Summary Against Sola Scriptura
Summary Against Sola Scriptura
This thread is apparently the Readers' Digest version of the other one, so I am posting my final rebuttal of SS here as well as in the original thread. Here goes:
... it is time for me to post my summary of why Sola Scriptura (SS) is an unbiblical doctrine. The debate has hinged on the precise definition of SS. There are essentially two versions that we have debated:
1) Man-on-the-street definition: All legitimate Christian doctrine must be explicitly written in the Bible.
2) Legitimate definition: The Bible as God's written word is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter ("Scripture interprets Scripture"), and sufficient of itself to be the final authority of Christian doctrine.
Knight’s argument addresses the first definition, and is useful because this is the operational definition one encounters in dealing with many Evangelical Protestants. Let’s call this version SS1 and the second version SS2. Clearly SS1 is unbiblical because if it were true, SS1 would be explicitly written in the Bible according to its own rule. But it is not, so by elementary application of logic, SS1 must be rejected. As a minor aside, Clete claims that this argument is based on the “stolen concept fallacy,” but as Paul McNabb has pointed out, the method of argumentation is straight out of high school geometry textbooks and has been around since the time of the ancient Greeks.
The second version (SS2) is more subtle than SS1, and cannot be directly addressed by Knight’s argument, because it doesn’t claim that SS is to be found explicitly in the Bible. However, its proponents claim that SS2 is a logical deduction from the Bible. Here is the chain of reasoning offered to us by Assuranceagent:
A. Scripture is authoritative based on 2 Tim 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
B. Nothing else is as authoritative as scripture in matters of doctrine and church practice.
C. If A and B are true, then Scripture holds a singular or 'sola' position of authority since nothing else can make the same claim.
However, this argument is full of holes. First, as pointed out by both Knight and Paul McNabb, A is only an argument for the usefulness of Scripture and has nothing to do with SS. Assuranceagent claims B to be true from an absence of any passages in the Bible stating otherwise. Assuming for the moment that the premise of his argument is true, this is a very weak argument based on silence. But B is manifestly not true from Scripture itself. Here are the passages which support Tradition (hearing what is passed down by word of mouth as well as by letter) as an equal authority with Scripture:
2 Tim 2:2 “What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
2 Thes 2:15 “Stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”
2 Thes 3:6 “Keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.”
1 Cor 11:2 “Maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you.”
1 Cor 11:23 “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.”
1 Thes 2:13 “When you 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.”
Assuranceagent claimed in a previous thread, SOLA vs. AND, that these verses argue for the validity of apostolic tradition only until the death of the last apostle. But what he never addressed was how SS could hold sway between the death of the last apostle and the very first canonization of the Christian Scriptures by Pope St. Damasus I in 382 at the Council of Rome. What this actually proves is that it is Tradition which begot Scripture, so Tradition must have an equal authority with Scripture.
As has been pointed out, SS2 is a deduction from Scripture. It is a teaching that was not obvious to Christians for over 1500 years until the Reformation, after which it was handed down. Hence it is on the same level formally as any other deduction from Scripture that has become a tradition. Therefore SS2 is self-contradictory because it is itself a (Protestant) tradition, yet it claims that there is no other source of authority than Scripture, including Tradition. This is a modified form of Knight’s argument sufficient to demolish SS2.
Finally, I have argued that it is impossible for Scripture to be an exclusive authority because Jesus, the Word of God, said “If I bear witness to myself, my testimony is not true (John 5:31).” (For you eggheads out there, this is an acknowledgment of the epistemological problem of self-reference.) Scripture is God-breathed only because it participates in the divine exchange that is the Breath of God (the Holy Spirit), in whom the Father witnesses to and glorifies the Son, and the Son witnesses to and glorifies the Father. Scripture constantly speaks of there being a need for two or three witnesses to establish any truth, precisely because this allows the Trinity to share its very breath with man. God does this equally through Scripture and Tradition. Therefore Sola Scriptura is not only unbiblical; it is a false teaching.