Desperate John Bugay to Catholics: Shut up about sola scriptura.

rotes­tant apol­o­gists are cre­ative and tire­less in their efforts to find sola scrip­tura in the Bible. They are undaunt­ed by refu­ta­tion. When told that Acts 17:11, or 2 Tim. 3:16, do not sup­port the doc­trine, they do not attempt fur­ther defense; they sim­ply move on to the next verse. In this way, per­haps Catholics could, in time, get them to run the cir­cuit through every last one. That would be one way to have fun with our sep­a­rat­ed broth­ers. Not only is sola scrip­tura in the Bible; the Bible talks about noth­ing else.

A lit­tle over a year ago (here), I took a look at six vers­es that the polem­i­cal rogue Mr. John Bugay had cit­ed in an attempt to defend this hereti­cal doc­trine: Acts 17:11, 2 Tim­o­thy 3:16–17, Rev. 22:18–19, Luke 16:29, Ps. 16:5, and Ps. 119:105. In my arti­cle, I reached this con­clu­sion:

Sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible.  What pro­po­nents must do—what they can only do—is to take some pas­sage that speaks well of scrip­ture, how­ev­er gen­er­al­ly, and derive from that some prin­ci­ple of exclu­siv­i­ty.

It is 2014, and there is noth­ing new under the Gene­va sun but van­i­ty and van­i­ty. On Sat­ur­day, no less a per­son­age than TurretinFan—known here as Mr. X—was, once more, kick­ing against the goads. Prompt­ed by some ques­tions on Catholic Answers, Mr. X dis­cov­ered four new proof-texts for sola scrip­tura. They are these: John 20:31, Rom. 3:4, Deut. 13:1–5, and Gal. 1:8.

WRITTEN THAT YOU MAY BELIEVE
JOHN 20:31

If for no oth­er rea­son than to be tire­less along with Tur­retin, I will take these vers­es up one by one. Here is St. John:

And many oth­er signs tru­ly did Jesus in the pres­ence of his dis­ci­ples, which are not writ­ten in this book: But these are writ­ten, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believ­ing ye might have life through his name.” (John 20:30–31)

Accord­ing to Mr. X, this verse illus­trates sola scrip­tura because “a per­son could pick up John’s gospel, read it, believe it, and receive eter­nal life in that way.” He goes on to explain that sola scrip­tura sim­ply means that “Scrip­ture is unique—there is noth­ing else like Scrip­ture.”

Well, if that’s all that it means, I don’t know how any­one could dis­pute it. Cer­tain­ly no Catholic I know would. But that is not what the doc­trine of sola scrip­tura states, at least not accord­ing to Dr.* James White of Alpha & Omega Sophistries, in his book The Roman Catholic Con­tro­ver­sy. In that valu­able resource by a great and learned apol­o­gist, Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) names three char­ac­ter­is­tics of sola scrip­tura.

• Sola scrip­tura says that Scrip­ture is the sole “infal­li­ble rule of faith.”
• Sola scrip­tura says that all the doc­trines one is required to accept as a Chris­t­ian are found in Scrip­ture.
• Sola scrip­tura says that what­ev­er is not found in Scrip­ture is not bind­ing upon Chris­tians.

Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) says noth­ing about Scrip­ture being “unique.” To be hon­est, I am not sure what it means to say that Scrip­ture is unique. Lots of things are unique. Mr. X’s blog is unique. The polem­i­cal rogue Mr. Bugay is unique. Pi is unique. The auro­ra bore­alis is unique. Dr.* White’s mas­sive pate is unique. So many things are unique that Scrip­ture is hardy unique in being unique. The obser­va­tion that Scrip­ture is unique, while true, is trite; it proves noth­ing.

What we have in John 20:31, as stran­gled out of sense by Mr. X, is a verse that proves too lit­tle and too much. It says that by read­ing the words writ­ten in St. John’s gospel, one may believe and have eter­nal life. But sola scrip­tura does not state that Scrip­ture is the sole source for knowl­edge of the divin­i­ty of Christ, and for eter­nal life. Nor does St. John even say that; he says that his gospel was wri­it­ten so that one may believe “that Jesus is the Christ,” but he does not go so far as to claim that that knowl­edge may not be acquired else­where.

