Let’s abandon this bad apologetic argument Thomas More used against Luther.

t’s pos­si­ble St. Thomas More is respon­si­ble for the fact that so many Catholics like to cite John 20:30–31 and John 21:25 as proof texts against sola scrip­tura. I haven’t tried to trace the argu­ment for­ward. Cer­tain it is, how­ev­er, that you’ll hear it a lot if you watch “The Jour­ney Home” on EWTN, and every now and then you’ll find it on Catholic apolo­get­ics Web sites. Here’s John 20:30–31 in the RSV-CE:

Now Jesus did many oth­er signs in the pres­ence of the dis­ci­ples, which are not writ­ten in this book, but these are writ­ten that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believ­ing you may have life in his name.

And here is John 21:25 (same trans­la­tion):

But there are also many oth­er things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be writ­ten, I sup­pose that the world itself could not con­tain the books that would be writ­ten.

See? the argu­ment goes. The Bible alone does not con­tain every­thing. There are teach­ings of Christ out­side of Sacred Scrip­ture we must observe.

But that’s not real­ly what the texts say; the sub­ject of John 20 and John 21 is not the rule of faith. The last two chap­ters of this gospel nar­rate Christ’s appear­ances and mir­a­cles after his Resurrection—specifically, signs that he gave to prove that he was the Lord. For exam­ple, he allowed St. Thomas to touch his wounds. He also per­formed a mir­a­cle to allow Peter to catch fish after he came back with emp­ty nets. So when John says, “Christ also did many more things,” he’s not telling us any­thing at all about a rule of faith—as though these “many more things” some­how form a part of Sacred Tra­di­tion. He’s say­ing: Jesus proved his Res­ur­rec­tion with more proofs than we can write down, but here are a few of them so that you too can believe.

If it weren’t for the fact that Thomas More, in a refu­ta­tion of Luther, was prob­a­bly the first per­son to proof-text John 20:30 and John 21:25, one might be tempt­ed to say, Well, those are just over-zeal­ous con­verts on a cute lit­tle TV show, they’re not trained apol­o­gists or exegetes, they’re going through some con­fir­ma­tion bias in their read­ing of Scrip­ture, they actu­al­ly are right that sola scrip­tura is false, don’t be too hard on them. Thomas More (1523) made the very same argu­ment:

What do you say to that, Luther? And to this: “Many things were done which are not writ­ten in this book,” a pas­sage of the Evan­ge­list’s? [John 20:30] These things which you have remarked as absent from the oth­er scrip­tur­al books also, and of which John says that the whole world can­not con­tain them — aren’t they to be regard­ed as mir­a­cles at least? Would­n’t you also find that an igno­rance of many of them would jeop­ar­dize faith? …

[Christ] doesn’t say that the Spir­it will “write” to you or whis­per in your ear, but he will lead you, will form you inte­ri­or­ly, and with His breath will show your hearts the way to all truth. [Luther did­n’t real­ly deny this.] Was it the Apos­tles, here addressed by Christ, to whom the way was to be shown? Were they alone told, “I am with you to the con­sum­ma­tion of the world”? [Matt 28:20] Who can ques­tion the direc­tion of this mes­sage to the Church? Will not the Holy Spir­it show her the way to all truth? Was she not told, “Go, preach the Gospel to every crea­ture”? [Matt 28:19] Did they read the Gospel or preach it? And did Christ cast the new law in bronze or strike it on stone tablets, com­mand­ing that every­thing else be con­sid­ered val­ue­less and cast out?

It’s impor­tant that we not get so dis­tract­ed by the weight More’s name car­ries that we can’t eval­u­ate whether he’s mak­ing a sound argu­ment here.

• More claims, first, that an igno­rance of the oth­er mir­a­cles Christ did after his res­ur­rec­tion would “jeop­ar­dize faith.”

More does­n’t explain how that would hap­pen. Does he real­ly mean that, unless we knew every mir­a­cle Jesus per­formed, we might stop believ­ing in the Res­ur­rec­tion? That was­n’t the view of St. John. “These things are writ­ten that you might believe,” he says. Cer­tain­ly he felt that the mir­a­cles he record­ed were sufficient—not as a rule of faith, but to estab­lish the truth of the Res­ur­rec­tion. More does­n’t explain why we’d need a list of all of them. The world can’t con­tain all the books but Sacred Tra­di­tion can hold it all?

• More claims, sec­ond, that some of the extra-bib­li­cal acts of Christ were pre­served in tra­di­tion and entered the faith of the Church.

That’s news to me. What are these deeds of Christ? I’m not aware of a Catholic tra­di­tion of things Christ did not record­ed in the Gospels—at least, not any we are required to believe with reli­gious faith. The con­text of the vers­es More cites is noth­ing more than: Christ did a lot of things after his Res­ur­rec­tion; he did so many things the world could­n’t con­tain all the books. But here are a few of them. That’s hyper­bole to impress upon us the great­ness of Christ. You can’t prove any­thing about sola scrip­tura from it, since that’s a dif­fer­ent sub­ject alto­geth­er.

More’s achieve­ment is to refute a claim Protes­tants do not make and advance a claim the Church does not make either. Protes­tants do not claim that the Bible is a com­pendi­um of all knowl­edge, as though you need to know every­thing in order to have a rule of faith, or as though what’s not in the rule of faith is not true. The fact that Christ did a lot of things that aren’t record­ed in Scrip­ture is hard­ly news to them and hard­ly trou­bles them. Only Athe­ists, and only some of them, claim to be scan­dal­ized by the fact that the Bible says noth­ing about germs or the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of stars.

But the Church does not sus­pect that the rule of faith—which includes tradition—ought to be a Big Book of Every­thing either. The Church does not teach that our faith is going to fail unless we know every last word Christ said and every last thing he did. The def­i­n­i­tion of tra­di­tion is not, as More treats it, “every­thing that hap­pened that the Bible left out.” Although the writ­ers of Scrip­ture nev­er imag­ined that they need­ed to write every­thing that con­sti­tutes the rule of faith, that does­n’t mean that the rule of faith is every­thing.

When More writes to Luther, he writes like a per­son who does­n’t under­stand what the nature of the con­flict over sola scrip­tura is in the first place. The dis­pute is about what (or who) the ulti­mate author­i­ty is, not how many facts you can cram into the rule of faith.

•••

Protes­tant apol­o­gists don’t make things any bet­ter, because some of them try to use John 20:31—“these are writ­ten that you may believe”—as a proof text for sola scrip­tura. Our old anony­mous friend Tur­ret­inFan, known here as Mr. X, made that argu­ment all the way back in 2014:

John’s state­ment implies that a per­son could pick up John’s gospel, read it, believe it, and receive eter­nal life in that way. More­over, John’s state­ment at least hints at the fact that the oth­er gospels have a sim­i­lar pur­pose — they are writ­ten for us to read, believe, and have eter­nal life.

But no. John 20:31 is not about what a Chris­tian’s ulti­mate author­i­ty is. It comes at the end of a nar­ra­tive account of evi­dence for the Res­ur­rec­tion, writ­ten to build up believ­ers, but it does­n’t go so far as to say that 66 or 72 canon­i­cal books com­prise the entire­ty of what Chris­tians must believe. John’s sub­ject is not the rule of faith; that’s Mr. X’s sub­ject, and Thomas More’s sub­ject, which both of them super­im­pose upon the actu­al text of Scrip­ture.

I would­n’t burn any­one at the stake for proof-tex­ting, but I would ask every­one to avoid it. It’s an abu­sive way to treat Sacred Scrip­ture.