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Sola Scriptura – An Unbiblical Recipe for Confusion Sola scriptura was the central doctrine and foundation for all I believed when I was Protestant. On a popular level, it simply meant, “If a teaching isn’t explicit in the Bible, then we don’t accept it as doctrine!” And it seemed so simple. And yet, I do not recall ever hearing a detailed teaching explicating it. It was always a given. Unchallenged. Diving deeper into its meaning, especially when I was challenged to defend my Protestant faith against Catholicism, I found there to be no book specifically on the topic and...

1. Jesus is the Word of God become flesh. 2. The Bible is part of the Word of God. 3. Jesus is not the Bible and the Bible is not Jesus. 4. Jesus as the Word of God is truly God and is worthy of worship. 5. The Bible which is part of the Word of God is not God and cannot be worshipped. 6. Jesus as the Word of God existed before His incarnation. 7. The Bible as part of the Word of God was written by men from different cultures and time period under the inspiration of the...

"If a teaching isn’t explicit in the Bible, then we don’t accept it as doctrine!" That belief, commonly known as sola scriptura, was a central component of all I believed as a Protestant. This bedrock Protestant teaching claims that Scripture alone is the sole rule of faith and morals for Christians. Diving deeper into its meaning to defend my Protestant faith against Catholicism about twenty years ago, I found that there was no uniform understanding of this teaching among Protestant pastors and no book I could read to get a better understanding of it.What role does tradition play? How...

Below is a set of theses from the late Dr. Marquart, posted here in honor of the Reformation. Originally written for class and perhaps a conference, they speak of what exactly Sola Scriptura means and what it means for the church. Blessed Festival of the Reformation! Verbum domini manet in aeternum. The two focal points of the Reformation conflict were the Gospel’s core content (justification) and the Gospel’s authority (Scripture alone—sola scriptura).“Sola scriptura” means to assert the sole authority of Christ over His church, to the exclusion of all other powers and authorities. IESOUS KYRIOS (Jesus is Lord, I Cor....

One of the great battle cries of the Protestant Reformation was “sola scriptura!” Many thought that the Catholic Church had cluttered up the simple Christian faith by adding all sorts of practices, customs and doctrines over the centuries. They thought the Church in their day was guilty of exactly the same Pharisaical obsession with traditions condemned by Jesus in this Sunday’s gospel (Mark 7:1-23). The solution, it seemed, was simple. Let’s purify the Church by ditching all these traditions and keeping the Bible alone. But if we read this portion of the Bible closely, the Lord is not telling us...

What is Sola Scriptura? "We believe in the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety as the sole rule of faith for the Christian!" You may have heard these words or something very similar to them from a Fundamentalist or Evangelical Protestant. They are, in essence, the meaning of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, or "Scripture alone," which alleges that the Bible – as interpreted by the individual believer – is the only source of religious authority and is the Christian’s sole rule of faith or criterion regarding what is to be believed. By this doctrine, which is one...

This shockingly large number comes from Matt Tuter, international projects manager at Family Radio--the California-based Christian organization that falsely predicted the world's end this past weekend--in an interview with the Christian Post. The bulk of the $100 million, Tuter insists, came from selling off property (their KFTL television station and a FM station), fu although there appear plenty of people who donated their life savings to the cause. Tuter, whose family first got involved with the Family Radio organization when he was a baby, was also sure to clarify that "I remember when the organization was normal!" Apparently, this was...

The “flabbergasted” biblical numerologist Harold Camping has emerged from seclusion and addressed the world about the still impending rapture...last night, the 89-year-old fake prophet announced that the rapture was far from cancelled – but simply postponed. More specifically, he was not off on the dates. May 21st marked a more “spiritual” beginning of the end, and in five months the real end will come....Camping, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Were not changing a date at all; we’re just learning that we have to be a little more spiritual about this. But on Oct. 21, the world will be...

.....The guidelines I used in interpreting Scripture seemed simple enough: When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. I believed that those who were truly faithful and honest in following this principle would achieve Christian unity. To my surprise, this “common sense” approach led not to increased Christian clarity and unity, but rather to a spiritual free-for-all! Those who most strongly adhered to believing “only the Bible” tended to become the, most factious, divisive, and combative of Christians-perhaps unintentionally. In fact, it seemed to me that the more one held to the Bible as the...

"Have ye not read?...Have ye not read?...If ye had known what this meaneth."—Matthew 12:3-7. HE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES were great readers of the law. They studied the sacred books continually, poring over each word and letter. They made notes of very little importance, but still very curious notes—as to which was the middle verse of the entire old Testament, which verse was halfway to the middle, and how many times such a word occurred, and even how many times a letter occurred, and the size of the letter, and its peculiar position. They have left us a mass of wonderful...

