The Bible:
Fallible Collection of Infallible Books?
R.C. Sproul and the Protestant tradition says the Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books. If so, what are the ramifications for trusting the message of Sacred Scripture?
This short essay was written as Dr. David Anderson, my uncle and senior pastor of Faith Baptist Church, simultaneously wrote his own essay. Read it here. The point was to organically see how our reactions to this particular quote from Sproul differed due to some theological differences my uncle and I have. I hope to do more interactions like this in the future. Body links look like this.
On October 31, 1517, a monk named Martin Luther is said to have nailed a document on the doors of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. His famous Ninety-five Theses challenged the authority, abuses, and some doctrines of the Catholic Church.
Forty-one teachings of Luther were deemed heretical. And at the Diet of Worms, where the highly educated monk was given an opportunity to recant those particular teachings, Luther doubled-down, saying:
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.
I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.
May God help me. Amen.
Martin Luther
Diet of Worms (1521)
“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures,” he argued. This position developed, spread geographically, and became a foundational doctrine of Protestantism. It’s commonly referred to as sola scriptura and asserts Christian Scripture as the only infallible authority in matters of faith and practice.
Presenting the Dilemma
Reviewing Luther’s impassioned challenge may seem an initial digression from a question involving the biblical canon and how we are to know which books are the “right” books. But, in fact, it’s profoundly relevant to ponder. What happened during the 16th century Diet of Worms paved way for a lingering 21st century philosophical and theological can of worms.
As Sproul puts it:
“How do we know that the right books have been included in this collection, or library of books, that we call Sacred Scripture? And by what authority do we determine what the canon (i.e., the right collection) is? …
According to the Protestants, each book that is found in the Bible IS an infallible book. But the historical process, undergone by the Church, was a historical process that was done by a church that is NOT infallible.
… So the collection itself is a fallible collection of infallible books.”
In short, though one may believe a particular book is infallible (i.e., it can’t be wrong) because it is inspired by God, the table of contents page telling you which books make up your Bible as a whole is fallible (i.e., it can be wrong). There could be a longer list of books. There could be shorter list of books. According to Protestants, says Sproul, your Bible’s list of books is fallible.
Think about sola scriptura. Imagine the potential issues which could arise from trying to derive your ONLY infallible teachings from a fallible list of teachings.
For example, take Luther’s other fundamental contribution to Protestant theology, sola fide, or justification by faith alone. St. Paul’s letter to Rome was hugely responsible for his new doctrine, especially Romans 1:17. It is that single verse — within a believed to be infallible book — which is said to have made “the lights come on for Luther.” He believed to have found the true Word (Jesus) clearly in that verse; in that book.
“You see a person is justified by works and not by faith alone,” James 2:24 explicitly says.
Interestingly, the epistle of James is problematic for sola fide. “You see a person is justified by works and not by faith alone,” James 2:24 explicitly says. If one holds James to be infallible as well, then the only time the Holy Spirit inspired a writer to refer to justification by “faith alone” was with a “not” directly before it. For theological reasons, Luther added the word “alone” to his translation of Romans 3:28, rationalized the addition by confidently believing he was “a doctor above all the doctors in Popedom,” and ridiculed James as unproblematic because it was a non-apostolic “straw” epistle.
Luther believed he had found the infallible teaching of God’s Word in Romans. So much so, he was even willing to alter the canonical list, add to the biblical text, and risk his life to spread this news.
We finally recovered God’s message of salvation to humanity. How? Because justification by faith alone is not some soteriological speculation, says Luther. It’s an authoritative truth given by God; it’s an infallible truth. IF Romans is an infallible book by nature, and keeping our Lutheran theological tradition in view, then we can know the saving message God wanted to tell us.
So, is Romans an infallible book by nature? As Sproul implies, Protestants can only answer that big IF with an internally ambiguous “maybe” or “I think” or “probably.”
Now multiply that epistemic formula (i.e., how we know the right books) to every major teaching read out of every book in the Bible. Also, recall there may be more infallible letters of Paul, further divinely inspired writings, and mistakenly included letters or books which could seriously correct a 16th century mistaken interpretation from Romans.
There is another point to consider. Sola scriptura epistemically precedes Scripture itself. Sola fide is a descriptive theology believed by reading Scripture. Sola scriptura is a prescriptive theology believed before reading Scripture.
The Bible does not claim for itself infallibility or canonical completeness. It’s impossible without also containing an infallible table of contents. Therefore, without any other means of potentially infallible information being given, as sola scriptura prescribes before reading the first page, then knowledge of what the first page actually is, within Protestant epistemology, must be fallible.
Considering the importance placed on every single word of every single book by serious interpreters, who within many Protestant Evangelical communions believe the Bible is self-authenticating, clear to the rational reader, and its own harmonizing interpreter, a fallible collection would be epistemically troubling for any systematic theology inside the predefined confines of sola scriptura.
This is not a musing into abstract theological water. The practical implications are startling. Depending on what sort of Christian you talk to today, or throughout history, you’ll find them reading different Bibles. Different Christians are carrying a different “Word of God.”
