A Defense of Sola Scriptura

Here is a fundamental question of (the methodology of) theology: According to what rule, or rules, should we determine our doctrines about the things of God? This question asks about our regula fidei, Latin for “rule of faith.”

The classical Protestant answer is: Our regula fidei is sola scriptura, also from Latin, meaning “Scripture alone.” The Bible and only the Bible tells us what our doctrines about the things of God should be.

Now, in some of my interminable debates with Catholics (or Catholic bots; sometimes one can’t tell) on social media, someone challenged me to defend sola scriptura. As a student of the Bible, I thought: challenge accepted. In this essay, I will defend sola scriptura by demonstrating that Scripture itself mandates that doctrinal positions must be grounded solely in the word of God.

What Sola Scriptura Means, Briefly

The place to begin is by explaining what sola scriptura entails. It does not mean that “everything we believe can only be found in the Bible,” obviously; that would be a straw man. We can believe many things about many topics the Bible never explicitly addresses. Nor does it mean that all our doctrines should be found, word for word, in the Bible. This is simply not the claim.

The formula concerns the propositions we should include in our Christian doctrine. This is not to say that these are the things we “take on faith”; that is yet another straw man. It is to say that these are the things that are part of our personal “confession,” or the things regarding God (or theology more generally) that we accept as true.

I think we may gloss the formula this way:

Sola scriptura: We should not advance doctrinal positions without scriptural support.

In other words, if something counts as Christian doctrine, and we accept it, then we—or someone properly trained, who takes our position—should be able to defend it on the basis of the Bible. Now, since we are discussing the interpretation of the Bible, that means we are discussing hermeneutics, and therefore we cannot really dispense with linguistic data, as well as common sense and rules of logic, because of course such things are needed to construct many Bible-based theological arguments. Now, if I were writing this for philosophers, I might pretend to be surprised and concerned about these additions, and I might go into them in more depth; but I’m not, so I won’t. The Bible serves not just as the strict guardrails for our doctrine, but also as its only acceptable foundation. Any proposition that is not grounded in the text of the Bible is, for that reason, probably not Christian doctrine.

But with this, I do not mean to rule out tradition per se. Traditions can be explorations, summaries, and modest outgrowths of Scripture, such as the broadly-supported doctrine of the Trinity, the very shape of the cross (i.e., that it is not merely a tall stake in the ground), and certain broadly accepted ideas about angels and demons that are difficult to support by the Bible alone.

You might notice, next, that sola scriptura is itself a theological doctrine. So we should not advance it without scriptural support. Catholics treat this observation as a “gotcha” for Protestants. They are correct to notice that the doctrine must apply to itself. But this is obvious and not exactly news. They are right that the defender of sola scriptura has a special burden of proof. But, in what follows, I am happy to do what I can to meet that burden.

One more thing: sola scriptura is not just a point of doctrine, it is a doctrine about doctrine, so we might call it a meta-doctrine. In defending the doctrine, we apply it to itself and affirm: sola scriptura may be supported with the Bible, of course.

Biblical Warnings Against Adding to God’s Word

There are at least five main places in which Scripture makes direct restrictions on our adoption of, or general characterizations about, doctrines concerning God. We will introduce the first four and discuss them together, as they all make similar points; in the next section, we will discuss the fifth.

The first two are warnings from the fifth book of the Pentateuch (or Torah), Deuteronomy, against going beyond what Moses has declared:

You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. (4:2)

Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it. (12:32)

The second is from the last chapter of the Bible, in the book of Revelation:

For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life and from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (22:18-19)

These warnings may be understood to apply, respectively, to the deuteronomic law and to the contents of Revelation. Critics will immediately point to this limited scope. So, what follows? How does this support sola scriptura? We will soon see.

