J
jennyhay
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- Definitions:
Fundamental – Of profound spiritual importance. It should be noted that recognizing a belief as fundamental does not imply its veracity. It only means that eternal salvation may hinge upon the acceptance or rejection of the belief. For example, the belief “God does not exist” is fundamental, but not true. If a church is not willing to compromise its teachings on a particular belief for the sake of unity, then the church holds that belief to be fundamental.
Scripture – The 66 books of the Protestant Bible.
**Sola scriptura **– The belief that Scripture is the sole rule and norm of the Christian faith, and that all beliefs which are both fundamental and true are taught in this Scripture. - By the definition of sola scriptura, no particular belief can have all three of the following characteristics: not taught in Scripture, fundamental, and true. In other words, if it’s not taught in Scripture, then it can’t be a fundamental truth.
- The definition of sola scriptura presents a trilemma for every belief that is not taught in Scripture. A particular belief that is not taught in Scripture must be exactly one of the following:
a. True, but not fundamental, or
b. Fundamental, but not true, or
c. Neither true nor fundamental. - The following beliefs, none of which is taught in Scripture, demonstrate the sola scriptura trilemma in action:
a. “Force equals mass times acceleration on planet Earth.” (true, but not fundamental)
b. “Man is inherently good.” (fundamental, but not true)
c. “My dog sings The Star Spangled Banner." (neither true nor fundamental) - The following belief is not taught in Scripture: “Scripture is the sole rule and norm of the Christian faith.” In other words, sola scriptura, as we have defined it here, is not taught in Scripture – not even implicitly.
- All Christians agree that sola scriptura is fundamental. Catholics believe that it is fundamental and false; Protestants believe that it is fundamental and true.
- Since sola scriptura is not taught in scripture and all Christians agree that sola scriptura is fundamental, then by the definition of sola scriptura, sola scriptura must be (c) fundamental, but not true.
Backup for statement #5 (the only possible point of contention)
• No theologian before Martin Luther argued that sola scriptura was taught in scripture. (I’m not even sure that ML made such a claim.) One must, at the very least, conclude from this that sola scriptura is not obviously taught in scripture.
• Steve Brown, Presbyterian Bible teacher, in his audio series Biblical Systematic Theology, calls sola scriptura a “presupposition.” He explicitly states that it cannot be derived from any source, including scripture.
• The two oft-cited “proof texts”, 2 Tim 3:16-17 and 1 Cor 4:6, are inadequate. Both texts refer to the Old Testament. If these texts are arguments for the sufficiency of scripture, then they are arguments for the sufficiency of the Old Testament, which would be a most unfortunate conclusion for Christianity.
In 2 Tim 3:16-17, “All Scripture” doesn’t mean “only Scripture”. For 1 Cor 4:6, the Ryrie Study Bible from Moody Press offers the interpretation “that you might learn by us to live faithfully according to the Scriptures.” In other words, “exceed” or “go beyond” in this context seems to mean “transgress”.
• In scripture, oral transmission of the Word of God is valued along with written transmission (2 Thess 2:15, 2 Tim 1:13-14, 2:2, Phil 4:9, among others).
• Tradition, which may be written or oral, is valued in scripture (1 Cor 11:2, 2 Thess 2:15, 2 Thess 3:6). Wherever corrupt tradition is denounced, it is qualified as “traditions of man” or “your traditions” (Colossians 2:8, Matthew 15:3, Mark 7:8-13)
• Scripture tells us that the church is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim 3:15).
• Scripture itself does not tell us what scripture is, namely the 66 books of the Protestant Bible. This is a gross oversight if God really intended Scripture to be the sole rule and norm of the Christian faith. I’m not looking for a table of contents here. In the New Testament, I would have been satisfied with a verse to the effect of: “Heed and preserve the writings of the apostles as they will guide you in all truth.” But the fact is that the Holy Spirit used the mechanism of early church tradition to define Holy Scripture. With respect to the Old Testament, there is simply not enough information in scripture alone to discern whether the apocrypha ought to be considered inspired scripture. I know this because Protestant arguments for excluding the apocrypha are based entirely on tradition, with a series of statements like “Person A with authority B in the year C marginalized these documents for reasons D.” If a decent argument could be made from scripture alone, why isn’t it done?
- an ex-Lutheran
OK, my knowledge of this is that the text we have today was set n the early centuries and really never changed. During Trent it was upheld officially due to the fact that Luther espoused a different canon. As with most Church Councils the Church usually doesn’t say much about doctrine until there is a reason too if that makes sense.