Eisegesis Master Mr. John Bugay tries to force sola scriptura upon unwilling texts.

he best argu­ment that Catholic apol­o­gists have against sola scrip­tura is that it is self-refut­ing. If the Bible alone con­tains all that is required for faith and prac­tice, and sola scrip­tura is required for faith and prac­tice, then why is sola scrip­tura not to be found there? Search as long as you may please, you will not find it. Protes­tants know that they have a dif­fi­cul­ty here. They know that, in order to defend sola scrip­tura, they must do so from the only source of doc­trine to which they point. They must tell us which verse teach­es sola scrip­tura. Just one verse will do. If they can, the argu­ment is over; if they can’t, sola scrip­tura fails its own test.

White Man’s Bluff.

At times, full of sweat, they tire of the cease­less hunt and try to bluff their way into the shade. I grant them their clev­er­ness in doing so. They need it; the hunt is long and the time short before the great and fear­some Day of the Lord. Among all such bluffers, the clever­est in my view is Dr.* James White, who runs an out­fit he ide­al­is­ti­cal­ly calls “Alpha & Omega Min­istries,” but which is more adept at prac­tic­ing sophis­tries. In a 1997 debate with Ger­ry Matat­ics, when pressed on whether the apos­tles prac­ticed sola scrip­tura, Dr.* White replied [~2:04:00]: “I have said over and over and over again that sola scrip­tura is a doc­trine that speaks to the nor­ma­tive con­di­tion of the church, not to times of enscrip­tura­tion.” Dr.* White’s prime toady, the glib and anony­mous Tur­ret­inFan, in a recent debate with Catholic apol­o­gist William Albrecht, used sim­i­lar words; though he at least spared us the syl­la­bles and was terse. As he put it [link no longer available—HSA, 3/2/23], “Sola scrip­tura is what we do to the Bible once we have the Bible.” He makes it sound like rape.

Here is what they ask us to believe: The apos­tles don’t need to have prac­ticed it; nor did they need to tell us about it. Their silence may mean much to Rome, but it means bug­ger all to us. Sola scrip­tura is a self-evi­dent first prin­ci­ple of the church. It exists out­side of Scrip­ture and is brought to Scrip­ture. After the apos­tles died, it some­how was just there, obvi­ous to all, until Rome added the doc­trines of men. It describes the very nature of a fin­ished canon, even though it is not artic­u­lat­ed in the canon. Because the Bible is, sola scrip­tura is.

In his book The Roman Catholic Con­tro­ver­sy (which you may buy here if you have some weird, pun­ish­ing desire to read all of it) Dr.* White says that wery thing in these words:

The doc­trine of sola scrip­tura is based on the nature of the Scrip­tures as the Word of God. There can be no under­stand­ing of the suf­fi­cien­cy of Scrip­ture apart from an under­stand­ing of the true ori­gin and resul­tant nature of Scrip­ture. (62)

It is the nature of what the Scrip­tures are (the Word of God) more than what the Scrip­tures say, that binds Chris­tians to the doc­trine of sola scrip­tura.

Now, this is clever and at first glance can be con­vinc­ing. But it fails to answer one key ques­tion: How do we know that the Bible alone is the Word of God? Dr.* White just assumes that it is, a pri­ori. But he gives no rea­son why we should­n’t believe that the Word of God might also exist elsewhere—say, in the Church (cf. 1 Tim. 3:15). So at bot­tom, all this is noth­ing more than a brave attempt to dis­tract from the inabil­i­ty to defend the doc­trine of sola scrip­tura from the only source of doc­trine to which the Protes­tant points. If you can’t defend sola scrip­tura bib­li­cal­ly, attempt to defend it exis­ten­tial­ly. That’s the ploy.