My third citation is a declaration of Paul’s to the Galatians about the accursedness of someone who preaches “any other gospel” than that which Paul and his confreres have taught:

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. (1:8-9)

Now, although this is about the Gospel, it falls into the same category as the others: it is a warning by the prophet (for though Paul is an Apostle, he here plays a role very similar to the prophets) that there is a well-understood body of doctrine, and adding to it will bring curses. This is not, of course, the only place where someone warns against preaching “another Christ.”¹

The fourth is an even more general principle from Proverbs, a warning that we might take as a summary of the foregoing:

Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. (30:5-6)

Now, Moses, John, and Paul obviously were not saying that only their personal words could be taken as expressions of the words of God. For example, there were others who came after Moses (like Solomon, Isaiah, John, and Paul) who did add to what was later accepted as the word of God. Nor did anyone ever accuse those later writers of violating Moses’ warnings. So what were they saying?

We can infer that these warnings were specifically against a specific kind of heresy: syncretic, doctrinal accretions not directly inspired by God. Syncretism is the practice—common throughout Biblical times and today as well—of combining the accepted declarations of God’s prophets with foreign elements, typically from other traditions, but sometimes from teachers who have not been approved and who make significant additions and changes to the approved traditions. The verse from Deuteronomy 12 puts it well: “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.” In other words, the claim is not, “I am done making my commands,” but “do not take your own commands, or those of some false prophet, as mine; wait for the reliable word of the Lord.”

This warning against going beyond the reliable and established word of the Lord appears again and again, so that it becomes fairly clear that in the above four instances, these are more of the same: we are not to extend our doctrine-building beyond explicating what is directly given by the Lord. Thus the thing being warned against, the practice being explicitly rejected, is the invention of new doctrine, called things like “precepts of men,” “deceits of the heart,” “commandments of men,” and “doctrines of devils.”

For example, Isaiah quotes the Lord as saying, “Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.” (29:13) Jeremiah quotes the Lord this way: “they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.” (14:14; cf. 23:16) The warning, then, is against dictates of men and imaginative additions to doctrine.

Along these lines, more famously, Jesus took the “lawyers” and Pharisees to task for this: “But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” (Mt 15:9; cf. Mk 7:7-9)

Paul’s warning to the Galatians against “any other gospel” (the third citation above) identifies a closely related problem: heresy. Here is Paul to Timothy: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” (1 Tim 4:1-2)

So far, all we have shown is that the Bible is replete with warnings against false additions to the word of God. This, by itself, does not establish sola scriptura, does it? It does not, but read on. As it turns out, Scripture contains much that is highly suggestive of just when innovators may be said to “add to the word.”

When Do We “Add to His Words”?

Next we must take up the question of how members of the church are to know when somebody is sharing a “precept of men,” “the deceit of their heart,” “the commandments of men,” “doctrines of devils,” etc. This has not really been clarified, so far. When do we “add to his words”?

I submit that, generally speaking, this would have been clear to the prophets and apostles themselves. They declared that they spoke on behalf of God himself, according to the prophetic refrain, “Thus saith the LORD.” Prophets, for their part, were identified as such based on whether their prophecy had come to pass, at least in part.²) The early Christian church seems to have adopted as a rule that only those Gospel reports that recorded the events surrounding Jesus’ ministry faithfully (obviously, according to those witnesses who were still alive), and only the words of doctrine shared by those who were taught by the Lord himself, and in the case of Paul who had visions and did miracles in his name over the period of many years.

In this way, all of Scripture claims to be imparting the words of God, along with a minority of material that concerned the history of Israel, the early church, and related issues that gave essential context and reference. Even in this case what we have is the divinely-inspired history and writing of witnesses of the Lord.

Here then is the point. If someone presumes to declare, as doctrine of the church, anything that extended beyond the words of prophets and apostles—again, beyond those who literally spoke on behalf or in direct witness of God himself—then he would be understood to be doing precisely what Moses, Solomon, Jesus, Paul, and John warned against.

Indeed, appropriately, it is not Jesus’ words so much as his actions that demonstrate how to apply this rule. He had no issues with what might look, to us, like creative interpretations of the Old Testament. Think of what he said about David and the shewbread: “But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; 4How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?” (Mt 12:3-4) What he had issue with, rather, were called “commandments of men” and “traditions of men” which were not to be found in the clearly God-breathed Scripture. We will return to the notion of “God-breathed Scripture” in the next section. How could Jesus take the Pharisaical traditions to task if he were not teaching something very like sola scriptura?

