Burden of proof in Sola Scriptura

  • Thread starter Thread starter trumpet152
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

trumpet152

Guest
Take a look at this argument for Sola Scriptura. I’ve never heard it before.
Roman Catholics maintain that the Bible is not the only Word of God. Taking this admission, that the Bible is at least one part of the divinely inspired Word of God, it seems incumbent upon Rome, which does not accept the Bible as the only Word of God, to bear the burden of proving there are other sources of equal weight.
Click to expand...
Any quick responses?
 
40.png
trumpet152:
Take a look at this argument for Sola Scriptura. I’ve never heard it before.

Any quick responses?
Click to expand...
Oral Tradition came well before the Bible was put together. In other words where did the Bible come from? Jesus did not write it.

Where we got the Bible

SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION
Bible Alone or Bible Plus Tradition?
1 Cor 11:2 - hold fast to traditions I handed on to you
2 Thess 2:15 - hold fast to traditions, whether oral or by letter
2 Thess 3:6 - shun those acting not according to tradition
Jn 21:25 - not everything Jesus said recorded in Scripture
Mk 13:31 - heaven & earth shall pass away, but my word won’t
Acts 20;35 - Paul records a saying of Jesus not found in gospels
2Tim 1:13 - follow my sound words; guard the truth
2Tim2:2 - what you heard entrust to faithful men
2Pet 1:20 - no prophecy is a matter of private interpretation
2Pet 3:15-16 - Paul’s letters can be difficult to grasp & interpret
1Pet 1:25 - God’s eternal word = word preached to you
Rom 10:17 - faith come from what is heard
1Cor 15:1-2 - being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached
Mk 16:15 - go to the whole world, proclaim gospel to every creature
Mt 23:2-3 - chair of Moses; observe whatever they tell you

Tradition Condemned?
*Mt 15;3 - break commandment of God for your tradition
*Mk 7:9 - set aside God’s commandment to uphold tradition
*Col 2;8 - seductive philosophy according to human tradition
1Cor 11:2 - commends them for following Apostolic tradition
2Thess 2:15 - commands them to keep traditions
2Thess 3:6 - shun those acting not according to tradition
 
Try Johns gospel, the beginning. It talks pretty clearly about what is the Word of God.

:rolleyes:

In Christ.

Andre.
 
40.png
trumpet152:
Take a look at this argument for Sola Scriptura. I’ve never heard it before.
Click to expand...
It seems to me that this is nothing more than the oft cited position of “He who asserts bears the burden of proof.”

Peace to you,
Richard
 
This is not a good arguement. The bottom line is that they are the people pushing for the Bible Alone. Therefore, the burden of proof lies with them. They have to prove it to us!

And they can’t!

Brad
 
40.png
trumpet152:
Take a look at this argument for Sola Scriptura. I’ve never heard it before.

Any quick responses?
Click to expand...
Rome does not have the burden of proving that the sources outside of Scripture are equally authoritative, because of the simple fact that the other parts of the Word of God draw their authority from the same source as the Bible, namely, the Catholic Church. The Bible has any weight at all only because the Catholic Church, by Her authority, declares that it does. This same authority of the Catholic Church also declares Sacred Tradition to be of weight.

It is not the burden of Rome to prove that Sacred Tradition is of equal weight to the Bible, but rather it is the burden for those outside of Rome to prove that the Bible has any authority itself. The Catholic Church claims to be a Divine institution of God endowed with the authority to teach by God Himself. By this authority, She accepts the cannonical books of the Bible as authoritative. By this same authority, She also accepts Sacred Tradition as so.

However, those whom do not profess to be of the Catholic Church have no evidence to support their claim that the Bible is authoritative at all. Does the Bible itself say so? Surely not, and, if it did, this fact would be of no value, for one cannot prove the authority of something from within itself. The Qu’ran, too, claims to be authoritative, and yet Protestants do not regard it so, for this is not proof. Joseph Smith claimed to be a prophet of God, and yet this is not proof that he truly was. So too would a claim within the Bible to be authoritative fall short of the burden of proof.

Protestants often declare the Bible’s authority to rest in the fact that it contains no error. However, this is not proof of its authority either. For inerrancy proves only only itself, not authority. Further, in appealing to the inerrancy of the Scriptures, one must first prove that they are in fact inerrant, a task which can be done only to the extent as those things which are contained therin are testable, and, while much of that so contained is testable, much is not. Indeed, should one wish to appeal to Biblical inerrancy for proof of its inerrancy, one must prove the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, indeed, even the existence of the soul. These tasks are those which cannot be accomplished in this life.

