Sola Scriptura Defended

i've done a couple videos lately on protestant and roman catholic and eastern orthodox distinctives and how those traditions interact with each other and i really enjoy those conversations i'm a settled protestant i'm a convicted protestant but i find that i learn from every single conversation or engagement i have in that space i walk away challenged and enriched in many ways so i think those discussions are really valuable i know that there's a number of viewers of my channel who are coming from a catholic or orthodox perspective and i love that um partly i know that

because i get more dislikes on my videos that address these topics so if you're willing to give me a like and help me out i'd appreciate the support here but also just from comments and other points of engagement and i i also know there's a number of viewers i have who are protestant but considering moving to one of those other traditions so i think these are really important discussions to have so in this video i want to address the issue of sola scriptura which is one of the rallying cries of the protestant reformation by scripture

alone sometimes called the formal principle of the reformation we'll talk more about what that doctrine means to me there's space around that issue to maybe make some progress and push the ball down the field a little bit now let me explain my approach here my goal in this video is not to try to blow the opposition to smithereens okay think of this video not as a bazooka trying to create an explosion think of this video rather as an invitation to sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk the goal is to reduce caricature

to further understanding and i do think that's important i think both sides caricature each other and this is this is something i think about every single day just the worrisome way that our culture is polarizing we're not as good at respectful disagreement and increasingly you see this in politics a lot there's the assumption that the other side is not only wrong but they're actually evil or ignorant or both and unfortunately that happens a lot in the church you see the same thing where it's like it's just assumed that well all the people on the other

side of this are obviously they're wrong and here's why and maybe they're even bad people you know and i think those of us who claim the name of christ should try to extend the benefit of the doubt and just to recognize these are big issues these are massive large-scale disagreements and therefore it's possible that the issues involved are sufficiently complicated that good sincere intelligent people can actually disagree about them and so then when you're in that kind of discussion where you recognize that even if nobody changes their mind but if you're just understanding where those

differences lie more accurately that's a win that's a good thing so my goal is that perhaps some will i mean i hope this could help you know influence someone's thinking but even if it doesn't if someone simply walks away from this video saying i don't agree with him i'm still against solo scriptura but i can understand a little better how someone could see it that way to me that's a win so here's what we'll do i'll give five objections to solo scriptura respond to each of them and then at the end if you stick around

for the end i'll give two admissions of challenges to my view that i feel the weight of those challenges because i think it's a good thing to be honest about that and admit you know there's some tough questions for my side now for each of these five objections i'm going to show a brief clip the reason i'm showing these clips is not to reflect negatively in any way upon the person speaking rather i think these are good expressions reasonable winsome expressions of a different point of view and i would encourage everyone who watches this video

to go to the video description and see the link to the full video from which these excerpts are taken and watch the full video so you see the fuller context here's the first one would you like me to say anything about solas scriptura if you'd like yeah you you mentioned i think it's the heresy that begets the other protestant heresies if i'm that might be a slight misquote but yeah maybe uh speak on that for a second you know i think most protestants who enthusiastically champion so the scriptura are doing are doing it from piety

what they're trying to say is that these words are from god and we trust them 100 percent that is in fact not what sola scriptura means that is the orthodox mind and the catholic mind as well as the protestant mind that no one's questioning the preciousness and the centrality of holy scripture there was a time in the roman catholic world where the church discouraged believers from reading the scriptures that is true and the protestants are right to criticize that although the opposite idea that everyone should read it and think that it's perspicuous which is a

protestant doctrine that means that perspicary in latin means to be able to see through to be you know translucent the idea that scripture is just going to make itself obvious to people who read it is not the case uh so orthodox christians are very aware that we need to read scripture but we need to read it in accordance with the way that the church has understood it so the scripture on in its formal definition is saying that the scriptures hold a unique authority and are the only authority to which we can appeal for establishing dogma

okay now i'm sure if josiah had more time to unpack that he could go into greater detail about all of that he is coming from an orthodox perspective but has a background in protestant christianity similar background to me in presbyterianism so i'm sure he you know could go into more nuance on all these things but just as it was stated there i want to raise the concern of caricature for how protestants understand scripture two things came up there one the perspicuity of scripture and then second solo scripture the perspicuity of scripture is defined in the

westminster confession of faith as those things which are necessary to be known believed and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or another that not only the learned but the unlearned unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them now think about how nuanced that is you need the due use of means so this might take place over time for example you're not talking about every passage but you're talking about one passage or another uh you're just attending to a sufficient