I will have more to say about this lat­er, in a detailed cri­tique of Dr.* White’s two chap­ters on sola scrip­tura in The Roman Catholic Con­tro­ver­sy. For now, I want just to look at three of the com­mon texts that do get cit­ed in defense of sola scrip­tura and show why they do not prove what Protes­tants claim they do. I will then turn to the polem­i­cal rogue Mr. John Bugay, to whom I have already replied on this top­ic (here and here). Mr. Bugay, who is known for his pow­ers of inven­tion, tries to find the doc­trine in three new texts that I would not have thought of in any fan­ta­sia, be it ever so wild. These are also worth look­ing at, for they are—once more—a les­son in the extremes to which some Protes­tant apol­o­gists will go when trapped in a cor­ner but unwill­ing to aban­don their error.

Acts 17:11: The noble Bereans.

The three most often-cit­ed proof-texts for sola scrip­tura are Acts 17:11, 2 Tim. 3:16–17, and Rev. 22:18–19. I shall take them in order. Here is Acts 17:11:

These [the Bere­ans] were more noble than those in Thes­sa­loni­ca, in that they received the word with all readi­ness of mind, and searched the scrip­tures dai­ly, whether those things were so.

The argu­ment is that the Bere­ans, via the Scrip­tures, sought to val­i­date the truth of what St. Paul’s taught them. That is to say, the Scrip­tures are the sole stan­dard of proof to estab­lish right doc­trine. Because the Bere­ans held Paul to a bib­li­cal proof, they were “more noble” than the rest.

But is this real­ly what we should con­clude from this text? To answer that ques­tion, we need to con­sid­er what the Bere­ans want­ed to con­firm when they “searched the scrip­tures dai­ly.” We find out by check­ing a few vers­es ear­li­er, in Acts 17:2–3:

And Paul, as his man­ner was, went in unto them, and three sab­bath days rea­soned with them out of the scrip­tures, open­ing and alleg­ing, that Christ must needs have suf­fered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.

Now, the scrip­tures that Paul uses here, to “rea­son with them,” are the Old Tes­ta­ment. There was no New Tes­ta­ment yet. And what he “rea­sons,” put sim­ply, is that Christ is the ful­fill­ment of the Old Tes­ta­ment prophe­cy. Christ is the Mes­si­ah fore­told. But to deter­mine whether or not that was so, where else should the Bere­ans have gone except the scrip­tures? If Paul was argu­ing “out of the scrip­tures,” it would have been very odd for the Bere­ans to have looked at some oth­er text to con­firm the exe­ge­sis. The scrip­tures were alone rel­e­vant to the ques­tion they were try­ing to answer. Acts 17 describes a par­tic­u­lar occa­sion of bib­li­cal exe­ge­sis, not a gen­er­al prin­ci­ple of bib­li­cal suf­fi­cien­cy. If Paul had said that Jesus was the ful­fill­ment of Pla­to’s Repub­lic, a wise Bere­an would have been fool­ish to have searched the scrip­tures. He’d have searched the Repub­lic. But one could hard­ly derive a prin­ci­ple of sola Repub­li­ca from that. Acts sim­ply does not say what the Protes­tant wants it to.

2 Timothy 3:16–17: All scripture is given.

But what about 2 Tim­o­thy 3:16–17? The Protes­tant apol­o­gist believes he has a more open-and-shut case here; indeed, it fea­tures promi­nent­ly in The Roman Catholic Con­tro­ver­sy (pp. 62–67). Let’s look.

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, thor­ough­ly fur­nished unto all good works.

It cer­tain­ly sounds—if you take a sur­face-lev­el view of bib­li­cal exegesis—like the Protes­tant apol­o­gist does have an open-and-shut case here. Scrip­ture makes the “man of God … per­fect [and] thor­ough­ly fur­nished.” As Dr.* White put it in his debate with Mr. Matat­ics, “That’s what a rule of faith is.” But a more care­ful look at this text will reveal sev­er­al prob­lems.

The first is that Paul says that “all scrip­ture is giv­en by inspi­ra­tion of God.” That’s dif­fer­ent, is it not, from say­ing that only scrip­ture is so giv­en. Any course in Log­ic 101 will teach you that you can’t derive an only state­ment from an all state­ment. It’s a faulty syl­lo­gism, along the lines of say­ing that if all apples are fruit, there­fore only apples are fruit.

