So let's just briefly kind of get into some of the biblical evidence for Sola Scriptura.
And if you're talking to, say, a Roman Catholic apologist, somebody who is a defender of Roman
Catholicism, especially people who have converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, usually
a non-historical Protestantism, where they read the Fathers, all of a sudden they're amazed at the
things that were taught. They don't sound like Protestants, therefore they become Roman Catholic.
It's often the way that it works itself out. But for a Lutheran or Anglican, it's, I think,
quite a bit different in the way that we look at the Fathers, because we do see,
hey, this is very similar to what we're saying and teaching and how we're worshiping today as well.
But if you're talking to a Roman Catholic apologist, when they're speaking about Sola
Scriptura, they're always going to raise the same statement over and over again. You're going
to hear this if you're looking at Roman Catholic apologetics or recent converts to Rome, and that is
Scripture never teaches Sola Scriptura. So you are holding Scripture as the ultimate authority.
However, Scripture itself never says that it is the only authority. Therefore, you're contradicting
yourself, because necessarily you're going outside of Scripture to say that Scripture is the only
standard, and therefore we can throw out Sola Scriptura. So the Bible doesn't teach Sola
Scriptura, therefore Sola Scriptura is false, based on the inherent principles of Protestantism
and Sola Scriptura itself. So it's self-contradictory. That's basically the argument that you're going to
hear more than any other when you're talking to somebody about Sola Scriptura. So what do we do
with that? I think the question that we have is, do we have to find a particular Scripture that
says Scripture is the only authority? And I just don't think we have to. We don't. There's nothing
in, you know, you can't find, you know, in any of Paul's letters, for example, it's like he says to
the Romans, by the way, Scripture is the only authority, and traditions are not an authority,
and there is no magisterium that is given some kind of infallible authority to pass on infallible
teachings, which it seems like a lot of Roman Catholic apologists think that for Protestants to
defend their position that they have to find a text that says that. No, I think more so what we
have to do is just speak about the unique authority of Scripture and the unique nature of Scripture,
and just to say that Scripture does present itself as God-breathed. 2 Timothy 3.16 is kind of
the famous text that says this, that all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking,
correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly or sufficiently
equipped for every good work. Now there are some important things, I think, that are taught
in that text. One is that Scripture is God-breathed. It is breathed out by God. That in and of itself
is not said of anything else, so it inherently gives Scripture a uniqueness that nothing else
has. We are never told that there is a tradition or a set of traditions or a magisterium that are
God-breathed in the same sense that Scripture itself is. So we do have something that is so
clearly stated about the uniqueness of Scripture, and I think where Rome goes is to say that, well,
the burden of proof is on you to say there's nothing else that's God-breathed or nothing
else that has this unique authority, and I would say the opposite, to say that Scripture places
as this authority that is so connected to God Himself that He breathed it out,
that the burden is really on them to prove that anything else has those characteristics.
So I turn it around, and I don't think the burden of proof is on us to try to prove
this isn't God-breathed or this doesn't have that same kind of sense of authority,
because there are various groups that claim all sorts of things are on par with Scripture
or are on an equal level with Scripture in terms of divine inspiration,
and the burden of proof is not on me to prove that all of those things are false.
I don't have a burden of proof to demonstrate that every false prophet out there in the world
who claims that they're infallibly teaching the things that are given to them by the Spirit or
that there are some new Messiah or all of these kinds of groups, the burden is not on me to prove
that they don't have that divine authority. The burden on them is to prove that they do
have some kind of divine authority that is equal with the uniqueness of Scripture.
So that's the first point. I think we're coming from different starting points in terms of
who has to prove what. So I fundamentally deny that principle at all, that to prove
sola scriptura you have to prove that the Bible says sola scriptura somewhere. No, I think that
is just a conviction that comes out of the uniqueness of Scripture and what Scripture is.
You have to prove that something else has that uniqueness that Scripture itself has and claims
for itself, and I don't think that tradition in the various forms that one tries to speak about it
has that. The other thing that is important in that text is it does say that
Scripture is sufficient to equip one in every good work, and it outlines those things for
you as being teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.
