Objections to Sola Scriptura

[farouk]

That's what I think about this. God will never contradict Himself, so He will never contradict the Bible. So if you learn the Bible, then, when you believe you are hearing from the Holy Spirit, you can compare His words to the Scriptures, and if there is any conflict, maybe you aren't hearing the Holy Spirit.

Much love!

@marks Great post, yes........

 

[marks]

Okay, do you need an example?

Say there is someone out there right, and they are underneath a cult leader.

The cult leader tells the person - if you do something that your eyes can not look at and I catch you, I will gouge your eyes out because this what the Lord had said.

The person the cult leader, does what the cult leader said not to do, and the cult leader, goes into their room which they are watching a dirty movie!

The cult leader, grabs his ice pick and gouges the persons eye out.

Was this what was important message that Jesus had said when he said : Gouge your eye out?


Thus it is with Sola Scriptura - an abusive form of use of scripture if you ask me. It is like little ice picks to stab and argue and division, @farouk.

I don't see what that has to do with the fact that I think the Bible is the final word on truth. Just an ugly story of a personal wickedness in the name of God.

Yuck!

 

[MatthewG]

Hey that stuff happens out there and truth can be pretty ugly. That is why the sola scriptura doesn’t work. Reading the Bible does.

 

[amigo de christo]

I don't see what that has to do with the fact that I think the Bible is the final word on truth. Just an ugly story of a personal wickedness in the name of God.

Yuck!

Its just an example to try and justify why folks dont support the bible anymore .
This is all it is . But i remind us all of what we already know . We gonna stay DUG INTO OUR BIBLE .
GOD always made a way for the jews to have torah just as HE has made a way for us to have the faithful copy of it and of the letters of the church as well . The priests and leaders of the jews often fell into error . YET ALWAYS GOD had copies of TORAH faithfully recopied .
Just cause the CC fell into massive error , dont mean GOD did not keep the same faithful records of the testimony of CHRIST
faithfully recorded . THE BIBLE IS TRUTH my friend . AS you know . AND WE GONNA STAY DUG IN IT .

 

[amigo de christo]

Hey that stuff happens out there and truth can be pretty ugly. That is why the sola scriptura doesn’t work. Reading the Bible does.

Sola scripta DOES WORK . You dont see me GOUGING OUT EYES . Just cause folks can claim sola scripta
DONT MEAN THEY FOLLOW THE TRUTH IN SAID bible .
EVEN the rotten KKK can say the BIBLE is the word of GOD . BUT do you know how i know they dont know GOD .
CAUSE THEY DONT PRATICE WHAT IT TEACHES . That is how i know they dont know him .
NOW OPEN THY BIBLE and STAY PLUGGED INTO IT .

 

[MatthewG]

Yes it’s important to read the Bible. It’s the only way to build up faith.

Romans 10:17 So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

This isn’t trying to put authority on anyone it is simply encouraging people to go and read the Bible, the more you read it out loud to yourself and hear it, it builds faith.

God bless @amigo de christo.

 

[Enoch111]

That is why the sola scriptura doesn’t work. Reading the Bible does.

You are contradicting yourself right here. Sola Scriptura means that the Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. Which means (a) reading the Bible, (b) believing the Bible, and (c) practicing what is taught in the Bible.

 

[Enoch111]

What are the doctrinal objections to this Protestant lynchpin.

There are no "doctrinal| objections. Those who place "Holy Tradition" on the same level as Scripture reject Sola Scriptura. By the same token the Reformers who made this an article of faith failed to see that Reformed Theology (Calvinism) was actually undermining Gospel truth. Sola Scripture means rejecting man-made teachings.

 

[amigo de christo]

There are no "doctrinal| objections. Those who place "Holy Tradition" on the same level as Scripture reject Sola Scriptura. By the same token the Reformers who made this an article of faith failed to see that Reformed Theology (Calvinism) was actually undermining Gospel truth. Sola Scripture means rejecting man-made teachings.

Yes indeed . Let the glorious LORD be praised .

 

[Enoch111]

Part of the reason I’m not a Protestant is because I can’t accept Sola Scriptura.

Naturally. Mormons have elevated other books to the same level as Scripture. This is about the same as the Catholics.

 

[amigo de christo]

Naturally. Mormons have elevated other books to the same level as Scripture. This is about the same as the Catholics.

Folks cling to many books but the lambs cling to the BIBLE . Let all praise and thank the LORD .

 

[Jane_Doe22]

Naturally. Mormons have elevated other books to the same level as Scripture. This is about the same as the Catholics.

Actually it’s holding God Himself above all others. That’s not an insult to the Bible or other texts. Just remembering that God comes before & above all else.

 

[marks]

Hey that stuff happens out there and truth can be pretty ugly. That is why the sola scriptura doesn’t work. Reading the Bible does.

But it's not because of "sola Scriptura". Which IS reading the Bible.