The sec­ond prob­lem is that nowhere does Paul say that scrip­ture is suf­fi­cient, which is what sola scrip­tura would claim. It does say that all scrip­ture is prof­itable, but that’s not the same thing. If I have a hard­ware store, it may very well be that my sale of nails has made me a prof­it. But that does not mean that nails alone are suf­fi­cient to keep my store in busi­ness. I also require the sale of oth­er goods.

The final prob­lem is that Paul says that scrip­ture makes the man of God “thor­ough­ly fur­nished unto all good works.” Apart from the odd­i­ty of the Protes­tant apol­o­gist prais­ing works is the fact that Paul does not tell Tim­o­thy that scrip­ture thor­ough­ly fur­nish­es the man of God unto all cor­rect doc­trine. That’s dif­fer­ent.

In short, we see here again that the Protes­tant apol­o­gist tries to make a text of scrip­ture say more than it says. He looks at 1 Tim­o­thy 3:16–17 and asks it to sup­port a doc­trine larg­er than the scope of its words will bear.

Revelation 22:18–19: Do not add or subtract.

But what about Rev­e­la­tion 22:18–19? For here St. John announces a curse on any­one who adds or sub­tracts, thus:

For I tes­ti­fy unto every man that heareth the words of the prophe­cy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are writ­ten in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophe­cy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are writ­ten in this book.

Strong words indeed. But again, as else­where, the Protes­tant apol­o­gist reads more into the text than is there. The bless­ing and the curse apply only to “the words of this book”—only to Rev­e­la­tion. John men­tions no curse on those who add to or take away from Gala­tians or Luke or Job or Tobit. (Would that he had said Tobit.) If this text proves a sola of any kind, it proves solus Apoc­a­lyp­sis, and I doubt any Protes­tant would advo­cate that. Not even Harold Camp­ing is that mad, and he makes Mr. Bugay look like the pith and sum of coher­ence. It is also worth not­ing that, even if the text does teach sola scrip­tura, the curse for remov­ing books should make any Protes­tant gaze upon his 66-book canon with fear and trem­bling.

Luke 16:29: Listen to Moses and the prophets.

Enter the polem­i­cal rogue Mr. John Bugay. Mr. Bugay very kind­ly referred me to a blog post he wrote in response to some­thing Dr. Michael Lic­cione had said, at Called to Com­mu­nion, in the com­box of Joshua Lim’s con­ver­sion sto­ry. (Dr. Lic­cione seems to be Mr. Bugay’s white whale.) The dis­cus­sion starts at com­ment 275. The rea­son I want to dis­cuss Mr. Bugay’s blog post from last June is in part because he sent it scream­ing into my inbox, but also because it con­tains three vers­es which I con­fess I had nev­er heard used to sup­port sola scrip­tura. These impress me if for no rea­son oth­er than the evi­dence they give of the amaz­ing eiseget­i­cal cre­ativ­i­ty of Mr. Bugay. The polem­i­cal rogue has deft pow­ers of inven­tion. The vers­es in ques­tion are Luke 16:29, and both Ps. 16:5 and Ps. 119:105, which can be dis­cussed togeth­er.

Luke 16:29 reads, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” By cit­ing this text, Mr. Bugay means for us to believe that Jesus is appeal­ing to an inter­pre­tive par­a­digm by which “Moses and the prophets” are the stan­dard for estab­lish­ing a doc­tri­nal point. But we need to back up a lit­tle bit in order to under­stand the con­text in which Jesus says these words, because the polem­i­cal rogue, slap­dash as ever, gives no hint of that.

At this point in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is telling the para­ble of the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus, the beg­gar who had lain out­side the rich man’s gate, beg­ging for food but receiv­ing none, has died and gone to his eter­nal reward. The rich man has also died, and ends up in Hades. From Hades, he can see Lazarus in glo­ry, and he begs Abra­ham (who stands beside Lazarus) to send some­one to the rest of his broth­ers (who are still alive) to warn them what they need to do to avoid such tor­ment. Abra­ham sug­gests that Lazarus’s broth­ers should “lis­ten to Moses and the prophets.” The impli­ca­tion of this statement—which Jesus lat­er points out—is that if Lazarus’s broth­ers aren’t per­suad­ed by Moses and the prophets to repent, nei­ther are they going to be per­suad­ed by any­thing else, not even some­one com­ing back from the dead.

