Why do you feel Sola Scriptura is a Biblical principle ?

Question

Scripture: The Bible is the inerrant word of God and is to be read as the earliest Christians read it: in the light of Tradition and under the guidance of those ordained to teach. The Books of the Old Testament were put together by the Hebrews in the Septuagint (ca 300 B.C.), which includes the seven Books called "Deuterocanonical" by Catholics and "Apocryphal" by Protestants, and was the Old Testament used by the Apostles. The Books of the New Testament were made canonical over time and were first listed over 300 years after the Resurrection.
The idea that all revealed truth is to be found in "66 books" is not only not in Scripture, it is contradicted by Scripture (1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 1 Timothy 3:15, 2 Peter 1:20-21, 2 Peter 3:16). It is a concept unheard of in the Old Testament, where the authority of those who sat on the Chair of Moses (Matthew 23:2-3) existed. In addition to this, for 400 years, there was no defined canon of "Sacred Scripture" aside from the Old Testament; there was no "New Testament"; there was only Tradition and non-canonical books and letters. Once Scripture was defined from the many competing books, Bibles were hand-copied and decorated by monks, were rare and precious, so precious they had to be chained down in the churches so that they would not be stolen. Do you think that the lack of printing presses affected the salvation of those who could not peruse Scripture as we have the luxury of doing?


And given the level of bickering back and forth about what Scripture means, do you believe that God expects each of us to be a scholar of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Chaldean to understand His word and the message of salvation? No! This is why He, in His wisdom, started a Church with teaching authority through Peter, the earthly father of the New Covenant and whose successors sit on the Chair of Peter, just as Abraham was the earthly father of the Old Covenant and his successors sat on the Chair of Moses.



Though we are not to "Judaize" because as Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, warned in the 1st century, " Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity," Christianity can only be fully grasped by understanding it for what it is: the Old Covenant growing into the New Covenant, the fulfillment of the Old Testament religion, the organic result of the coming of the expected Messiah Who was Himself from the Tribe of Judah. Tradition and earthly authority have always been an extremely important part of this:

Malachi 2-7
For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.


Our Lord founded a Church (Matthew 16:18-19), not a book, which was to be the pillar and ground of Truth (1 Timothy 3:15). We can know what this Church teaches by looking not only at Sacred Scripture, but into History and by reading what the earliest Christians have written, what those who've sat on the Chair of Peter have spoken consistently with Scripture and Tradition, and what they've solemnly defined. To believe that the Bible is our only source of Christian Truth is unbiblical and illogical.


And here is a little something to think on for those who believe in sola scriptura: Ignatius, appointed as Bishop of Antioch by Peter, came up against some Jews who resorted to the same mind-set in order to disprove Christ's Messiahship. In his first century letter to the Philadelphians he wrote: "When I heard some saying, If I do not find it in the ancient Scriptures, I will not believe the Gospel; on my saying to them, It is written, they answered me, That remains to be proved."




2 Peter 3:16
As also in all his [Paul's] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

My original question was going to say :

Why do some Protestants like to use 2 Timothy 3:16-17 as a "proof-text" that Sola Scriptura (Bible only) is a Biblical principle?

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Answer 1

Pastor Billy says: truth be told, the ones who claim they hold to sola scriptura don't. They've been waving that false claim around like some sort of banner the last 450 years but in truth they've merely exchanged the authority of the Pope and bishops for the authority of themselves or the local congregational preacher and once they decide they don't like his take on things one of two things happen, they go find another preacher they like or start their own church and become pastors in training.

After the Protestant reformation the Protestants pretty well immediately sub-divided and that subdivision is still on-going to this day. Some of the higher church Protestants still resemble what should be Christian worship yet all of them do not have a valid priesthood and once that was given up there was an authority void created, a black-hole in a sense. The liturgical and sacramental life of the Church was damaged and an attempt to fill this hole the idea of "sola scriptura" arose. It sounded good (superficial as it is) and so some Protestants ran with it such as the dim and plain witted Puritanicals hiss boo hiss.

Answer 2

The key implication of the principle is that interpretations of how to understand and apply the Scriptures do not have the same authority as the Scriptures themselves; hence, the ecclesiastical authority is subject to correction by the Scriptures, even by an individual member of the Church (Luther said, "a simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it"). The intention of the Reformation was to correct the perceived errors of the Catholic Church by appeal to the uniqueness of the Bible's authority and to reject added-on tradition as a source of original authority in addition to the Bible (which did not have any Biblical basis and/or contradicted with Scripture). The Apostolic Church's teaching authority is in the scriptures alone.