Ugly things happen all the time for many reasons, but not because God gives us the Bible for authority. It's because people don't live according to the Bible.

Much love!

 

[Enoch111]

Actually it’s holding God Himself above all others. That’s not an insult to the Bible or other texts. Just remembering that God comes before & above all else.

That still dodges the issue of which books are ALSO regarded as Scripture by the LDS Church.

 

[Jane_Doe22]

That still dodges the issue of which books are ALSO regarded as Scripture by the LDS Church.

And guess what: even considering those LDS Christians aren’t Sola Scripura proclaimers.

God Himself is the Alpha and Omega. Not any book of scripture (Bible, Book of Mormon, etc). He speak, He guides understanding, etc. He is the author and finisher of faith.

 

[amigo de christo]

But it's not because of "sola Scriptura". Which IS reading the Bible.

Ugly things happen all the time for many reasons, but not because God gives us the Bible for authority. It's because people don't live according to the Bible.

Much love!

ED ZACHARY . Yes indeed .

 

[amigo de christo]

That still dodges the issue of which books are ALSO regarded as Scripture by the LDS Church.

Dodges it like spikes stuck on a ball during dodge ball .

 

[Hidden In Him]

What are the doctrinal objections to this Protestant lynchpin. From the vantage of any denomination.

To me, it seems foolish to be against Sola Scriptura. It just makes too much sense that God's inspired word should be the first, middle and last word on all things pertaining to the faith. If this were not so, why do we even have the bible?

Discuss ty and God bless

Hey Friend Of.

The problem with Sola Scriptura is that it insinuates God is done speaking to the churches, which kinda renders the Creator of Heaven and Earth a Mute in worldly affairs today. Charismatics believe He is still speaking to the nations and cares for them deeply, so is still warning and admonishing them prophetically as He did even in Israel's day and always has. But advocates of Sola Scriptura are bound to say it cannot be, or else "the canon is not closed," but it is not actually about the canon. It's about Cessationism vs. Continuance, and whether or not God is still speaking to the churches through divine utterance.

God bless, and good to see you still posting.
- H

 

[Hidden In Him]

Thanks for this important post. I have a few objections to sola scriptura. And for my list, I will focus just on the NT. But we first must define sola scriptura – for if we do not agree on its definition we cannot agree on its doctrinal soundness. I define it as an abiding faith that (a) the NT writers were inspired by God to write what they wrote in such a fashion that every word is accurate historically when it recounts history and accurate doctrinally when it exhorts theology; (b) the assembly of the 27 NT books and the process by which these particular writings came to be chosen as canonical (e.g., the letter to the Hebrews is in, the Gospel of Thomas is out) -- based largely on the twin on criteria of presumed ties to the original apostles and consistency with then-held orthodoxy -- was likewise inspired by God to ensure that those making the cut were all included in (a) above; and (c) there can be found in the 27 that happened to make the cut an answer to every material theological question imaginable.

This post is already going to be long, and it would take way too long to discuss the possible challenges to (a) and (b) – and any challenge to (a) will draw way too much vitriol on this site! -- so I will focus on (c). With that out of the way, here are my comments:

1. The first generation of Christians had no NT. They had the oral teachings of the apostles and their disciples (and MAYBE, within a decade or so of Pentecost, some written compilations of the sayings of Jesus Christ now lost to us), and soon the teachings of Paul and his disciples as they traveled around the eastern Mediterranean world (slowly – no planes, trains, cars or powerboats back then). By around 50 C.E. Paul’s letters delivered to particular churches in particular towns started to be written and then copied so as to make their way beyond those towns, and MAYBE the first gospel was written in the early 50’s as well and, sooner or later, got similarly copied and began to be spread around (slowly – no printing presses back then). But that means around 20-30 years – a generation – of reliance solely or almost solely on the oral traditions of the apostles and their disciples. This was a time of nulla scriptura rather than sola scriptura. Yet Christianity in some form (whether the Jerusalem flavor of Peter and Mark or the Antiochene flavor of Paul and, much later, Luke) nevertheless managed to take root – proving that oral tradition alone can do the trick. Imagine that! Keep that in the back of your mind for now.

2. The apostolic tradition in those early years was not unanimous. There is little reason to doubt some difference of opinion among the original apostles (let’s add Matthias to the group; in fact, let’s add “the seventy”), all of whom were Jewish, on outreach to Gentiles (think about Peter’s vision and the Cornelius incident, and its aftermath, in Acts 10 and 11 – a mind-boggling scenario if these apostles had indeed heard the final words of Jesus as “recorded” in Matthew 28:19). There is little reason to doubt the disagreement between Peter and Paul recounted in Galatians on proper interaction with the Gentiles (the very different account of this “split” and its resolution as recounted in Acts is probably the more accurate). We know about the Council of Jerusalem to resolve the latter dispute. We don’t know how many other councils, conferences, theological debates and formal or informal efforts to achieve apostolic consensus on other matters took place (none of the 27 NT books describes any, but that hardly suggests there were none).

