Demonstrating & Defending Sola Scriptura

[mnmmnm]

8:00 is there widespread ignorance of good protestant thought?
11:29 how important is SS?
14:05 defining SS
16:10 responding to the "texts don't have authority, agents do" argument
18:20 what is SS not? (an article of faith, the claim that SS is sufficient for all beliefs, no relying on tradition)
24:30 argument for SS
34:50 objection: SS was created at the reformation
42:29 objection: SS causes anarchy
48:35 objection: SS isn't taught in scripture
59:53 objection: early church fathers praise extra-biblical traditions
Q&A segment: 1:05:45, 1:07:26, 1:10:56, 1:15:05, 1:16:27, 1:17:58, 1:19:40, 1:21:56, 1:24:53, 1:25:35

[IC_XC_NIKA]

How about you get an Orthodox Apologist on your show and see if the protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura works.

[thejerichoconnection]

1:07:57: “The splitting of churches is a tragic thing and somebody is at fall and has committed a grave sin when they do that”

Are you calling Martin Luther a grave sinner?

Could you please explain how, when the Traditional Protestants split from the Catholic Church, that was absolutely good and necessary, but when Liberal Protestant split from Traditional Protestants, they become suddenly grave sinners?

Smells like double standards here.

[thejerichoconnection]

All right so your positive argument for sola scriptura is twofold:

1. The OT never mentions any other infallible authority other than the Word of God —> Sorry, this is not a positive argument. This is a negative argument, an argument from silence. And, didn’t you say that sola scriptura is not a doctrine taught in the Bible but rather an epistemological presupposition? Why are you now turning to the Bible to make a case for it? Is it or is it not a doctrine taught in the Bible?

2. When the last apostle died no other infallible authority was around therefore sola scriptura —> this statement blatantly contradicts Scripture which teaches that Jesus granted his Church a divine infallible protection (John 16:13) and that the pillar and foundation of truth is the Church (1 Tim 3:15). Also, no closed canon of Scripture was available until 300 years after the death of the last apostle, which implies that sola scriptura for those 300 years was not a feasible epistemological option.

Is this all you have to positively defend sola scriptura?

This is probably the lamest argument in favor of sola scriptura I’ve ever heard of.

[thejerichoconnection]

33:40 “given the premise that no other authority has been granted an infallible divine protection, therefore you have sola scriptura by necessary consequence”

This statement is blatantly false on so many levels:

1. Scripture teaches that Jesus granted his Church an infallible divine protection (John 16:13)

2. Scripture teaches that the foundation and pillar of truth is… the Church (1 Tim 3:15)

3. The canon of Scripture remained open for at least 300 years after the death of the last apostle. Sola Scriptura could not possibly function as an epistemological presupposition for those 300 years.

False premise, false conclusion.

[thejerichoconnection]

1:06:11 Too bad you quite conveniently avoided answering the first (most important) part of the question.

The second part you answered wrong. Of course you can (and you should) try to interpret Scripture with all the hermeneutical tools used to interpret any other text. But this is not the point. The point is: how do you know that, by doing that, you get it right all the time with no margin of error? Sola Scriptura claims that there is no infallible authority outside of Scripture, which implies that no authority can possibly claim to have the Truth 100%.

Sola Scriptura therefore implies the impossibility of understanding the Word of God with no margin of error, which is a contradiction of John 16:13 and 1 Tim 3:15.

When you affirm sola scriptura, you no longer have the Right Interpretation of Scripture.

You have a pletora of different, more or less plausible, interpretations, with which you can have fun arguing against your fellow Protestants by throwing Bible verses at each other.

Which is by the way the sad condition of the Protestant movement today: the total disintegration of the Church that Jesus established.

[thejerichoconnection]

47:48: “Anyone who does believe that relying on Scripture alone … as the sole final judge above all authorities including authorities you do submit to… if you want to say that it is anarchy then you are accusing the Word of God as a cause of anarchy… Those who make this kind of arguments… I’ll call it blasphemy, because it is!”

This bold statement is to be totally rejected.

The exponential growth of Protestant denominations since the time of the Reformation is an indisputable historical fact that cannot be explained away by simply pointing at a few splits in the previous 1500 years.

Nobody is claiming that having an authority that can teach infallibly will prevent any schism. People have free will and if they want to break away from the Church that Christ instituted they can always do it, sola scriptura or not.