Answer 3

Bible Alone did not exist until the Waldensians in the High Middle Ages, Wycliffe and Hus in the Late Middle Ages and Luther and Zwingli in the 16th Cent. SS is not in the Bible (nor is Sola Fide,Faith Alone) and they are absent from the Early Church. There would no Bible alone if it were not for Tradition and the Church(1st the Jewish and then the Catholic).

Answer 4

Y'all sure are wordy. I feel like I've got a bunch of guns pointed at me 'cuz I ain't Catholic.

The nerve of you people, thinkin' you can go around pointing fingers at all us dumb people who love God and want to be in the center of His will. Don't go twistin' this all around and say that I said you're wrong, 'cuz I don't know. I don't believe that any man or religion has all the answers. I believe that the Bible has most of them, if you take the time to look. Maybe you have some wierd off the wall question that nobody understands, ask God, He knows your heart and if you'll listen, I mean really listen, He'll tell you what you need to know. Most of the time He already has, you just didn't want to hear it 'cuz ya' think ya' know it all!

Answer 5

I think the only ones who believe in "sola scriptura" are protestants. And it is not biblical as you said. Jesus spoke His words, just as the Apostles spoke Jesus's words, there was not a stenographer or secretary taking dictation, and there wasnt a Kinko's or Office Max nearby to run off copies, or a Barnes and Noble to go buy a copy

Answer 6

"The Bible is the inerrant word of God"

Well that'll be fun. For starters, with pi equal to three according to the bible construction will become a lot more interesting. Secondly, I see 'stoning' picking up as a pastime. Yeah, nothing but fun with literal bible truth.

Answer 7

I Timothy 3:15

The church of God is the pillar of truth.

Answer 8

The Christian religion teaches that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords, the only One and the very Self that has life in Himself.

"All who acknowledge and worship any other God than the Lord the Savior, Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah God Himself in human form, sin against this first commandment. Those also sin against it who persuade themselves of the actual existence of three Divine persons from eternity. For as they confirm themselves in that error, they become more and more natural and corporeal, and at length are unable to comprehend interiorly any Divine truth; and if they listen to it and accept it, they still defile it and cover it up with fallacies. They may therefore be compared to those who dwell in the lowest story or the cellar of a house, and in consequence hear nothing of the conversation of those who are in the second and third stories, because the floor above their heads keeps the sound from penetrating to them. [2] The human mind is like a house of three stories, in the lowest of which are those who have confirmed themselves in favor of three Gods from eternity, while in the second and third stories are those who acknowledge and believe in one God under a visible human form, and that the Lord God the Savior is He" (True Christian Religion n. 296).

Also - THE GOD OF HEAVEN IS THE LORD

"First of all it must be known who the God of heaven is, since upon that all the other things depend. Throughout all heaven no other than the Lord alone is acknowledged as the God of heaven. There it is said, as He Himself taught,

That He is one with the Father; that the Father is in Him, and He in the Father; that he who sees Him sees the Father; and that everything that is holy goes forth from Him (John 10:30, 35; 14:9-11; 16:13-15).

I have often talked with angels on this subject, and they have invariably declared that in heaven they are unable to divide the Divine into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine is One and this One is in the Lord. They also said that those of the church who come from this world having an idea of three Divine beings cannot be admitted into heaven, since their thought wanders from one Divine being to another; and it is not allowable there to think three and say one.{1} Because in heaven everyone speaks from his thought, since speech there is the immediate product of the thought, or the thought speaking. Consequently, those in this world who have divided the Divine into three, and have adopted a different idea of each, and have not made that idea one and centered it in the Lord, cannot be received into heaven, because in heaven there is a sharing of all thoughts, and therefore if any one came thinking three and saying one, he would be at once found out and rejected. But let it be known that all those who have not separated what is true from what is good, or faith from love, accept in the other life, when they have been taught, the heavenly idea of the Lord, that He is the God of the universe. It is otherwise with those who have separated faith from life, that is, who have not lived according to the precepts of true faith" (Heaven and Hell n.2).

Answer 9

For those who defend the priesthood of the Catholic Church, it should be pointed out that your greatest adversary is the apostle Paul.

