I would much appreciate it if someone one, (especially you who are n-Cs) would display and clarify for me just precisely where it is in the Word of God that it specifically states that everything that Christians believe and practice must be found within its pages.
Sorry Michael, I would appear we are not going to discuss anything like your opening question.
This is of course because the need to prove something from scripture is an extra biblical belief that cannot be proven explicitly from scripture and is therefore self refuting and “everybody” knows this to be the case.
Because this is true, we are forced to go down the path of trying to instead nuance the “it must be found in the bible” part out of any definition of “Sola Scriptura”.
If you try to define “Sola Scriptura” in such away that include anything like “it must be found in the bible” as part of the definition it instantly becomes self refuting:
Whether you define Sola Scriptura as:
“Only what is explicitly taught in the Bible” or
“Only what is explicitly or implicitly taught in the Bible” or
“Only what is explicitly or implicitly taught in the Bible in alignment with the interpretations of whatever Christian community I embrace” or
Some much longer version thereof.
you are not going to find anything approaching an “only the Bible” rule in scripture.
So while we are looking to show that Sola Scriptura is “Scriptural” we need to redefine it to mean something like: “Only what is not in conflict with the Bible and is in Alignment with the Apostolic Faith”
This is a definition that we can of course find implicitly in scripture. In fact this definition removes the burden to prove “Sola Scriptura” from scripture at all. We simply have to show that “only Scripture” is not in conflict with the bible and claim that we believe it to be an Apostolic teaching.
Now that we are done with that exercise, I can rightly claim that “Sola Scriptura” is scriptural.
Of course when the conversation moves on to any other extra biblical tradition it is important to remember that “Sola Scriptura”, which we have after all shown to be scriptural, means that “only what is explicitly taught in the Bible must be believed”.
It is Bill Clinton speak: “Well it depends on what you mean by only. When I say “only” I don’t really mean only what I mean is “mostly” or “primarily” or “nearly always” because we don’t have to find everything in the Bible, certainly we don’t have to show that the bible says we have to be able to show everything can be found in the bible, so “only scripture” really means “scripture and other things which are true.” So as you can see to say “only scripture is our authority” is correct even though what I really mean is that “only I am my own authority”. Oh wait did I say that out loud…where was I….oh yeah “I did not have sex with that woman.”
As soon as you include the words “Only” and “the Bible” in what ever definition you devise, no matter how wordy or well nuanced you try and make the qualifiers, you always end up in the same basic place, which is:
“Only whatever I believe the Bible means”
It boggles my mind that folks can claim to do otherwise.
Either they really don’t believe in “only” the bible as an authority or they don’t believe in another “authority”, you can’t have it both ways and claim any sense or rational thought.
Yet we see exactly this claim repeated over and over again.
Chuck