Similarly, when Paul and Peter observed the early gnostics and others teaching “another Gospel,” they were observing that they said things that extended beyond the divinely-inspired words of Jesus’ hand-picked apostles.

Now, you might point out that in Acts 15 there was a church council that declared new doctrine. Putting aside the fact that it was not, in fact, new (i.e., beyond what can be clearly inferred from Jesus’ own words), we can observe that this falls into the same category as the epistles: the council in question featured key apostles, like Peter and John, who, being filled with the Holy Spirit from the mouth of Jesus himself, were uniquely qualified to clarify doctrine (which, it can be argued, was also firmly rooted in the combination of the Old Testament law and what had already been revealed by Jesus).

By contrast, the early church wisely did not include Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, etc., in the Bible. This seems to be because, as wonderfully wise and edifying as the writings of these Apostolic Fathers are—I recommend that you read them if you have not done so yet—they are not words of those who claimed to be sent by Jesus or inspired to speak by God the Father. Indeed, some (not many) of their statements are frankly questionable. They are simply not reliable on the (doctrinally, rather random) points where they extend beyond firmly accepted Scripture of the Septuagint, the Gospels, and the authoritative (i.e., actually quoted) letters of Paul and Peter. Again, the early church had the option to include these writings in the first canons, and, for the most part,³ they did not. If they were wholly reliable, why not include them?

The most fundamental explanation is that the Apostolic Fathers did not necessarily speak for God. Nor did they claim to, which is perhaps the crucial point, and one that Roman Catholics really do not like to hear—but it is true. The Apostolic Fathers were not prophets or apostles. They knew it; unlike today’s popes, they knew they could not speak for God. Paul, however, could and did. In fact, in one place (see below), he explicitly distinguishes between doctrines that are of God and doctrines that are merely his own opinion.

In keeping with this, later ecumenical church councils were not added to the Bible as new books, though they could have been. This simple fact suggests that the members of the ecumenical councils at that time refused to pretend that their words were as reliable as, and on a par with, Scripture. Again, if they had regarded them as such, the councils would have been added.

An interesting example of a doctrine adopted by the Catholic Church that, in my opinion, illicitly extends beyond Scripture and the word of God is the notion that demons especially fear Mary. It seems that, according to tradition and practice, when priests perform exorcisms, the demons often say they fear Mary. (I am afraid I cannot confirm this; I am only reporting what I have been told.) It is Catholic doctrine that demons are not permitted to lie when they are bound by the priests to tell the truth. On this, I would like to point out, gently, that this notion that demons fear Mary is a doctrine; that it is a doctrine that avowedly, according to Catholic exorcists, comes from “devils” (demons); hence it appears to be a “doctrine of devils”! Paul warned Timothy against those, you know. This sounds like a joke, but if so, it is a serious joke and a rather good illustration of the concepts in play.

Further Issues and Arguments

Furthermore, the sufficiency of Scripture for doctrine is not just implied but explicitly stated in one place. On sola scriptura, a fifth, often-cited text is in a letter from Paul to Timothy:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly [thoroughly, completely] furnished unto all good works. (2 Tim 3:16-17)

This can be used to develop a straightforward argument: If Scripture makes a person thoroughly prepared for “all good works” including the teaching of doctrine, then no later church councils or ex cathedra papal declarations are necessary for doctrinal preparation. In other words, Roman Catholics would indeed seem to contradict Paul when they hold up certain church councils and ex cathedra statements as being required for proper teaching of doctrine. If extra-Biblical “tradition” were essential for justifying important doctrines, as the RCC also holds, then we would not be “throughly furnished” by mere Scripture alone, would we?

Now, this argument by itself does not establish sola scriptura. It only lends support to the notion. I do not believe in proof texts,⁴ generally speaking. But the argument does support sola scriptura because, quite simply, if a teacher may be “complete” and “equipped for every good work” with the help of Scripture, that strongly suggests (but does not by itself prove) that nothing would be missing that would be supplied by, say, the utterances of demons about the scariness of Mary.