But this is not the point. The point is that sola scriptura is a tremendous incentive to break away from any authority whenever you feel that that authority is not teaching according to your personal interpretation of Scripture.

While I may agree with you that sola scriptura is not the only cause of the total disintegration of the Protestant movement, it is obviously the major cause of it, hands down.

Failing to see this means failing to reconcile empirical data with reality. It means being scientifically illiterate. If sola scriptura does not explain the sudden exponential growth in Protestant denominations, please tell me what does.

The anarchy that everyone observes in the Protestant movement is not caused by the Word of God, obviously. It is caused by the ridiculous idea, fueled by sola scriptura, that my own interpretation of Scripture may be more correct than the one developed by the Church in the past 2000 years.

After all, if the official teachings of the Church that Christ founded can be fallible, why would I have to accept them if I do not agree? Why would I even want to submit myself to a fallible church anyway?

The real blasphemy comes from whoever, thinking they are smarter than the Church founded by Christ, break away from that Church showing how little faith they have in Christ, who promised to send his Holy Spirit to protect and lead his Church in all truth (John 16:13), and how little faith they have in Scripture, which teaches that the foundation and the pillar of truth is the Church that Christ instituted (1 Tim 2:15).

[thejerichoconnection]

57:00 Do you realize that the analogy that you just gave about the Supreme Court of the US proves the infallible authority of the magisterium of the Catholic Church?

Let me explain you your analogy. The Constitution is like Scripture. And the Supreme Court is like the magisterium. If you claim that the only infallible authority is Scripture, in your analogy you should say that the Constitution (not the Supreme Court) is the only infallible authority!

But of course, you yourself realize that in order to interpret the Constitution correctly it would be ridiculous to point to the Constitution itself. It would be a total mental short circuit. To interpret the Constitution correctly you need an external authority (the Supreme Court) to whose decisions everyone needs to abide. Otherwise it’s total anarchy.
Which is by the way what Protestantism looks like today.

Nice job proving the Catholic point.

[thejerichoconnection]

1:20:12 "Who is we in the passage? Is it us today in the 21st century West? Or is it the Thessalonians? ... Can you quote to me any words... that Paul said to the Thessalonians without using those letters? Can you name one? And they can't. They never can."

You are totally missing the point here.

The point is not about knowing what specific tradition Paul taught the Thessalonians that he had not taught them in his letters. The point is that Paul is clearly affirming that there were traditions that he taught the Thessalonians that he had not taught them in his letters!

This is one if the many Scriptural proofs of the Holy Apostolic Tradition, that deposit of faith preserved by the Catholic Church, which runs in parallel with Scripture and preserves it from any corrupt interpretation.

Every single church father in the first 4 centuries was familiar and totally on board with the idea of an Apostolic Tradition preserved within the Catholic Church. No exceptions. No sola scriptura, as understood by Protestants today.

The idea that the Apostolic Tradition died the moment the last apostle died and was replaced by sola scriptura is simply silly and unhistorical. If the principle of sola scriptura, as you argue, had been adopted since the second century, by the time of the Reformation you would have never found the Catholic Church still intact: you would have found hundreds of different denominations fighting with each other and throwing Bible verses at each other.

If the principle of sola scriptura had been adopted since the second century, as you argue, no Reformation would have ever occurred 1400 years later.

[thejerichoconnection]

40:02 “I’m asking them to go through all the sources”

This is hilarious. Catholics need to prove that 100% of church fathers were against the Protestant idea of sola scriptura, but Protestants can get away with cherry picking one or two.

Historical data shows that all of the church fathers, including those few that you like to quote to support your idea of sola scriptura, were submitted to the authority of the pope and of the magisterium (think for instance about the fierce debate between Jerome and Augustine on the deuterocanonical books: eventually Jerome submitted to the infallibile decision of the Church even though he may have disagreed on a personal level).

This is an empirical proof that sola scriptura as understood by Protestants was never around until the Reformation.

[thejerichoconnection]

51:48 “We do not claim that sola scriptura is a doctrine or an article of faith”

We who? The Westminster Confession of Faith has sola scriptura spelled out in its ninth and tenth articles of faith (Chapter 1).

You see? Sola Scriptura destroyed the Protestant movement so badly that different Protestant denominations cannot even agree on what sola scriptura really means.