Answer 10

No. Mistake #a million: Confusing formal and fabric sufficiency. the fabric sufficiency of Scripture." This implies that Scripture involves the whole lot crucial for Christian educating. All doctrines can also be determined there, implicitly or explicitly, however they are all there. Formal sufficiency, then again, is the function that you're making an attempt to turn out. Formal sufficiency implies that Scripture involves all crucial Christian fact, and (and it is a very foremost "and") that Scripture's that means is so transparent that the Church and Tradition don't seem to be crucial to reach at a correct interpretation of the that means of Scripture. For illustration, the Bible does now not say that Christians will have to baptize babies. Nor does it say that simplest adults have got to be baptized. It without difficulty does not let us know. Paul and the opposite writers of the New Testament assumed their readers already knew the reply to this question from gazing the train of the Church, so they did not see the ought to deal with this predicament explicitly. Some folks, corresponding to Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians say the Biblical proof that infants have been baptized within the New Testament is well. So, hence, we will have to baptize infants. Others, corresponding to Baptists, Pentecostals, and Jehovah's Witnesses say the Biblical proof indicates that infants weren't, and will have to now not be baptized. Scholars on each side of the talk admit that the Biblical proof is without difficulty inconclusive. But, if the proof is inconclusive in this, or every other doctrine, then Scripture is obviously now not enough to deliver us a conclusive interpretation of the whole lot that it teaches. In reality, Scripture itself denies that its doctrines are regularly transparent to all readers. In II Peter three:15,sixteen we learn, "Our pricey brother, Paul additionally wrote you with the knowledge that God gave him. He writes the identical means in all his letters, speakme in them of those issues. His letters include a few matters which can be tough to have an understanding of, which the ignorant and the volatile folks distort, as they do different Scriptures, to their possess destruction." So, we see, right here, that the Bible warns us that its doctrines can also be misunderstood, they are able to be doubtful, and they are able to be distorted. Mistake #two: Using a hermeneutic of anachronism. Mistake #three: Thinking that the word, "Word of God" applies to Scripture on my own. Scripture does check with itself as God's Word, however many different matters are referred to as God's Word as good. Mistake #four: Confusing "testimony" with "authority". Mistake #five: Many say we can not have a couple of superb authority. On the skin, that could sound convincing. But, observe, that it is fake, while you seem at it extra cautiously. The 4 Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are similarly superb and similarly authoritative. And one Gospel does now not subjugate the opposite Gospel. The identical with the prophet Isaiah and the prophet Jeremiah. Mistake #6: The try to shift the load of evidence. II Timothy three:17 does now not educate the formal sufficiency of Scripture, men and women, it without difficulty does not. It teaches, maybe, fabric sufficiency, which I could be flawlessly blissful to move together with. But, simply considering that Scripture involves the entire crucial gear, keep in mind, Paul is pronouncing that the person of God, by way of Scripture, can be in a position, can be capable, can be "utterly provided", because it says within the King James, for each well paintings. But, simply considering that it'll deliver you the entire gear that you wish to have, doesn't suggest that it'll always make you in a position to make use of that gear correctly. Scripture says we have got to rightly divide the Word of God. That implies that a few folks can wrongly divide it. They can wrongly use it. So, simply having the Bible on my own isn't adequate to completely equip the person of God, within the feel that, he will have the entire uncooked ingredients, he will have the entire gear, however he won't understand how to make use of it correctly. within the very identical Epistle, in II Timothy two:two, Paul expenditures Timothy with handing on oral culture, oral culture. All of the apostles PREACHED, handed on their teachings through phrase of mouth, lengthy earlier than some thing used to be written down. Scripture on my own, sola scriptura is, itself, unscriptural. That manner it is fake. It's a culture of guys, which have got to be rejected through each person who desires to be devoted to the lessons of Scripture. That's why I reject sola scriptura, considering that I love the written Word of God. I do not desire to peer it undermined. I do not desire to peer its authority corrupted, or compromised. I do not desire to peer Scripture come to be the personal play toy of each person individual who has a few suggestion, whether or not precise or bogus, approximately how faith will have to be. That isn't what Jesus meant for His Church. That isn't what the Bible says approximately itself. I will withstand the temptation to bury you beneath a mountain of quotations from the Church Fathers, proving they didn't educate sola scriptura. I have right here fifty two pages of quotations from the early Church Fathers, adding Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, and the entire different fathers that James could like to cite, displaying that they didn't educate sola scriptura.