In short, the burden lies not on Rome to prove Sacred Tradition. Rather, the burden rests on all of those whom reject Rome to prove the authority of the Bible at all.
 
Try these (these are not mine but come from user RNRobert:
  • Jesus did not hand the New Testament to his followers and say “read and heed.” He never wrote a line of scripture, and with the exception of Revelation, never commanded anyone else to do so either.
  • When the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, He did not drop New Testaments on to their laps, but gave them the authority to preach and teach.
  • When the early church leaders had a debate about Gentiles entering the Church (Acts 11), they could not use the scriptures to decide the issue as the Old Testament didn’t apply and the New Testament didn’t exist. Instead, they met and discussed the issue, with the church leaders making a statement as to what should be done.
  • People were converting to Christianity through oral word for years before any of the New Testament was given.
  • When the New Testament began to be written, it was addressed to people who had already been taught the faith through oral preaching, and (mainly in the case of the various epistles) it’s purpose was to clarify issues or correct problems, not be an exhaustive primer of the faith. Also, keep in mind that the books were written to a specific church or individual, and as a consequence, an epistle that might be widely read in one region might be completely unknown to another.
  • Even after the books that we now know as the New Testament were written, there was no attempt to set down what the “New Testament” composed of until the middle of the second century AD. Even then, there was a lot of disagreement as to what constituted the New Testament canon. Some books like Jude 3 John, and Revelation were at one point disputed, while some of the patristic writings like those by Clement and Ignatius were included. The New Testament as we know it was not formalized until the end of the 4th century AD. S, it was the church that created the Bible, not the other way around.
  • Until the advent of the printing press, the necessity of writing everything by hand and the expense of writing materials (like parchment) made books too expensive for the average citizen. The concept of modern organizations (like for instance the Gideons) passing out pocket New Testaments by the truckload would have been fantastic to ancient Christians.
 
  • Furthermore, many people in ancient times were illiterate, so the only way for them to hear the Gospel was to go to church and hear it preached. BTW, while I’m at it, I’d like to explode the Protestant myth that “the Catholic Church kept the Bible in Latin so ordinary people couldn’t read it.” As I said, the ordinary people were largely illiterate to begin with. Secondly, schools of the Middle Ages (and for a few centuries thereafter) taught Latin as part of their curriculum, so anyone who could read could read Latin. Also, numerous vernacular translations of the Bible were in existence long before Luther & Co. came along.
  • Nowhere in the Bible is it written “The Bible, and the Bible alone, shalt thou take as thy sole rule of faith.” Instead, we are told that it is the Church which is “the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” (1 Tim 3:15). St Paul tells the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15). How do we know for sure all what Paul taught by word of mouth? For that matter, how do know that the Pauline epistles included in the New Testament are the ONLY ones he wrote?
  • The Apostle John tells us twice in his Gospel (20:30, 21:25) that not all the things that Jesus said and did were written down. Were those words and deeds any less important because they weren’t? Keep in mind this was primarily an *oral *culture.
 
  • In Acts 8, when Philip asks the Ethiopian eunuch if he understands the passage in Isaiah he is reading, the Ethiopian responds, “How can, I, unless someone guides me?” (vv 27-31). In other words, whose interpretation do you trust? The practice of using Scripture Alone has shattered Christianity into over 30,000 different denominations (a number which shows no sign of decreasing), all of whom claim to follow the Bible, all who claim to be led by the Holy Spirit, but all giving different interpretations! One sect claims baptism is necessary for salvation, another says it isn’t; one denomination says baptism provides grace, another says it’s merely a symbol, one believes in baptizing babies but another one says it’s nonsense. One sect believes in the Trinity, another does not. One sect says Jesus was God and man, but another says he was only a man, a third says something else. How is the earnest inquirer of Christian truth able to sort the wheat from the chaff?
 
The Burden of Proof rests on he who enacts change. Jews observed an oral Tradition, as did the Christian church until the time of the reformation.

If the change is TO Scripture-alone, one must bear the burden of proof for that change.
 
Sola Scriptura is good if and only if in the scriptures Christ says:

I want you to write books that will be guided by the Holy Spirit and through this book alone is the Word of God.

Otherwise, one has to consider the claims of the human institution that canonized the Bible…the Catholic Church. Any other intellectual acrobat is an attempt to make dogma out of Luther’s incomplete ideas.

in XT.
 
40.png
AquinasXVI:
Sola Scriptura is good if and only if in the scriptures Christ says:

I want you to write books that will be guided by the Holy Spirit and through this book alone is the Word of God.