not an expertise knowledge of scripture and here's the key point the perspicuity of scripture has to do with getting saved it's about understanding the message of salvation from the scripture it has never been understood to say that the bible is perspicuous in general in some unqualified sense similarly with sola scriptura sola scriptura has always been maintained as the view that the bible is the only infallible rule for theology it has never been held by any historic protestant confession or something like that i understand that you can find anecdotal evidence of what this or that protestant

person or group will do but we shouldn't judge an entire branch of christendom based upon anecdotal observations like that you have to look at the best of the tradition or at least the all of the tradition historically and yes it's true that protestants caricature catholics and orthodox christians all the time and anybody who knows me or knows my channel knows i try to call that out and try to avoid that that's equally of value for me that we not do that but caricaturing should be called out wherever it happens it's not like it's a contest

like if protestants have caricatured a lot therefore it's not such a problem if they are caricatured it is a problem we want to understand these doctrines in their best light there's a big difference between saying the bible is the only source for theology and saying the bible is the only infallible source for theology but i hear this over and over again so let me just make a plea for my catholic and orthodox friends if you hear nothing else in this entire video just hear this don't say that protestants believe that the bible is all you

have or all you need it's just you and your bible and that's that's it thoughtful protestants have always understood that tradition has an important place and i'll talk more about that in a second all we're saying is the bible is the final court of appeal the bible is the highest in fact some protestant traditions prefer to use the word the words prima scriptura and that's another thing we've got to do is get into the nuances of how different protestant traditions like anglicanism for example have cashed out this doctrine so the main point is just to

say something simple just here at the start thoughtful protestants have always recognized that tradition has an important place calvin and luther affirmed the early ecumenical creeds and councils thoughtful protestants recognize that there's oral tradition mentioned in the bible all we're saying is the scripture as we have it is the final court of appeal the norming norm that norms all other norms but has not normed itself now maybe that's still wrong but let's just be clear that's what the doctrine historically has been taken to mean okay here's a second objection and that's that uh solar scripture

was not known to church history uh it's it was invented by the reformers here's one particular expression of that concern so no christian had parsed out this sola scripture of theology until the 16th century holy scriptura just does not make sense historically and i think the reason why a lot of protestants don't immediately recognize this is because even in protestant religion departments there's less of an emphasis on church history we really don't go that in depth into church history it's more just about learning biblical languages learning about greco-roman culture the historical critical method of interpreting

the bible but if you study early christian history it's just really obvious that in the early church it would have been impossible for them to go by solo scriptura lizzie does a lot of interesting videos she's got a very successful channel that you should check out here she's raising a concern that's often raised and sometimes catholic christians and orthodox christians kind of gave the impression that there was sort of one monolithic view of scripture and tradition prior to luther and calvin and then they invented this or that they're the first to propound the idea of

solar scriptura i want to suggest that things are much more complicated than that actually what you have is a development in the church's understanding of scripture and tradition so in the earliest centuries scripture and tradition had a lot of overlap and they were sort of interwoven because the canon had not been finalized yet it took a long time to get to a fully articulated two-source view of divine revelation where you've got scripture and sacred tradition as this sort of two-pronged view of revelation and when you go back to the church fathers what you see is

a mixed record but if you want to check out some pretty fascinating quotes pick up this book the church of rome at the bar of history by william webster and just read the first appendix which is i haven't read i haven't finished the rest of the book yet it's an interesting book the first appendix is a series of quotes from the church fathers not all of which are sola scriptura in fact none of them are that pure and proper i don't think that solo scriptura is the kind of thing that you can like there is

a danger of reading that back into the fathers they were not facing this question as we are facing it today the earliest of the church fathers again they didn't have the scripture you know but here's the point there and i'll give two examples there is among the church fathers even while they are appealing to oral tradition as well an awareness and a conviction though it's not always fully articulated in a self-conscious way that there's a deposit of authoritative revelation in the holy scripture that possesses a kind of unparalleled authority let me give some examples so

basel the great in his book on the holy spirit is arguing against those who think that within the creed we should use the the phrase through whom rather than with whom referring to the son of god and in order to make his case he appeals to prior tradition of what previous church fathers have said but then he says but we are not content simply because this is the tradition of the fathers what is important is that the fathers followed the meaning of scripture this is a good example of where scripture and tradition were not seen

as two separate norms they were seen as um some people have called this the coincident view that scripture and tradition have both have authority insofar as they coincide okay here's another example from saint augustine he's dealing with the idea of succession in his book on the unity of the church and he says whoever descends from the sacred scriptures even if they are found in all places in which the church is designated are not the church francis turreton quotes this passage in augustine and a few others in him as well to argue that succession of doctrine

