Three verses that don’t prove sola scriptura.

n con­ver­sa­tions with Protes­tants, the top­ic of sola scrip­tura will almost always come up. Accord­ing to those who are per­suad­ed by this idea, the Bible—sixty-six, not sev­en­ty-three, books—is the sole infal­li­ble rule of faith and prac­tice for the Church. What­ev­er is not specif­i­cal­ly in the Bible, what­ev­er one may not log­i­cal­ly infer from it, is not bind­ing upon Chris­tians.

The idea is actu­al­ly self-refut­ing when asked this sim­ple ques­tion: “So where is sola scrip­tura in the Bible? If it is not to be found there, then the teach­ing is self-refut­ing: What­ev­er is not in the Bible is not bind­ing on Chris­tians » Sola scrip­tura is not in the Bible » ergo, sola scrip­tura is not bind­ing on Chris­tians.

Protes­tants do, how­ev­er, have a hand­ful of proof texts; and they often trot them out in order to give some basis to sola scrip­tura. Here are three of them, and why they do not in fact prove this teach­ing.

2 Timothy 3:16–17

“All scrip­ture is inspired by God and prof­itable for teach­ing, for reproof, for cor­rec­tion, and for train­ing in right­eous­ness, that the man of God may be com­plete, equipped for every good work.”

The prob­lem with using 2 Tim­o­thy 3:16–17 as a proof text is that no Catholic denies that all scrip­ture is inspired by God. That’s not the ques­tion. The ques­tion is whether God inspires only scrip­ture. For a Protes­tant to cite this verse is, in fact, to beg the ques­tion.

Acts 17:11

“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thes­sa­loni­ca, for they received the word with all eager­ness, exam­in­ing the scrip­tures dai­ly to see if these things were so.”

This verse is more dif­fi­cult to answer. A Protes­tant will want to claim that the Scrip­tures are pre­sent­ed as the sole stan­dard of proof in this text. There are two main prob­lems, how­ev­er.

First, the “scrip­tures” in ths verse are the Old Tes­ta­ment only; and if—as is likely—the Bere­ans were using the Sep­tu­agint, that canon includ­ed the Deute­ro­canon­i­cal books Protes­tants reject today.

Sec­ond, the “things” in ques­tion, which the Bere­ans sought evi­dence of in the scrip­tures, was the teach­ing of the apos­tles that Jesus ful­filled Old Tes­ta­ment prophe­cy. Thus the Scrip­tures were direct­ly rel­e­vant to the ques­tion that was being asked. Where else would they have looked except the Old Tes­ta­ment? This does not prove that there are no oth­er rules of faith; only that this rule of faith was the only one rel­e­vant to the ques­tion at hand.

Mark 7:13

“You make the word of God of none effect through your tra­di­tion.”

Protes­tants inter­pret this verse as a blan­ket con­dem­na­tion of all tra­di­tion, against “the word of God,” by which they mean the Bible alone.

These words, spo­ken by Jesus, come at the con­clu­sion of his con­dem­na­tion of the Cor­ban rule. The Cor­ban rule was a loop­hole that the Phar­isees had dis­cov­ered in the com­mand to hon­or your father and moth­er by, among oth­er things, tak­ing care of them in their old age. By des­ig­nat­ing a por­tion of one’s income as Tem­ple trea­sury, they could get around this oblig­a­tion.

The impor­tant thing to note here is that Jesus does not con­demn tra­di­tion as such; only a par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion that had devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly in order to avoid a com­mand­ment. The tra­di­tion con­tra­dict­ed Scrip­ture.

But the Catholic teach­ing on tra­di­tion is not that it is con­tra­dic­to­ry to Scrip­ture, but that it is in addi­tion to Scrip­ture. For Protes­tants to cite the Cor­ban rule is to avoid the real nature of the dis­pute between sola scrip­tura and tra­di­tion.

If a tra­di­tion were to be found that con­tra­dicts Scrip­ture, then Catholics would be right to do away with it. But if it is mere­ly in addi­tion to Scrip­ture, Christ’s con­dem­na­tion of the Cor­ban rule has no bear­ing.

 
Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Epic Pew, May 19, 2016.