The Problems of Sola Scriptura

By Andrew White, grade 8

  Sola Scriptura is the belief that our only rule of faith should be the Bible. The goal of this paper is to present the problems of Sola Scriptura, and disprove this false belief using Catholic evidence. The idea of Sola Scriptura was first suggested by Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer from the sixteenth century and has since become one of the pillars of Protestant thought.

  Catholics believe that God's word was also passed down by the apostles orally as well as in scripture; this is called Tradition (Matthew 16:13-20, 18:18; Luke 10:16), which should be followed alongside scripture (2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6). We know that Tradition should also be followed because Jesus passed his teaching authority to the apostles, the forerunners of the present day bishops. This teaching authority is called the Magisterium.

  There is a difference between Tradition with a big T and tradition with a little t. Whereas, tradition refers to cultural traditions such as novenas and processions, Tradition refers to the Apostolic Traditions, which are teachings on faith and morals.

  Some Protestants have the notion that Catholics do not “believe” in the Bible, so they bring up Second Timothy 3:15-16 to support their belief of Sola Scriptura:"... from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." Certainly Catholics believe in the Bible (Catholics put together the Bible!) but this verse does not really support the belief of Sola Scriptura; it does not say that scripture alone is an adequate guide to the faith. For that matter, the whole Bible does not say that we should believe in the Bible alone, nor does it say which books are inspired by God. This is only one hole in the belief of Sola Scriptura; there are many more.

  The Protestants believe that the Bible alone should be our sole rule of faith. Therefore, they believe that a body with binding authority (like the Magisterium) does not exist. From here it follows that one should be allowed private judgment of the interpretation and meaning of the scriptures, since no one else has the authority to tell you what it means. Protestants believe that things like the Magisterium and Tradition should merely give suggestions for a person to follow as he makes his decision of what the Bible means. Thus, a person has to become his own theologian. Catholics believe otherwise, as in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40). Philip asks the Eunuch if he understands what he is reading, and the Eunuch replies, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”(Acts 8:31) As James Akin, a well-known apologist writes,

"Not only is the average Christian totally disinclined to fulfill the role of theologian, but if they try to do so, and if they arrive at conclusions different than those of the church they belong to-an easy task considering the number of different theological issues-then they will quickly discover that their right to private judgment amounts to a right to shut up or leave the congregation. Protestant pastors have long realized (in fact, Luther and Calvin realized it) that, although they must preach the doctrine of private judgment to ensure their own right to preach, they must prohibit the exercise of this right in practice for others, lest the group be torn apart by strife and finally break up. It is the failure of the prohibition of the right of private judgment that has resulted in the over 20,000 Christian Protestant denominations listed in the Oxford University Press's World Christian Encyclopedia. "¹

  This is just one of the many practical problems of Sola Scriptura. There are many more, such as who put together the canon of the Bible and how long it took to be made, and more practical things such as the lack of worldwide literacy or the fact that Bibles were not universally distributed.

  In the Bible, there are seventy-three books; forty-three of which are in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is divided into three parts: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Law is very old; it was written by Moses 3,300 years ago and was once the only book of scripture that the Jews had.

  The other two, the Prophets and the Writings, were added a long time later. The exact time that the canon of the Old Testament was completed and closed is not known. One must always remember, though, that the Old Testament was first written in Hebrew, the language of the Jews. It was later translated into Greek, the universal language, and then  into Latin by Saint Jerome, approximately between the years 392 and 404, with the New Testament. This Latin translation is called the Vulgate (common version), and is the Catholic Church's official version of the Bible.  

  Like the Old Testament, the New Testament was written by different people, with some parts written at different times. The difference of years between the completions of the earliest written book to the latest written book is at least forty years. The disciples began to write the books at around A.D. 45 and Jesus died on the year 33 A.D., so it follows that the Church existed before the Bible: another practical problem of Sola Scriptura.

  Yet another is that Jesus' chosen method to spread the Faith was the teaching of the Church. In the end of the Gospel of Matthew, He told the apostles to "teach all nations", saying, "He that heareth you heareth me". This is further proven because the Holy Spirit gave each apostle the gift of speaking in different languages. The Apostles did not even think of making a New Testament; the New Testament was needed later to meet certain demands. Paul said, "How shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach unless they be sent? Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ." The New Testament was never meant to be the only method of Salvation, but not in any way do Catholics deny that the books of the Bible are inspired by God.