And even if he did, and even if that were sola scrip­tura, would it not in fact mean that one should believe in sola Johan­neum? It is not enough to throw out the Deute­ro­canon; there are 65 more books to get rid of, too. For St. John did not say, “Scrip­ture was writ­ten so that you may believe”; he said, “My gospel was writ­ten so that you may believe.” If there is a sola in that, it’s a sola that goes much far­ther than Mr. X would want it to go.

EVERY MAN IS FALSE
ROMANS 3:4

In his quest to find a verse that illus­trates the “unique” char­ac­ter of Scripture—as though any­one denies that, or as though that is part of the def­i­n­i­tion of sola scrip­tura—Mr. X stum­bles upon Romans 3:4. Here is the verse in con­text:

For what if some did not believe? shall their unbe­lief make the faith of God with­out effect? God for­bid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is writ­ten, That thou might­est be jus­ti­fied in thy say­ings, and might­est over­come when thou art judged. (Romans 3:3–4)

Now watch how Mr. X exegetes this verse: “This empha­sizes the cru­cial dis­tinc­tion between God’s words and men’s words.” But in fact, if you read the verse in con­text (for Mr. X fails to quote verse 3), it is clear that the din­stinc­tion St. Paul is empha­siz­ing is not between God’s Word and men’s words, but between men’s faith­less­ness to God and God’s faith­ful­ness to keep his covenant.

The rel­e­vance of this dis­tinc­tion to the doc­trine of sola scrip­tura is unclear. One feels—as one so often does when read­ing Mr. X—that the Protes­tant apol­o­gist is just dash­ing through his con­cor­dance in a pan­ic for any instance of the word “word” in Scrip­ture, and then claim­ing the verse is a proof of sola scrip­tura, irre­spec­tive of what the verse is in fact talk­ing about. In this way, John 1:1 would become a proof-text for sola scrip­tura, even though the clear sub­ject of the verse is the divin­i­ty of Christ.

KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS
DEUTERONOMY 13:1–5

Per­haps sens­ing his pitiable fail­ure to force sola scrip­tura upon Paul, Mr. X, known to him­self as “Tur­ret­inFan,” tries again—this time with a long pas­sage from the Pen­ta­teuch.

If there arise among you a prophet, or a dream­er of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a won­der, and the sign or the won­der come to pass, where­of he spake unto thee, say­ing, Let us go after oth­er gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; thou shalt not hear­ken unto the words of that prophet, or that dream­er of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his com­mand­ments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dream­er of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spo­ken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God com­mand­ed thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.

Accord­ing to Mr. X, “The point to take away from that pas­sage is that even if some­one has author­i­ty that appears to be attest­ed by work­ing won­ders, the per­son­’s mes­sage should be judged by the Scrip­tures.” While super­fi­cial­ly that is true, it is also an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly broad exe­ge­sis that miss­es the speci­fici­ty of what this pas­sage is talk­ing about.

Accord­ing to this pas­sage, the goal of the “prophet or dream­er of dreams,” in work­ing his “sign” or “won­der,” is to entice the Jews “to go after oth­er gods.” That is to say, Scrip­ture is not warn­ing us against fol­low­ing oth­er rules of faith; it is warn­ing us against serv­ing oth­er gods. The dan­ger is not that peo­ple will sud­den­ly start lis­ten­ing to the Mag­is­teri­um, but that peo­ple will sud­den­ly start wor­ship­ping Baal or Moloch. Deut. 13:1–5 is an exe­ge­sis of the first com­mand­ment; the nature of Scrip­ture is not the sub­ject, but the nature of God.