is a superior way to determine the true church than succession of office and look i don't mean to suggest that these things are neat i'm not saying the church fathers were all in favor of solo scriptura i'm just saying that historical evidence is messy and this wasn't a 16th century innovation take a look at some of the quotes in here you find among the fathers even going back to irenaeus and some people like that this recognition that the scripture has this kind of unique unparalleled authority that leads into the third objection which is solo scripture

is not in the bible i hear this one all the time here's one expression of this the the most problematic aspect of it is that the bible actually never teaches this nowhere in sacred scripture can we find in a verse or in a collection of verses any indication that solo scriptura is a true doctrine and so therefore it becomes a self-refuting doctrine because the doctrine itself says that christians are only obligated to accept those doctrines which are taught in scripture but the doctrine of sola scriptura is not taught in sacred scripture and therefore that should

be a doctrine that protestants reject so what sean is outlining there is a very common claim and it's certainly true that we don't find any verses in the bible that say thus follows the relation of scripture and tradition colon and then it fills in but then again there's a lot of things that we would say are entailed by the bible but aren't spelled out in that sort of explicit self-conscious way i'd also admit that verses like second timothy 3 16 2nd peter 1 20-21 and john 10 35 don't in themselves get you to solo scriptura

so respectively these verses say the scriptures are god breathed that those who wrote prophecies of scripture were carried along by the holy spirit and then john 10 jesus says the scripture cannot be broken okay so we've got here these claims in the bible that the scripture possesses this kind of god-breathed unbreakable divine authority but they don't say that they're the only thing that has that kind of authority so i'd admit that those verses in themselves don't get you to solo scriptura they do raise the question though of course well what else could there be that

has that level of divine unbreakable spirit carried authority but where i would go to in my appeal would be for those who say as is said over and over again the solar scripture is not in the bible you can't find it anywhere would you interact with matthew 15 1-9 more because this is one of those passages that does get into so here's the way i would make the case here jesus is interacting with some of the traditions of the pharisees now the pharisees get a bad rap but they were the jewish religious leaders of the

day and they had oral tradition and he's contradicting their oral tradition by basically saying he prioritizes the word of god over human traditions so for example concerning certain washing rituals he says in verse 3 why do you break the commandment of god for the sake of your tradition and again in verse 6. for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of god so the question that i would ask is do you grant that it's at least a meaningful conceptual distinction to draw between the word of god and human tradition with the

former regulating the latter and if you grant that as at least like a conceptual possibility can you understand how if someone isn't already convinced that sacred tradition has that kind of unbreakable divine authority how you'd look at matthew 15 and say this looks like it pushes you towards solo scriptura what else is there that has that level of authority i think it would push the discussion down more helpful avenues and more interesting avenues if more catholics i know some have engaged passages like this but too often i just hear people assert the solar scripture is

not in the bible and they don't engage the classic protestant texts like this a fourth objection to sola scriptura is that it leads to interpretative anarchy that everyone becomes their own pope functionally if you adhere to solar scriptura here's just a a brief clip where trent horn articulates this concern the people that i you know that i that i study you know uh uh i i find they're they're it's you yes but my ultimate um authority is the scriptures well so but but yeah gotta admit though at the end it's not the scriptures it's what

you think the scriptures mean right since the scriptures don't say that explicitly as you should admit it so so i guess i get that i've heard that argument and but but here brandon but it can be gone too far because i agree at the end of the day whenever we decide to do something it's us as human beings taking the data and making a decision whether it's to trust sola scriptura or to be catholic for me i want to see who's got the best logical steps in their argument i really appreciate what trent is saying

at the end there because when i in previous videos have said it's really important for me to follow my conscience i've had some people you know label that as though that's kind of an individualistic or even a relativistic thing which i don't think relativism is the right category here relativism means there's no absolute truth i think the differences between catholics and protestants and protestants and orthodox don't have to do with whether there's absolute truth but how we adjudicate what it is so i think the charge of individualism is more the concern here but i appreciate

what trent is saying there at the end he's a really thoughtful proponent of catholic views where basically everybody follows their conscience because if someone comes to the view that i should join the catholic church and then function accordingly that also is a decision of conscience so the difference here is not whether we're trying to follow our own conscience as best as our own individual reason leads us to do so i think the root issue here is are we interpreting scripture from an individualistic standpoint and in other words therefore are we being selective in terms of

what we appropriate as protestants from the early church we're just picking and choosing but and i've heard people say that to me your criterion is just what you find agreeable about the early church you accept the early creeds and councils that were ecumenical creeds and councils you accept the doctrine of the trinity but you reject the papacy and the immaculate conception and these other things that you don't like so you're your own authority but protestants do have criteria for how we determine which are the doctrinal developments in the early church that we should accept and