  In the different councils that took place from 393 to 1546, Catholics agreed and reaffirmed that the books of the Bible are inspired. Before the Council of Carthage, which took place in 397, scriptures were divided into three groups: acknowledged books, disputed books, and false books. Among the "acknowledged" books were the thirteen epistles of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the four Gospels. These books were acknowledged globally to be valid and canonical, worthy of being read at Mass.

  In the "disputed" category were the books Revelation, and the Epistles of James, Jude, the Second of Peter, Second and Third of John, the Apostolic Constitutions, and Hebrews. These books were later deemed canonical. Of the books in the "disputed" category later deemed uninspired are Paul's epistle to the Laodiceans, the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Gospel according to the Hebrews.2

  Most of the books in the "false" or "spurious" category were not taken care of as well as the books of the other categories, and were lost. However, some survived to the present times. There are fifty Gospels, twenty-two Acts, and a few other epistles and apocalypses. These were rejected as "Apocrypha", which means uncanonical: false scripture.3

  A problem soon arose for the Christians. The emperor Diocletian issued an edict in A.D. 303 that all churches and sacred scriptures should be burned. This was a problem because the Christians did not know which scriptures were sacred and which ones were false. Thus, the Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (A.D. 397) were held to decide which books should be canonical and which should be considered false. The result of this council was the books that are in the Catholic Bible today.

  Another council was held in Carthage to notify bishop Boniface of Rome, and the councils of Florence (1442) and of Trent (1546) were held (before the Protestant Reformation) to reaffirm this. The Bible was actually written by mortal men inspired by God, and the Church has the authority to interpret the Bible's words and passages to show what they mean.

  The Protestant bible lacks seven books and a little more than the Catholic Bible has: Tobit, Baruch, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), First and Second Maccabees, seven chapters of the book of Esther, and over fifty verses in the third chapter of Daniel. These books and parts of books are commonly known to Catholics as the Deuterocanonicals, and to the Protestants as Apocrypha (false scriptures).

  These books were taken out of the Protestant bible by Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers. They included ideas which the reformers did not like, so were presumptuously rejected and removed. For example, Luther did not like Maccabees, which included passages which said that it was wholesome to pray for the dead, so the book was done away with. These people took out these books; books that had been in the Bible for over one thousand years and were declared and reaffirmed to have been inspired in five different councils.

  An ironic aspect of the reformers taking out the seven-plus books of the Bible is how they got their ideas of what to take out. In the Jewish council of Jamnia, some rabbis got together and took out the books now called the Deuterocanonicals. Their motive was that this would keep Christians from using their Old Testament to prove that Jesus is God. The belief of Sola Scriptura has many redundancies as well as practical problems, for example: why would Jesus establish a church with a belief in Sola Scriptura... when many people at the time were illiterate? In fact, people did not start becoming more literate until the middle ages, when the printing press was invented, and it became more convenient to be literate.

  This brings up another problem. Until the printing press was invented, books were very, very expensive, since they had to be hand written. Only the very wealthy could afford to own a Bible, let alone a regular book. Books in the libraries had to be chained to the desks, since they were so valuable! And also, there were definitely not enough Bibles to be spread around the world; even now, many places in the world do not have Bibles because of political reasons and civil strife. The belief in Sola Scriptura is riddled with gaping holes.

  As you can see, there are many problems in the belief of Sola Scriptura, "the Bible alone". Among the snags that Sola Scriptura hits that this paper has discussed are: Sola Sciptura presupposes universal literacy and universal access to a Bible; the Bible alone is our sole rule of faith, when Jesus himself gave teaching authority to the apostles to pass down teachings on faith and morals and when the Church clearly existed before the Bible. The absence of the printing press alone made this belief unimaginable for people in over three-fourths of Christian history! It is not the Bible but the Church which is the pillar of truth, as stated in I Timothy 3:15:

"...if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth."

  If our Protestant brethren had just held firm to this passage, then we would all be in the pillar and foundation of the Truth.

Sources

1.    http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/practicl.htm

2.   Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church by Henry G. Graham

3.   Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church by Henry G. Graham

Bibliography

http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/practicl.htm

http://home.inreach.com/bstanley/knell.htm

Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church by Henry G. Graham

The Bible Alone? By Charles White

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