A GOSPEL CONTRARY
GALATIANS 3:8

In one last brave effort, Mr. X cites Gala­tians 1:8: “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 Mr. X explains the pas­sage, Paul is warn­ing the Gala­tians against addi­tions to the writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny of Scrip­ture regard­ing the char­ac­ter of the Gospel. What he over­looks is the key word παρ’, par’. This is ren­dered “any oth­er” in the KJV, but is best trans­lat­ed “con­trary,” as the NASB does. St. Paul does not warn the Gala­tians against addi­tion­al sources of gospel knowl­edge; he warns against false gospels. Pre­sum­ably, if extra-bib­li­cal sources exist which are not con­trary to what he preached, Paul would have no dif­fi­cul­ty with them. At least, he does not say oth­er­wise in this pas­sage. Catholics do not claim that extra-bib­li­cal rules of faith are “con­trary”; they claim that they are addi­tion­al. The text just does not address the nature of the dis­agree­ment between Protes­tants and Catholics when it comes to sola scrip­tura.

THE POLEMICAL ROGUE SAYS HERE, THAT HE DON’T NEED TO PROVE SQUAT

But although Mr. X has not tired of invent­ing new proof-texts for sola scrip­tura, Mr. Bugay seems to have giv­en up all hope. Per­haps the polem­i­cal rogue, upon read­ing Mr. X’s post, thought to him­self: This will nev­er work. That pesky blog­ger Alt will have this refut­ed before the cof­fee’s cold.

Thus Mr. Bugay’s new gam­bit is to deny that Protes­tants need to find a verse at all. Instead, attempt­ing to shift the bur­den of proof, Mr. Bugay says that it is Catholics who must prove that God estab­lished the Mag­is­teri­um as the infal­li­ble inter­preter of Scrip­ture. That, accord­ing to Mr. Bugay, is “the true issue.” Catholic apol­o­gists who ask “Where is sola scrip­tura in the Bible?” do not under­stand “the true issue.”

At its heart, Mr. Bugay’s claim is a false dichoto­my, in that it assumes that there is a dif­fer­ence between affirm­ing the pos­i­tive and deny­ing the neg­a­tive. If I want­ed to prove that 2+2=4, one way to do it would be to show that 2+2≠5. That would not by itself prove that 2+2=4, but if a lot of peo­ple were assert­ing that 2+2=5, show­ing that they are wrong would be an impor­tant step in the direc­tion of truth. Thus, one way to prove the author­i­ty of the Mag­is­teri­um is to prove that the con­trary claim of sola scrip­tura is false.

Thus the impor­tance of the ques­tion: Where is sola scrip­tura in the Bible? For if the Bible alone is the source of all that must be believed by Chris­tians, and if sola scrip­tura is one doc­trine that must be believed by all Chris­tians, then it fol­lows (as a point of ele­men­tary log­ic) that sola scrip­tura must be in the Bible. Well, where is it, Mr. Bugay? Can you cite a verse—just one verse—that will hold up to scruti­ny? I am will­ing to go through every verse of every book, if you like. But the polem­i­cal rogue denies he needs to do any such thing:

Roman Catholics who are in a mind to observe the New Evan­ge­liza­tion, if they are going to have any sem­blance of cred­i­bil­i­ty in Protestant-vs.-Catholic dis­cus­sions, are going to need to show their fun­da­men­tal hon­esty by speak­ing out against Roman Catholics who con­tin­ue to ask this ques­tion.

This is the bul­ly­ing tac­tic of a des­per­ate man. These are the words of some­one who knows he is beat­en, who knows that sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible, and who wish­es to hide his defeat by get­ting Catholics to shut up about it. For if sola scrip­tura were in the Bible, all Mr. Bugay would have to do is point out where, and the debate would be over.

But I have news for Mr. Bugay: We are not going to shut up about it. We are going to keep ask­ing the ques­tion. It is not dis­hon­est to ask the ques­tion. What is dis­hon­est, Mr. Bugay, is to assert a doc­trine, and then claim that you don’t have to prove it from the only source of author­i­ty you accept, and that every­one else should just be qui­et about it.

Good luck get­ting us to do that.