It is an article of faith, if you ask a Presbyterian.

It is not, if you ask an Anglican.

Pretty tragic.

[davoforrest]

God could but does NOT, Repeat does NOT give new revelation, there is no new thus says the Lord ! The Bible is our revelation ! Poor argument brother. Yes Sola Scripture is easily defendable. Starting 2Tim . 3:16, 17. all of Proverbs defends Sola Scripture, finally Moses writes down the events of the Exodus so the Hebrews will read and understand it as Gods word just to mention a few places.

[pipinfresh]

I thought Anglicans didn't believe in Sola scriptura?

[clintgreive]

Another great episode Eli. On a side note, was there a video regarding 'the fake Greg Bahnsen' coming up? I feel like I've either imagined it or going made?

[davidszaraz]

Timestamp 22:22
Its interesting Paul appeals to Chemnitz, book 2. I am wondering if he read book 1. On page 185, paragraph 21 Chemnitz is talking about the "spurious books" of the NT, he says:
"Of the books of the New Testament which lacked sufficiently able, firm, and harmonious testimonies of their certainty and authority in the first and ancient church, these are listed ..." Chemnitz cites church fathers that list the spurious books like The epistle of James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, the Apocalypse of John, ...
After that on page 187, paragraph 23 Chemnitz says: "Against these clear testimonies of antiquity the Council of Trent, in the fourth session decrees: >>If anyone does not accept these books whole, with all their parts, as they are contained in the old Vulgate Latin edition, as sacred and canonical, let him be anathema.<<
But how do they prove and confirm this decree of theirs against the testimonies of antiquity? Do they bring forward any sure and clear proofs in the attestations of the first apostolic and ancient church *that these controverted books have the same certainty and equal authority with others concerning which there never was any doubt* ? By no means!"

So what was the tradition concerning the canon which Chemnitz accepted? Obviously Chemnitz asserts that the spurious ones are not of *equal authority* than those which were never doubted. Is this the tradition of modern day protestants? Chemnitz would criticize modern day protestants just as well, for adding these "spurious" books to their canon, and ask them the same question: "How do they prove and confirm their canon against the testimonies of antiquity?"

This leads me to commenting on Paul's answer to a question in the Q/A section, timestamp 1:06:03
How does Paul know with absolute certainty which books are inspired? Does he appeal to the same tradition as Chemnitz dose? Clearly not. By necessity, Paul is appealing to a fallible tradition in regards to the canon of scripture, and has no certainty in that he has a complete Bible, or in that he does not have a Bible with not inspired books in it. Actually the question of the canon is THE objection against Sola Scriptura, and I am quite surprised this one did not pop up, not until the Q/A. Sola Scriptura - Scripture is the sole *INFALLIBLE* rule - is dependent on whether you know you have only inspired books, and a complete Bible. If you don't know, you cannot assert that its infallible. So do we need an external infallible authority to determine the canon? In order to be sure that I have a complete collection of inspired books with no not-inspired book in it, yes, by necessity.

[seekingtruth]

Christians are separated into thousands of denominations. Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Apostolic, Methodist — the list goes on. Estimations show there are more than 200 Christian denominations in the U.S. and a staggering 45, 000 globally.

13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
See not everyone can't understand scripture in the own, they all had different ideas of who Jesus is. They heard the word of God straight from Jesus and yet didn't understand. Christ gave is the Church his church not thousands of denominations.
one Lord, one faith, one baptism. He gave Peter the keys and we all know what the simple of keys means, he gave Peter and his Church Authority to teach, how to bind to loosen. Sola Scriptura is just not in the bible and the name of the books to be put in the bible isn't found in the bible. Yes a person can say we believe Jesus to be the Son of God our savior, but we musten just believe who he is but believe everything he taught, and the meaning etc....as we see who do people say I am, there are all kinds of opions but not true. This is why we have the Church to keep unity in Christ teachings. And now there is so much disunity as we see thousands of denominations. Sorry if I have spelling mistake I am typing on my phone

[thejerichoconnection]

22:24 “The canon of Scripture is a tradition reverently received by unbroken succession from the Church .”

But since, according to sola scriptura, no tradition is infallible, we must conclude that there is a chance that the canon of Scripture is wrong.

Thanks, The Other Paul. You just destroyed the authority of the Bible.