3. Even after the books of the NT were composed, different apostolic traditions continued to thrive. An example is the date of celebrating Easter, which didn’t get resolved until Nicaea in 325 C.E. The churches in Asia Minor followed the tradition handed down by John and Philip celebrating Easier on 14 Nisan regardless of whether that date fell on the Lord’s Day; most everyone else celebrated Easter only on the Lord’s Day. No answer in Scripture! A council was required to resolve the issue.

4. The gospel authors wrote down different apostolic traditions, and while they do not agree on all details, each presented different words and deeds of Jesus to support differing theological perspectives. But as full expositions of everything Jesus said and did, they are necessarily incomplete. Luke 1:1 tells us that many other accounts were written. John 21:25 tells us that Jesus Christ said and did so much more than was written by him that the whole world wouldn’t hold all the books required to do so. It follows that all of the apostles who were witnesses to what Jesus Christ said and did – whether they dictated gospels or not – were a treasure trove of unrecorded teachings of Christ. And in the first generation of Christendom, their oral traditions mattered – not just the one-tenth or one percent (at best!) that is found in the four canonical gospels. Why should it not matter today (presuming we can reconstruct it)?

5. Doctrine is informed by more than Scripture, and has to be. The doctrine of the Trinity is a prime example, if only because Scripture is so equivocal on the subject. (I use this example with some trepidation, as I suspect this post is going to be hijacked by strident debaters on both sides of this issue – because they can’t help themselves. So buckle in. It’s unavoidable. But I digress . . .) Those few scattered passages in the emerging NT canon that could arguably be deemed binitarian or (far less frequently) trinitarian yield no coherent picture of the Son’s participation in the Godhead, and as a result, three centuries of patristic thinking were occupied by the effort to explain the Church’s understanding of the nature of Jesus Christ in a manner consistent with Scripture. Thinking of two beings as distinct, and yet as sharing the same substance or essence, the same ousia, presents no difficulty unless that substance or essence or ousia is itself the unique and absolute self-subsistence of the Mosaic “I AM”—for by definition only one being can have that as its essence. Efforts to solve this dilemma—and the first three centuries of the Christian era were marked by an astonishing array of such efforts—required more than resort to Scripture if all of the myriad heresies of the time were to be beaten down. Arianism, Sabellianism, and dozens of similar isms would have hijacked the Faith and split it apart if the Church could have done no more than point to passages in Scripture. Something was needed to fill the gap – and that something was reason and philosophy. The march of Christianity outward from Palestine into the Greek world inevitably resulted in a cultural and philosophical disconnect, as tales told and texts written from a Jewish/messianic perspective were being interpreted by men imbued in a Greek philosophical tradition. It was thus natural that Greek philosophy, which had long sought to locate an ontological bridge between the One and the Many, between the realm of soul/spirit and the material world, would provide the looms for this tapestry. Rejecting it as “unscriptural” will revive all manner of early heresies. Nicaea and Chalcedon – not simply opening a Book -- were necessary to defeat them.


Given all of this, what reason do we have to believe that the NT has all the answers to everything? I can see none. I can see, rather, the need for respect to the apostolic traditions from the first and second century, as revealed in sacramental/prayer rituals tied to that era, and in the writing of the Church Fathers of the patristic period discussing these things -- as well as the need for Church councils.

[By the way, I’m not Roman Catholic, but I do think the RCC is a repository of some of this ritual and tradition (the Eastern Orthodox Church is as well). There is so much Catholic bashing on this site that I wonder whether Protestants are blind to this simply because they deem the bathwater to be as tainted as the baby.]

This is a well-written post. One place I would disagree with you on is that the church resorted to reason and philosophy to resolve it. I think the Nicene era bent towards all things philosophical was actually a detriment to the faith, as it gave way to the professional orator and rhetorician in place of those truly anointed of God to lead, if not quite so eloquently. But I think reason and the continued leading and utterance of the Holy Spirit is what eventually filled out early church teaching. But you are correct, it most certainly was not Sola Scriptura. The earliest texts settled nothing, and in fact left MANY questions still unanswered. I believe God designed it to happen this way, however, so that the church not rely on the written word but on the Spirit who enlightens it.

God bless, and impressive post.

 

[Wrangler]

Objections to Sola Scriptura

IMHO, the question is framed incorrectly. A good debate is between at least 2 options, not between a singular option and nothing. For instance, what are the pros and cons to Sola Scriptura compared to the alternatives?

There is an active thread like this; do you place your faith in the Bible or God?That thread revealed one drawback that @MatthewG pointed out. Sola Scriptura runs the risk of turning the Bible into an IDOL, divorced from the Spirit of God.

Overall, I think it is better than the alternative, which is a reaction to a collection of power hungry men who corrupted the purpose of Christian living to control the masses for profit. Compare the medieval cathedrals to the squalor the people lived in who financed it.