So there certainly is a sense in 1 Timothy that Scripture has a sufficiency or the sufficiency
of Scripture to equip for every good work, which includes all of those things connected to
teaching. So teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. So there is a unique
authority. The unique authority of Scripture in that it is God-bred gives it that sufficiency,
and so it is sufficient to equip one in good works that include teaching because of its unique
character. Now that I think is as close of a text as you're going to get that proves sola
scriptura. Not that the point of the text is to say let's compare Scripture to tradition and
different kinds of authority and levels of authority. That's not the point of the text,
but it does speak about the unique authority of Scripture as being theanoustos or God-breathed
being connected to its sufficiency in equipping one for good works and for teaching. Now the
rebuttal to that from Rome is always going to be the same, which is, well, when that particular
text was written, the entirety of the New Testament was being written, so it's not yet
totally written. Therefore, he's speaking only of the Old Testament, and if you take that to
be speaking about the sufficiency of Scripture, then it's only speaking about the sufficiency
of the Old Testament and not at all the New Testament, and then you have a problem because
Protestants who believe in sola scriptura believe in the authority of the Old and New Testaments
when they're saying sola scriptura. But I kind of think that that's really missing the point of the
text. The point of the text is not really to outline what the books of the Bible are. It's
just speaking about the nature of Scripture. So it is true that it is in the nature of Scripture,
whether he's speaking about the Old and New Testament, that it is the thing that makes one
sufficient in those good works. And so if that is true of the Old Testament and what had been
written of the New Testament at this time, and there can be some debate about that and exactly
which books had been written or understood as Scripture or transmitted at that point in any
broad sense at all, but it's speaking about the nature of what Scripture is. So I think it would
be the understanding that in terms of the sufficiency of what Scripture is for, if New
Testament books are written and continuing to be written, including First Timothy itself,
they would have that same unique character as well that the Old Testament did have. So I think that
there is, if there's any proof text for sola scriptura, that would be the closest one that
there is because of the uniqueness and the sufficiency of Scripture that is taught there.
But at the same time, I don't think you have to necessarily prove that the Bible says sola
scriptura in so many words. It is in terms of the uniqueness and authority of Scripture,
you have to prove that there is something else that is given that authority outside of Scripture.
So the other place that I would go is from Matthew 15, and this is a text that is cited
many times in the relationship between Scripture and tradition. It's discussed a lot if you read,
you know, Martin Kamenetz or Luther or a lot of people at the time of the Reformation or in the
post-Reformation scholastic era, because this is really the heart of the debate in many ways,
because if tradition was given this equal authority to Scripture, then I shouldn't be
Lutheran. I shouldn't be any kind of Protestant. I should be either Eastern Orthodox or Roman
Catholic. And a lot of what, if you read the, you know, the earlier Lutheran writers, someone like
Kamenetz or Gerhard or others, where they are going to focus a lot of their attention is on
proving the contradictions in the Roman tradition itself and rebutting the claims of this
absolute historical continuity and consistency that happens in Rome. I think they're
absolutely right, and those are very good ways to argue, but today we're dealing a lot more with
Eastern Orthodoxy, I think, especially within Lutheranism, because it's something that is
more attractive to people than Roman Catholicism is, especially because of the, well, the liberalism
that's snuck into Rome since Vatican II. It's hard to kind of take those absolutist claims of
historical consistency seriously at all. I really can't do it, and the more I study the history of
Rome and the papacy and read the Fathers and then switch to reading Roman Catholic writers today,
that there's such an inconsistency that I'm not even slightly convinced of any claims of
continuity at all. So that's not even a temptation at all. But Eastern Orthodoxy is different in that
it has a lot more behind it, I think, in terms of consistency with the early church,
and it doesn't have all this baggage that Rome has. So I think the problem
in looking at some of the early Lutheran writers is that they spend so much time just dealing with
the claims of Rome's tradition that they don't spend as much time just interacting with sola
scriptura as a doctrine, dealing with tradition itself as a whole, because they're only thinking
in terms of Rome. They're not thinking so much in terms of the East. But let's look at a text from
Matthew 15, and this is a text that speaks about the relationship between scripture
and tradition, and it speaks about the relationship between scripture and tradition in relation to the
teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees. So this is Matthew 15, starting in verse 1.
Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, Why do your
disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat
bread. He answered and said to them, Why do you also transgress the commandments of God because of
your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honor your father and your mother, and he who curses
father and mother, let him be put to death. But you say, Whoever says to his father or mother,
Whatever prophet you might have received from me as a gift to God, then he need not honor his
father or mother. Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition.
Hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying, These people draw near to me with their
mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship
me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men. So what we have here is a claim about an
infallible tradition that is passed down from Moses and its relationship to scripture. And I
think what we see here is a principle that we can apply today, which is so let's look at the claims
of Rome and the claims of the Jews. And I think this is important because Chemnitz points this
out a lot, which is there's a lot of similarity between the claims of an infallible tradition
passed on through the magisterium and the claims of an infallible tradition being passed on through
the scribes and Pharisees that come down from Moses. And so the Jews in the first century had
a very similar notion that scripture itself is an authority, but there also are these other
authorities, which are the sayings of, well, laws given by Moses, which become the sayings of the
scribes and Pharisees. We think today of something like the Babylonian Talmud that is written down
after the New Testament. But we have then these infallible traditions and what those infallible
traditions do is serve to interpret scripture. And so if you're going to interpret various laws,
for example, the Sabbath and what it means that we are to rest on the Sabbath. So look at that
tradition or that commandment that's clear in scripture. Now we have various traditions that
are passed on. We have Halakha and Haggadah, which are these kind of expansions of the Old Testament
in terms of both narrative form as well as in terms of various laws and how those laws are
developed. So we have within that, you know, say the command of the Sabbath, now we have various
particular traditions would say this is now our guide to interpreting scripture. And that guide
to interpreting scripture includes all of these various ways that we are to fulfill those
commandments. And then it becomes not just scripture alone, but scripture as it is understood
through these various traditions that have been said to be orally passed down by Moses. So it was
taught that Moses had the written law and the oral law, which resulted in the situation that we have
in the first century with the various traditions that Jesus himself is often judged by. So we
certainly have a parallel. And I think it's really hard not to see the parallel between
what we have in Rome and what we have in Judaism, which is we have two competing things. We have one
that says there's this tradition and then there's scripture. And the tradition is said to simply
interpret scripture or help us to understand scripture or give us the kind of infallible,
not that the Jews are using that particular term at this time of the first century, but the same
concept nonetheless, this kind of infallible interpreter of what scripture really means.
And it's in that context that Jesus does set up some principles that I think are valid for the
church today. And the principle is that there can be indeed opposition between tradition
and scripture. And when scripture and tradition are at odds, it is scripture that is the thing
that gets the final say. So scripture has this kind of overriding power over tradition. So if
scripture says something and tradition says something, scripture wins every time.
And it's not just that we have to always interpret scripture in light of the various
supposed infallible traditions that have been passed down as ways to interpret scripture.
So we have that going on in the first century, which is very much parallel to what's happening
throughout the late middle ages when we arrive at the time period of the Reformation. Now,
what Roman Catholic apologists do when they approach this text is they're always going to
say, well, this is just condemning a particular kind of tradition, and that is the traditions
of men, because that's the phrase that Jesus uses. So the difference is Rome doesn't teach
the traditions of men, but the Jews who had supposedly had this infallible set of teachings
and interpretations of scripture, they were teaching traditions of men. And that leaves a
question, though, which is to say, well, according to what? How do you judge one as a tradition of
men and the other not as a tradition of men? Because they're making pretty much the same
claims. And so the first century Jews are making the same claims, and they could point out to Jesus
here the same thing. They could say, hey, Jesus, where does the Old Testament say that the Old
Testament is the only authority and not the traditions of men? You see, they could use the
same argument. But of course, that wouldn't work with Jesus. But why is that any different? Again,
the burden of proof was on them to show when Jesus says, hey, there's opposition between
scripture and the traditions, the burden of proof is on then the Pharisees to go back and say, no,
here is where we know that these traditions are indeed true and infallible and correct,
and they really came from Moses. But Jesus gives us a way to interpret that relationship
between scripture and tradition, which is scripture overrides tradition when there is
a contradiction between the two. And, you know, Jesus doesn't then make some distinction to say,
well, this is traditions of men, but there also are these other traditions which are on par with
scripture, and those are ones passed on by God. And by the way, here's how you know the difference.
He certainly seems to be functioning on a sola scriptura kind of principle when he is evaluating
the traditions of the Jews. And I don't see any reason why we shouldn't apply that same
principle in the way that we look at traditions in the church as well.