Otherwise, one has to consider the claims of the human institution that canonized the Bible…the Catholic Church. Any other intellectual acrobat is an attempt to make dogma out of Luther’s incomplete ideas.

in XT.
Click to expand...
Even that wouldn’t be good enough. That would still require that a person prove the person who wrote the Scriptures didn’t just make them up. There’s no authority in the Bible without the Church saying there is.
 
40.png
sadie2723:
This is not a good arguement. The bottom line is that they are the people pushing for the Bible Alone. Therefore, the burden of proof lies with them. They have to prove it to us!

And they can’t!

Brad
Click to expand...
And you have to realize that if you’re evangelizing them and telling them that Sola Scriptura is an invalid rule of faith then the burden of proof lies with you.

Again: “He who asserts must prove.”

Peace to you,
Richard
 
40.png
Richard_Hurtz:
And you have to realize that if you’re evangelizing them and telling them that Sola Scriptura is an invalid rule of faith then the burden of proof lies with you.

Again: “He who asserts must prove.”

Peace to you,
Richard
Click to expand...
40.png
Lazerlike42:
Rome does not have the burden of proving that the sources outside of Scripture are equally authoritative, because of the simple fact that the other parts of the Word of God draw their authority from the same source as the Bible, namely, the Catholic Church. The Bible has any weight at all only because the Catholic Church, by Her authority, declares that it does. This same authority of the Catholic Church also declares Sacred Tradition to be of weight.

It is not the burden of Rome to prove that Sacred Tradition is of equal weight to the Bible, but rather it is the burden for those outside of Rome to prove that the Bible has any authority itself. The Catholic Church claims to be a Divine institution of God endowed with the authority to teach by God Himself. By this authority, She accepts the cannonical books of the Bible as authoritative. By this same authority, She also accepts Sacred Tradition as so.

However, those whom do not profess to be of the Catholic Church have no evidence to support their claim that the Bible is authoritative at all. Does the Bible itself say so? Surely not, and, if it did, this fact would be of no value, for one cannot prove the authority of something from within itself. The Qu’ran, too, claims to be authoritative, and yet Protestants do not regard it so, for this is not proof. Joseph Smith claimed to be a prophet of God, and yet this is not proof that he truly was. So too would a claim within the Bible to be authoritative fall short of the burden of proof.

Protestants often declare the Bible’s authority to rest in the fact that it contains no error. However, this is not proof of its authority either. For inerrancy proves only only itself, not authority. Further, in appealing to the inerrancy of the Scriptures, one must first prove that they are in fact inerrant, a task which can be done only to the extent as those things which are contained therin are testable, and, while much of that so contained is testable, much is not. Indeed, should one wish to appeal to Biblical inerrancy for proof of its inerrancy, one must prove the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, indeed, even the existence of the soul. These tasks are those which cannot be accomplished in this life.

In short, the burden lies not on Rome to prove Sacred Tradition. Rather, the burden rests on all of those whom reject Rome to prove the authority of the Bible at all.
Click to expand...
 
The canon of the New Testament is something that is not part of the bible, but is accepted by all who call themselves Christian. If you accept the canon of the New Testament then you accept something outside the bible as a rule of faith.

Sola Scriptura is false because it contradicts scripture, history and common sense.
 
If the Sola Scriptura folks believe in the Bible, what’s their proof that the Bible is inspired? It’s sure not in the Bible…
 
Why should anyone have to prove it? We believe one thing and they believe another, why do we have to prove what we believe?

If, however, we/you are trying to evangelise them then we have to prove every single thing we say to them (or everything they ask for proof for), not just Sola Scriptura. That’s just the way evangelising is.

If they are trying to evangelise us and expect us to prove what we believe, we can just tell them to nick off.

The way this guy said it as “Rome has to prove” almost sounds as if Rome is in court up against some charges. Yes, it is Rome’s assertion - but to whom? To her followers of course. Us Catholics don’t need Rome to prove to us that Sola Scriptura isn’t true for us to believe that it is not true. And why should she have to prove it to those who aren’t followers of her, who don’t agree with her in the first place? It’s very simple - either they believe what Rome says or they don’t.

PS I also agree with Andre, except I would say “It talks pretty clearly about WHO is the Word of God.” (-:
 
40.png
trumpet152:
Take a look at this argument for Sola Scriptura. I’ve never heard it before.

Any quick responses?
Click to expand...
Well, where on earth did you find that quote and who said it?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top