which are the ones we shouldn't accept the root issue is what are the organic developments out of scripture so we'd say the trinity and the person of christ that as defined by chalcedon and so forth those are organic developments out of what's already in scripture the papacy and the immaculate conception we would say isn't now is that because we're radical individualists and we're just going by what i see in the text no because another criteria we have is the church catholic what what is the some aggregate witness of all christians within orthodoxy eastern christians don't

believe in the papacy or the immaculate conception and i've argued that various points of these doctrines you don't see until several centuries into the church so arguably you don't see them in the second century with respect to say the immaculate conception for example so a protestant might be wrong in those historical judgments but the protestant is not being a radical individualist in reading scripture the protestant is trying to say how have other christians all other christians not just one in one particular institutional branch of the church but how have all christians interpreted the scripture before

me and that's a significant uh influence upon how we read the scripture okay here's one final objection and this is i'll show you a clip from matt fradd's excellent youtube channel which i watch all the time called pints with aquinas where he's interviewing gary mashuda about i think they're talking about the canon issues of canonicity but they also get into solar scriptura and gary makes a very reasonable point here take a look but you know in terms of the scriptora there's no inspired table of contents there's nothing to indicate exactly which books belong in the

bible and so uh you know if you go by the bible alone you really can't establish the old testament canon or perhaps even the new testament can and just based on those uh things i hear this appeal all the time you know the church gave us the bible we wouldn't even know what the bible was if not for the church the historic protestant view which i wish was more engaged sometimes again this is why i'm trying to make this video i feel like we need to press the conversations further what protestants have always said is

the church didn't give us the bible it recognized the bible and that is a meaningful distinction so one protestant put it like this the church no more gave us the bible then newton gave us gravity another protestant put it like this the church's role with respect to the canon of scripture is a thermometer not a thermostat the metaphor that i like to use is imagine a child's walking to school with a note from mom that says they have permission to get out of school a bully rips up the note but they're able to piece the

note back together tape it back together and therefore give it to the principal the fact that they can piece the note together recognize what it is doesn't mean that it's that they have the same level of authority as mom they're recognizing what the note is but they didn't imbue it with that authority that's the protestant view on these things all right to end with let me try in the spirit of trying to be as conciliatory here as possible because i i i'm sure i've probably annoyed many of my catholic and orthodox viewers but if you're

not annoyed again hit the like button because i need i need some backup here okay let me mention some of the challenges for my view because i acknowledge this is not simple again this is not something where it's like everybody who's intelligent is on one side and even simply recognizing that to me is a win so let me mention two challenges first of all i acknowledge most protestants don't function with a very robust definition of sola scriptura many function with what some people call solo scriptura or nuda scriptura scripture alone they don't understand what you

know a more thoughtful account of sola scriptura that you might get in anglicanism or in the westminster confession of faith or something like that and they do protestants do value church history insufficiently and so if there's any blame for caricatures about sola scriptura a lot of it comes on us protestants because we don't even understand what what that doctrine means in many cases a second acknowledgement i would make is that i often try to make this appeal that the witness of the early church in those first several centuries is not in accord with current catholic

or orthodox dogma but i have to acknowledge that's not universally the case i try every time i make that appeal to say you know to nuance it like that and admit it's not all you know the second century church didn't look exactly like a protestant church just this week i was reading through the letters of ignatius going back through some of the other writings of the apostolic fathers the letter of polycarp the first epistle of clement those kinds of things there's a letter by someone who's just named mathetes which i think just means disciple and

looking at what you see in there and there's i mean at least in the letters of ignatius though i'd argue not in those other ones you do see an episcopal form of church government as well as a high view of the eucharist come in early i mean people think those letters were written around 107 a.d so very early on and he would have been someone who knew the apostles so i want to acknowledge for protestants like me who don't believe in episcopal church government that's tough that's a fair challenge to me however i would also

say there are protestants who do believe in episcopal church government there's also protestants who believe in the real presence of christ in the eucharist so those letters of ignatius are not necessarily roman catholic over protestant but they do challenge me as a baptist and i'll just admit it yeah you know that's a challenge to my perspective okay that's my appeal for those video clips that i quoted i hope i didn't misrepresent you if i did please let me know in the comments and i hope that this video again the hope is not that everyone is

now okay solo scripture up sign on the dotted line rather the hope is someone might look at this doctrine and say okay yeah i can actually understand how that could be a coherent view how someone who is sincere and intelligent could come out to that outlook even if that's all we get here that's a win