More and perhaps even a stronger support can be found in how Paul treats his own opinions in the following:

Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be [a virgin, i.e., unmarried]. (1 Cor 7:25-26)

Now, the notion here is clear enough: Paul himself distinguishes between a “commandment of the Lord” and “my judgment,” the former being indisputable and binding, the latter being friendly advice that the faithful may set aside. This serves as a good example of a certain tendency in the Roman Catholic Church: it has made church doctrine even out of a clear disavowal. That is, they have proceeded to enforce a doctrine of priestly celibacy even though the statement is explicitly disavowed as a commandment of the Lord. By contrast, we defenders of sola scriptura may see in this a perfect instance of the problem I have set myself in this essay, namely, how we may know that some doctrine goes beyond the word of God. The short answer is that no mere opinion or speculation, even if from the likes of Paul, should be taken as a “commandment of the Lord.” Rather, we are to seek what God reveals to his prophets and what God in the flesh revealed to his disciples.

One argument that Roman Catholics like to make is that Jesus and Paul did indeed accept non-Biblical oral and written traditions, which is true; but Jesus is God. Jesus’ endorsement of a tradition constitutes it as truth. He also rejected other traditions as merely human inventions. As God—unlike, say, the Pope—he could declare certain traditions acceptable. The highest-ranking Pharisee or Sadducee could not do this, and were rebuffed sternly by Jesus on certain points. Thus the verse in Proverbs that I quoted earlier. As to Paul, the situation is similar, except that, like the prophets, it is accepted by Christians that he was divinely inspired. Paul was powerfully inspired by the Holy Spirit and was God’s instrument for establishing the church among Gentiles in Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome. So, if he declared in a doctrinal epistle to the church that some tradition was correct, then the Holy Spirit has declared it to be so, through him.

Conclusion

Sola scriptura may be understood as the view that we should not advance doctrinal positions without scriptural support. There are many warnings in the Bible itself not to extend our doctrine-construction beyond the word of God. Such warnings are often broad and seem to depend on a pre-existent notion of what is the word of God. So what was meant?

Both Scripture and early Christian practice has much of relevance on this point. The Bible consists of the writings of prophets, apostles, and their close associates, who were thought to speak on behalf (or as messengers) of God, or as witnesses and disciples of the Son of God. By contrast, the writings of the early Christians who were directly taught by the apostles, such as Clement and Ignatius, were not adopted into the canon of Scripture. Indeed, even today we can read these writings and see some things that clearly extend beyond the Bible on certain points. In many cases, such points were not made into doctrines, according to scripture, because these men neither said they spoke on behalf of God—nor did others claim this of them. Similarly, the conclusions of the first ecumenical councils of the church, such as the A.D. 325 Council of Nicaea, were defended not as inspiration but on the basis of Scripture. These councils were not adopted into the Bible, though they could have been, if they had been regarded as inspired and reliable as Scripture itself. This suggests that the later Roman Catholic Church at some point changed its view on the relative reliability of church pronouncements.

We need not, of course, conclude that all Roman Catholic distinctives, which cannot be adequately defended on the basis of Scripture—such as doctrines of Purgatory, indulgences, and the Assumption of Mary, to take the relatively obvious examples—are “doctrines of devils.” But Protestants are well within their rights to rest on sola scriptura, firmly rejecting such doctrines as later accretions of an all-too-human tradition that became comfortable with adding speculative doctrine uninspired by the word of God.

Footnotes

1. “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” (Mt 24:24) “For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.” (2 Cor 11:4) “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” (2 Jn 1:7) There are other similar warnings as well.[↩]
2. The central text: “And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.” (Dt 18:21-22[↩]
3. Some included 1 Clement, which is a very fine letter. But ultimately there was a consensus that it did not belong with the words of those who had received the Holy Spirit from Jesus himself.[↩]
4. This is a technical term in Bible study: a proof text is a verse or short passage that is taken, by itself, to justify a position on some controversial doctrine, especially one on which other texts may also be cited, with various other implications.[↩]