Introduction Has God made himself known only in the Bible and/or Jesus? Are there any other ways in which He has revealed himself to us? If so, how? What is the nature, extent, and value of that revelation and how does it compare with the knowledge we have of God through Christ and Scripture? Does everyone inherently know God? If so, in what way(s)? These are just some of the questions we will treat in this brief paper. Our use of the term “revelation” comes from the Greek term ajpokavluyi" (apokalupsis) and means “to uncover, reveal, disclose,” or “make known”...

I. And the first step, which I hope is an obvious one but becomes crucial as we move ahead, the first step is for us to recognize that the Bible teaches that our convictions are not to be based upon human wisdom! Human wisdom isn’t always wrong; sometimes people used their intellect and their independent ability to research, and find facts and come to truths which are very valuable. The problem is not that human wisdom is always wrong. The problem is that human wisdom is (1) fallible, and (2) not a sufficient foundation for believing anything about God. Because...

This is an excerpt of the rebutal of Steve Rays article on "why the Bereans Rejected Sola Scriptura", by James White Sola Scriptura: Misrepresented AGAINThe main criticism that can be lodged against Mr. Ray's work is quite simple: he does not accurately portray (or possibly even understand) the Protestant position that he has abandoned, and is now intent upon attacking. This is a common problem in Roman Catholic apologetics: and the fact that many Protestants don't know their faith very well, and hence allow such misrepresentations to pass without comment or correction, only exacerbates the situation. We begin with the...

One of the common Catholic objections to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura is that without the Church to offer authoritative interpretations we are all just left with our own personal readings of Scripture. So, the argument goes, evangelicals may talk a big game about the Bible being our ultimate authority, but actually the final authority rests with each individual interpretation of Scripture. In light of this chaotic free-for-all, consider how much better is the Catholic understanding of authoritative Tradition with a capital T. There are a number of ways an evangelical could respond to this argument. 1. Illumination. We...

The sixteenth century Reformation was responsible for restoring to the Church the principle of sola Scriptura, a principle that had been operative within the Church from the very beginning of the post apostolic age.Initially the apostles taught orally, but with the close of the apostolic age, all special revelation that God wanted preserved for man was codified in the written Scriptures. Sola Scriptura is the teaching, founded on the Scriptures themselves, that there is only one special revelation from God that man possesses today, the written Scriptures or the Bible. Consequently the Scriptures are materially sufficient and are by their...

The Reformation was responsible for restoring to the Church the principle of sola Scriptura, a principle which had been operative within the Church from the very beginning of the post apostolic age. Initially the apostles taught orally but with the close of the apostolic age all special revelation that God wanted preserved for man was codified in the written Scriptures. Sola Scriptura is the teaching and belief that there is only one special revelation from God that man possesses today, the written Scriptures or the Bible, and that consequently the Scriptures are materially sufficient and are by their very nature...

A Quick Ten-Step Refutation of Sola Scriptura By Dave Armstrong 1. Sola Scriptura Is Not Taught in the Bible Catholics agree with Protestants that Scripture is a "standard of truth"—even the preeminent one—but not in a sense that rules out the binding authority of authentic apostolic Tradition and the Church. The Bible doesn’t teach that. Catholics agree that Scripture is materially sufficient. In other words, on this view, every true doctrine can be found in the Bible, if only implicitly and indirectly by deduction. But no biblical passage teaches that Scripture is the formal authority or rule of faith in...

Neo-orthodoxy is the term used to identify an existentialist variety of Christianity. Because it denies the essential objective basis of truth—the absolute truth and authority of Scripture—neo-orthodoxy must be understood as pseudo-Christianity. Its heyday came in the middle of the twentieth century with the writings of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebaur. Those men echoed the language and the thinking of [Soren] Kierkegaard, speaking of the primacy of “personal authenticity,” while downplaying or denying the significance of objective truth. Barth, the father of neo-orthodoxy, explicitly acknowledged his debt to Kierkegaard. Neo-orthodoxy’s attitude toward Scripture is a microcosm...

What do I mean, when I speak of the Bible’s internal consistency? I am talking about the Bible’s internal harmony. From the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to the last book, Revelation, the Bible is absolutely consistent. The skeptic says: “Why is that an evidence of divine origin? There are plenty of books that are internally consistent.” I agree, but let me share with you seven factors that make the consistency of the Bible an amazing evidence of its divine origin. A. The Bible addresses life’s most controversial questions. How did the universe come into existence? Does God exist?...

The issue of Scripture and Scripture Alone (or what Protestants have come to call the principle of sola Scriptura) is a matter that divides professing Christians as to the foundation of their faith and what defines their faith. Back in the days of the Reformation when there were men who felt that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ had been not only corrupted by the Roman Catholic Church, but had virtually disappeared under the mask of human traditions and rituals and things that kept people from actually hearing the good news of Jesus Christ, in order to reform the...