving it? Well, the only way I could go about proving it... is if I looked in all of your purses, and all of your shirt pockets, and all of the stores in the world... and looked through all of the houses, and all of the planet earth, and the moon, and all the planets in the solar system, and in the entire universe looking for a pen like this, and of course I cannot do that. But it would be very easy for Mr. Madrid to win that debate. All he needs to do is get a Cross Medalist pen, walk up here, hold it right next to mine and say "See! another pen just like yours!" and he's won the debate.
As we also said at the beginning of this article, this argument we've presented is not new, and it was actually used by Madrid in this very debate. White avoided the argument simply by saying that the history of the development of the Canon is extraordinarily complex.
The reason I bring up this analogy is to make one of my own. The reality of the situation is that every Christian who owns a Bible has an infallible rule of faith which is separate from the contents of the Scripture at the beginning of their Bibles right before the Sacred text begins: in the table of contents. Understanding this, let's make our own pen analogy:
Imagine two men debating that there exists in all of creation one and only one Cross Medalist pen. The affirmative debater holds up his right hand and says "all my opponent has to do is produce a second Cross Medalist pen like this one, and he's won the debate!" His opponent offers the following rebuttal: "Sir, you're holding a second Cross Medalist pen in your hand, right next to the first one." The best response the affirmative debater has is "This is not a pen! This is merely a pencil that happens to look like a Cross Medalist pen and happens to write in ink!"
If it looks like a pen, feels like a pen, and writes in ink like a pen, it is a pen. Likewise, if it looks like an infallible rule of faith, acts like an infallible rule of faith, and is just as necessary to know the Truth as an infallible rule of faith, then it is, in fact, an infallible rule of faith.
Because of this, we must conclude that the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura is false.
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