Navigating the Dilemma
Navigating this dilemma first requires either affirming or denying Sproul’s conclusion. Maybe you deny Sproul’s conclusion. For the scope of this brief reflection, I can’t interact with all possible escape routes. Suffice it to say each position suffers from the same basic theologically internal problem of a fallible authority recognizing infallible authority. As such, any of those positions I’ve read have been severely unsatisfying. It seems to me the very essence of being Protestant — holding to a Lutheran or Calvinist tradition of sola scriptura — logically requires holding to a fallible collection.
God knows what the canonical list is, but according to Protestants, he didn’t reveal that information in any infallible way.
Of course, this does not imply God doesn’t know which books he did and did not inspire. God knows what the canonical list is. But according to Protestants, he didn’t reveal that information in any infallible way. It’s a divine secret.
The implications of this reality are significant. It illumines a potentially fundamental problem for Protestantism as a theological system.
Having a fallible list of books does nothing to denigrate the infallibility of a book. Epistemically though, it significantly denigrates the level of trust one should have in the grand narrative of Sacred Scripture. Having a fallible list of books, I would argue, establishes an epistemic wall too high for an individual to justifiably overcome when other options are reasonably available.
Let me be clear. I am a philosophical fallibilist, meaning no belief can ever be rationally supported or justified in an absolutely conclusive way. So I am not placing an unjustified expectation on the biblical canon. I don’t expect absolute certainty regarding any propositional belief — including that one. Every belief ultimately requires faith or trust in one or more unprovable assumptions. But this doesn’t mean all unprovable assumptions are created equal. Some are better than others. Therefore, it seems we have an intellectual and ethical responsibility to hold the most credulous faith possible. In other words, we should believe what is most probably true.
I am also an evidentialist. Evidentialism states one is justified in believing something if and only if the available evidence supports believing that thing. So, in the biblical case, when I’m looking at the evidence for which theological system can bear the epistemic weight of believing exactly all the right books — neither one too many or one too few — are included, I judge any explanations against criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, and simplicity.
So, with those concepts in mind, why do I think the “fallible collection of infallible books” dilemma is significant and likely part of a devastating problem for Protestantism? Because, if the Christian wants to affirm the existence of infallible books, there is an alternative theological system within the Christian fold which, at the very least, matches Protestantism’s explanatory power and scope. It also proves to plot a far more cogent and straight-forward epistemic path.
Catholic theology denies the Scripturally unfounded — a paradox in its own right — doctrine of sola scriptura.
Catholicism provides an internally consistent and epistemically reasonable alternative. Catholic theology denies the Scripturally unfounded — a paradox in its own right — doctrine of sola scriptura. Therefore, instead of putting faith in a countless sea of fallible and increasingly circular subjective decisions about what constitutes as divinely authoritative information, faith is put in two or so historically viable events. Leading examples would be the resurrection of the historical Jesus by God, and whether there is good evidence Matthew 16:13–19 reaches back to an historical dialogue. If the evidence points toward those being true, then the next step of faith would be to go where Peter was, as he was given “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” which was understood as a successive office (Is. 22:21), and the objective authority from Christ to bind and loose.
By believing a few historical events to be most probably true, one makes a single, fallible, linear move of faith into the Catholic theological system. In the Catholic system, God is said to have provided the living resources to authoritatively, objectively, and reliably answer difficult theological questions. “How do you know which books are the right books?” is one such question. This is an epistemically reasonable framework.
No such resources exist in the Protestant system. On top of having no singularly objective resources, prescriptive Protestant theology (sola scriptura) necessarily places the highest epistemic demands on Sacred Scripture to not only be interpretively clear, but an unambiguously complete and closed canon. Yet the empirical data clearly points to Sacred Scripture not being interpretively clear on even fundamental issues. Whether the Bible is an unambiguously complete and closed canon is a question each Protestant, like Luther, has to fallibly answer for themselves — along with answering the complex interpretations and theological dynamics contained within a diverse library of books written in a language and time far removed from their own.
…a fallible collection of fallible books.
Furthermore, all this is without mentioning another empirical problem which significantly affects sola scriptura. Most conservative Protestant scholars are willing to attribute infallibility, “strictly speaking, … only to the autographic text of Scripture.” No one has the original inspired documents. So, if sola scriptura was a well grounded prescriptive theology, it therefore could ONLY be applied to centuries old and difference ridden copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of the original manuscripts, at best. This means the fundamental Protestant theology can not, “strictly speaking,” even be applied to a fallible collection of infallible books; it is actually applied to a fallible collection of fallible books.
For divine information important as one’s eternal destiny, the Protestant system seems an epistemically unreasonable framework.
Conclusion
Luther’s noble and inflammatory cry, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason,” consequently led to an internal theology which worked its way to producing a fallible collection of potentially infallible books. And I am unconvinced the fallible collection of infallible books formulation stands the test of Scripture (whatever that means in this context) or clear reason. Clear reason, as far as I can see, is on the side of denying sola scriptura and accepting a wider landscape of infallible Christian authority.
“How do we know that the right books have been included in this collection, or library of books, that we call Sacred Scripture? And by what authority do we determine what the canon (i.e., the right collection) is?” We check our theological assumptions against the light of clear-er reason and recognize how Jesus, a Christian’s ultimate authority, chose to protect his deposit of faith.
