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Two Highly Illogical Arguments for Sola Scriptura.

Two Highly Illogical Arguments for Sola Scriptura.

Last updated on: March 30, 2018 at 9:58 pm by Scott Eric Alt

Two Highly Illogical Arguments for Sola Scriptura. 2018-03-30T21:58:14-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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Both of these come from Stephen Wolfe, writing at Reformation 500—a site frequented by our old friend, the polemical rogue Mr. John Bugay The title of Mr. Wolfe’s small little post is “A Short Defense of Sola Scriptura”; and it is so short—even cursory—that he fails to avoid several large and breezy gaps in logic.

In the first of them, Mr. Wolfe tries to reply to a commonplace observation: that you can’t have sola scriptura unless the Bible itself gives us an infallible list of what’s canonical, and the Bible does not come with an inspired table of contents. Mr. Wolfe says he has a rebuttal to this.

The canon, as the “list of books,” is no more inspired than the number of parables in the gospels. (I think that TurretinFan made this point a while back). The number of parables is a consequence of the parables being inspired, but the number is not inspired. In the same way, the “list of books” is not inspired; it is a consequence of the receiving or “hearing” of scripture by the church. Yes, the Church had a fundamental role in recognizing scripture, for they are the ones who “hear” and recognize the voice of Christ (Jn. 10:27); and the Church, as the receiving body, codified what they heard in the form of a canon. So the canon is a consequence of the church hearing and receiving scripture. As I say below, the canon is a consequence of the principle of sola scriptura.

Several problems emerge here.

1. Mr. Wolfe concedes that “the Church had a fundamental role in recognizing Scripture” and that she “codified [it] in the form of a canon.” But what the Church “codified” was a 73-book canon, and Mr. Wolfe’s Bible only has 66 of them. If it is the Church that “recognizes the voice of Christ,” why does Mr. Wolfe not hear that voice in Judith, or Tobit, or Maccabees, as the Church does? In his blithe post, he simply bypasses this problem, as though it does not exist.

2. If the Church can tell us what the canon is or is not, then it follows that she has at least some authority outside Scripture. It also follows that it must be an infallible authority, for God would not give the Church the authority to tell us what Scripture is and then allow it to make a mistake. But according to Mr. Wolfe it made seven of them. What he grants with his right hand he takes away with his left. If the Church has the authority to tell us what scripture is, why does it not have the authority to tell us what the Scripture means? Why does it not have the authority to tell us what doctrines are or are not to be found there? Mr. Wolfe does not say.

3. Mr. Wolfe misstates the Catholic argument in his rebuttal. The Catholic argument is not that the precise number of biblical books is inspired. Nor is the Catholic argument that their titles are inspired, or that some particular list is. Rather, the Catholic argument is that, without an authority external to Scripture, we cannot know what belongs on that list. Why Galatians, and not the Epistle to the Laodiceans? Why the Gospel of Luke, and not the Gospel of Philip? Scripture itself does not tell us these things; only an authority external to Scripture can do so. Mr. Wolfe tries to trick us by conceding the Catholic argument while at the same time denying it. The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away.

In Mr. Wolfe’s second argument, he tries to sidestep this problem by arguing that sola scriptura, as a doctrinal principle, is subsequent to the process of codification. The Church had authority for a time (to tell us what books belong in the Bible) but it ceased to exist once the canon was closed.

The doctrine of sola scriptura is not about a list of books, but the principle that all doctrine must come from scripture. In other words, all doctrine must come from a certain type of revelation, namely, inscripturated divine communication. The codification of the canon as a list of books is subsequent to the receiving of texts as scripture, not prior to it; and saying that the rule of faith is contained in the sixty-six book canon of scripture presupposes this codification as subsequent.

All this bears a striking similarity to a point which Dr.* James White has made before, most notably in his 1997 debate with Gerry Matatics. In that debate he said that sola scriptura is a “normative condition” of the church that does not exist “during times of enscripturation.” It only shows up when the canon is closed. TurretinFan (known on this blog as Mr. X) made the same point in a more recent debate with William Albrecht, when he said that sola scriptura is “what we do with the Bible once we have the Bible.”

It’s a clever argument, as I’ve said before (e.g., here and here and here). It tries to get around the fact that the Church must first tell us what the canon is, by saying that sola scriptura did not exist then anyway. The canon needed to be written first. Then it needed to be codified. But then, once all that was done, sola scriptura took over and we did not need these external authorities any longer.

The problem with that argument is that it leaves at least four things unexplained.

1. If that were true, what about the many Christians who could not read? Even Reformed scholar Michael J. Kruger concedes that the literacy rate among Christians in the early centuries of the church was somewhere between ten and fifteen percent. How can sola scriptura function if such large numbers can’t even read the Bible in the first place and must rely on other authorities to tell them what it says and how it is to be understood?

2. If that were true, why would God not have told us about sola scriptura somewhere in the biblical text? You don’t find any passage in the Bible that says we are to be governed by the Bible alone. Instead, we find texts, like 1 Tim. 3:15, that tell us about the authority of the Church.

3. If that were true, why do we not hear about it in the Church Fathers? (Instead, we find people like Ignatius of Antioch telling us, “You make sure you listen to the bishop.”) Why did we have to wait for Dr.* James White to tell us that sola scriptura took over when apostolic authority left off. For when I pressed him on it, Dr.* White was not able to tell me of one single person, before himself, who made that point. Now Reformed apologists all ape something Dr.* White said in 1997 only when Mr. Matatics forced him to concede that the apostles did not practice sola scriptura.

4. If that were true, why was the Church wrong about the number of books in the canon for 1200 years? For all that time, Christians thought that Baruch was canonical scripture. For all that time, they thought that Tobit was the inspired word of God. If the Church had the authority to recognize what books were in the canon, how did they get it wrong, and why was Martin Luther the first to figure that out? Where in the Bible did Martin Luther learn that Wisdom shouldn’t be in the Bible? If, once the canon is settled, we’re supposed to follow scripture alone, how is it that scripture gets removed from scripture?

In truth, none of these arguments are at all original with Mr. Wolfe; he apes them from Dr.* White and Mr. X. Nor does he acknowledge that they have been answered, time and again, nor does he attempt to interact with the questions and difficulties that others have raised. The result, on his part, is a very shallow and perfunctory post with numerous gaps in logic.

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