On the Plausibility of Sola Scriptura

This post concentrates on one reason why sola scriptura, if assessed conceptually and philologically, is problematic.

The idea of sola scriptura is important for various Protestant groups. As a principle for understanding the nature and function of scripture, it was incipient during and developed especially in the wake of Martin Luther’s debate at Leipzig with Johann Eck in the summer of 1519 (for a recent discussion, see Richard Rex’s The Making of Martin Luther, 152–153). There is an important historical point here that gets missed in claims that sola scriptura was the motivation or cause of Protestant reforms: the Leipzig Disputation happened nearly two years after 1517 when Luther presented his 95 theses, which mention no scripture principle and, notably, assume the legitimacy of the papacy and indulgences alike. For Protestants who embrace sola scriptura, its import and status as a “cause” is thus a matter of retrospective, personal judgment.

Deciding exactly what sola scriptura is, what it entails, and also whether to accept it, remain topics of debate among Protestants to this day (e.g., see the paper by Protestant writer Henk van den Belt, “The Problematic Character of Sola Scriptura,” 38–55, who also dismisses as ahistorical the efforts to bolster sola scriptura by comparing it to a recent foil sometimes called solo scriptura). Despite its contested definitions, a general description of sola scriptura’s core claim can suffice for present purposes: the only decisive basis for identifying doctrine or resolving theological disputes is scripture. Additionally, this singular (i.e., “only”) status tends to overlap with the idea that scripture is materially and formally sufficient as a foundation for Christian doctrine. Note how nothing here touches on whether or not tradition is important; whether history is important; whether community is important; and so on. Let us assume they are all important for the supporter of sola scriptura. This description of sola scriptura focuses on what it claims as the decisiveness and qualitative singularity of scripture as the crucial reference point for doctrine.

Sola scriptura’s foundational role is evident in a text like the “1689 Baptist Confession of Faith,” originally created in late 1670s London. Its leading doctrinal statement is not about God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit or the church or the nature of revelation or original sin or the nature of salvation, but rather a statement about select texts as constituting “the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience” (§1). Doctrine must stem from scripture—which is comprised of 66 texts (see §2) that themselves constitute “the Word of God” according to §4–5. Building on these ideas, the following section then declares that “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture” (§6, my italics). In other words, the test for anything to count as binding doctrine is that it must be expressly articulated in scripture or “necessarily contained” in the sense of a compelling (i.e., force of necessity) logical demand from the words in the texts. With structural priority even over the doctrine of God in this Baptist confession, sola scriptura is the doctrine that in principle undergirds everything else.

The one issue to point out for now is that sola scriptura does not, and cannot, live up to its own standard.

1. Premise 1: According to sola scriptura, doctrine is to be expressly stated or logically necessitated by the written words of scripture.
2. Premise 2: Sola scriptura is a doctrine.
3. Observation: No biblical texts teach sola scriptura; nor does any text present an idea that logical necessity requires to be deemed tantamount to sola scriptura.
4. Inference: Accordingly, sola scriptura fails the test that it sets for how to identify doctrine.
5. Conclusion: Sola scriptura is self-defeating and therefore false.

Finally, given §4–5 of the 1689 Baptist Confession, there is a textual issue to acknowledge. By my count, using some combination of λόγος (“word, utterance; issue; reason”) and θεός (“deity”), the New Testament itself refers to “word(s) of God” some 45 times, with at least 2 relevant variants of this word pairing in John 1:1 and Acts 20:32 (if we factor in the synonym ῥῆμα, with one variant, then the phrase occurs some 52 times). In none of the usages is “word(s) of God” an expression that indicates a particular text or collection of texts. It refers to Jesus himself; events of apostolic preaching; divine utterances like the Sinai revelation; and the like. This usage resembles what one finds in the Old Testament (MT and LXX), where “word of God” likewise is not a textual expression but refers to oracular phenomena. Nor do church fathers use “word of God” in a textual sense; by it, they very frequently mean God the Son (as in, e.g., John 1:1; cf. also 17:17; and 13:8). Philologically, then, within the ancient texts themselves, this terminology is not obviously even pertinent to ideas of “scripture” or “canon” or “Bible”—concepts which the Baptist Confession presupposes as pertinent already in §2 and identifies as “the Word of God” in §4–5, 8 (see also, e.g., Westminster Confession 1.V, originally from 1646 London).

In short, sola scriptura is a uniquely modern, revisionist conception of scripture that, when measured by its own standard, fails logically and exegetically and ought to be dismissed. It is groundless.