The key thing to notice here, how­ev­er, is that that Christ is telling us about repen­tance, not doc­trine. His sub­ject is not the rule of faith. This is, after all, a line of dia­logue in a para­ble. The point of the sto­ry is that once you shut your ears to Moses and the prophets, you nec­es­sar­i­ly shut your ears to any oth­er rea­son to believe. Now, that hard­ly estab­lish­es a prin­ci­ple of bib­li­cal exclu­siv­i­ty; it affirms, even if implic­it­ly, that oth­er rea­sons to repent (such as wit­ness­ing a mir­a­cle) count. It is not that Scrip­ture alone brings one to repen­tance; but rather, that rejec­tion of Scrip­ture pre­cludes repen­tance. Christ is not telling us about the nature of scrip­ture; he is telling us about the obsti­na­cy of human beings in reject­ing God.

Mr. Bugay’s attempt to use Luke 16:29 to estab­lish sola scrip­tura is cre­ative. I praise his pluck if not his care. For as with all the oth­er texts, a care­ful look at con­text and word­ing makes it clear that Mr. Bugay is read­ing into the verse a doc­trine that is not to be found there. He does not read Luke 16:29 and say, “Oh, my ears and whiskers! sola scrip­tura!” No. Rather, he pre­sumes the gold is there before he opens the first page, then plows through the Bible with a divin­ing rod. His whole body shakes about with histri­on­ic fer­vor.

Psalms 16 & 119: Thy word a lamp to my feet.

Psalm 16:5 and 119:105 can be viewed togeth­er, because they each say the same thing. Psalm 16:5 reads, “The Lord is the por­tion of mine inher­i­tance and of my cup; thou main­tainest my lot.” Psalm 119:105 reads, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” Some trans­la­tions of Psalm 16:5, in Lutheresque fash­ion, include the word “alone” to read, “The Lord alone is the por­tion of mine inher­i­tance.” It is not a ques­tion worth quib­bling over; even if one con­cedes that the word should be there, the verse is not talk­ing about the Bible but about God. Is Mr. Bugay con­fus­ing the two? Is God a book? God did inspire Scrip­ture, but I nev­er before heard any­one say that God is Scrip­ture. As far as Psalm 119:105, it cer­tain­ly prais­es God’s word, but nowhere does it state a prin­ci­ple of exclu­siv­i­ty, nor does Mr. Bugay explain why God’s word is to be lim­it­ed to the Bible. Like Dr.* White, he assumes it a pri­ori, but nowhere does the verse state any such thing.

I admire Mr. Bugay his cre­ativ­i­ty, but I can’t say much for his exe­ge­sis. He even claims he can find sola scrip­tura in Eden, where not only was there no scrip­ture but there was no writ­ing. Eve did not hold open a scroll before the ser­pent and say, “Here in the book it is writ.” I could more eas­i­ly claim that Adam and Eve had oral tra­di­tion. And inci­den­tal­ly, it was­n’t the oral tra­di­tion that failed, but the fact that Eve dis­obeyed it.

Sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible. What pro­po­nents must do—what they can only do—is to take some text that speaks well of scrip­ture, no mat­ter how gen­er­al­ly, and try to derive from that some prin­ci­ple of exclu­siv­i­ty. The prob­lem is, Catholics do not reject a high doc­trine of Scrip­ture. We embrace the texts that Protes­tants cite. But you can­not prove exclu­siv­i­ty from them. Protes­tant apol­o­gists make the same error when they cite the Church Fathers: They find a verse prais­ing the scrip­tures, or prov­ing some point from them, and then imme­di­ate­ly claim to have proven exclu­siv­i­ty. They haven’t. Until the Protes­tant apol­o­gist can demon­strate how such-and-such a verse proves exclu­siv­i­ty, sola scrip­tura con­tin­ues to fail its own test.