Ten Things Every Catholic Should Know About Sola Scriptura

Do you know how to answer a non Catholic Christian who challenges you about the Bible?

Knowing how everybody loves lists, here are ten things every Catholic should know about Sola Scriptura:

1. Sola Scriptura means “only Scripture”. It is the Protestant belief that the Bible is the only source for teaching on doctrine and morality.

2. Sola Scriptura was one of three “solos” the other two being Sola Fide (Faith Alone) and Sola Gratia (Grace Alone)

3. Sola Scriptura which means “Scripture Alone” cannot be found in the Bible. The closest proof text is 2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” While this verse says Scripture is useful for these things it doesn’t say Scripture is the only source for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”

4. While Protestants claim to follow Sola Scriptura, in practice they interpret the Bible according to their own denominational traditions. Presbyterians have the Bible plus Calvinism. Baptists have the Bible plus their theological opinions. Lutherans have the Bible plus the teaching of Luther etc.

5. Jesus commanded and prophesied that he would establish a church, but he nowhere commanded or prophesied that a book would be written recording his words and works. This is why Catholics say the Church came first. The Bible came second. Jesus passed his authority on through the apostles–not through a book.

6. How could sola Scriptura be the only way for people to know God when, for most of history, the majority of people could neither read nor have access to books?

7. Protestants blame Catholics for believing late, man made doctrines that the early church had never heard of, but Sola Scriptura had never been heard of before the sixteenth century. Not only can it not be proved from the Bible, but there is no trace of the doctrine of sola Scriptura anywhere in the writings of the early church. The entire edifice of Protestantism, however, is based on the foundation of sola Scriptura.

8. If the only source for teaching and moral instruction comes from the Bible how are we supposed to answer the questions that arise about things that were never heard of in Bible times? How can the Bible instruct us about important current problems like nuclear war, artificial contraception, in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, gender re-assignment or genetic modification, cloning or a whole range of other modern issues. Only a living and dynamic, Spirit filled authority can sift the facts and come up with the right teaching.

9. Sola Scriptura is linked with the idea of that the Bible is easy enough for any simple person to understand. While the basic teachings seem easy to understand it is clear that the Bible is an extremely complex document which requires the insights of theologians, Bible scholars and linguists to understand clearly. Why else would Protestant pastors be required to go to seminary before being qualified to be pastors?

10. Sola Scriptura has led to the thousands of divisions within Protestantism. Because they couldn’t agree, even from the beginning, the Protestant leaders began to split and form their own sects. How could sola Scriptura be the foundation for the church when it leads to such division? How could this division be part of Jesus command and prayer that there be “one flock and one shepherd”?

>The catholic position on this would place Mary on the same level as Christ <

No. Christ was pure and sinless of his own inherent nature. Mary was conceived in a state of grace and preserved free from sin by the grace of God. It's not of her doing, but His.

> To continue to believe in the false teaching that mary was without sin, born without sin, never sinned, etc, the catholic has to ignore these, amongst other, verses in the Bible. <

Huh? 1 Pet. 2 says Jesus was sinless (I agree). Gal 2 is speaking to Paul's theme of justification by grace and not the law; I don't see how that verse creates a problem when I just said Mary was preserved by God's grace.

Of which we have ZERO scriptural support for this. Catholic apologists admit this.

The issue is that catholics are appealing to Mary to help with their salvation...and probably in some cases, looking to Mary for their salvation.

Mary has been elevated by the rcc to a position not accorded her in the Word. Plain and simple.

The whole fifth marian dogma, when approved, will officialy declare mary to be co-redemtrix, helper and advocate. The position of Helper and Advocate is currently fulfilled by the Holy Spirit.

That catholics cannot see the conflict amazes me.

Do you mean, like someone's apologetics page (like I asked about)...or possibly from comments on some other forum elsewhere..."?

Vague recollection it might have been Dave Armstrong's site. But this goes back about 8-10 years ago; I really don't recall. I think I added or modified a few of the comments by going direct to Butler, Dahlgren & Hess.

The missing, wider contexts of where those quotes arose from, though listed in notation as for source, still leaves one needing to play a game of go fetch if one was hoping to see how those commentators may have been misrepresented[.]

Well, one commentator I listed was from an article in Encyclopedia Britannica:

Though in the past some authorities have considered that the term rock refers to Jesus himself or to Peter's faith, the consensus of the great majority of scholars today is that the most obvious and traditional understanding should be construed, namely, that rock refers to the person of Peter.

(Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1985 edition, "Peter," Micropedia, vol. 9, 330-333. D. W. O'Connor, the author of the article, is himself Protestant and author of Peter in Rome: The Literary, Liturgical and Archaeological Evidence [1969] )

It just now took me all of about 30 seconds to find this online. So was the quotation of that author done fairly?

Would not what the patristic authors from the earliest centuries of the Church had to say, and the contexts in which those noteworthy individuals addressed the same issue be worth far more than a few isolated snippets of opinion from persons chiefly, otherwise obscure, and all but unknown to us?

The article above speaks to the general consensus among scholars as it exists today.. On this point, the article doesn't even give contemporary examples; there is even less reason to go back and give historic ones. In any case, the statement can't be proven nor disproven by a few examples, so there's little point to providing any.

That's just so much vague had-waving which rather neglects you were just focusing upon the very same thing!

Since your post was pretty much all about the Patristic views, I added some comments on that topic. Necessarily they are general; I wasn't about to embark on a Patristic survey.

It is those contexts themselves which is among the various evidences against the concept there was a "pope in Rome" carrying singular "Petrine authority" which other bishops were not also equally heirs of . . .

There was accepted, even among many of the Greek writers, that the Bishop of Rome, on account of being the successor to Peter, held a type of "primacy." The Orthodox today speak of it as merely a primacy of honor, not one of jurisdiction. Popes and others Latins in roughly the 8th to 11th centuries read the writings of the earlier Greek Fathers and saw language which implied much more than that. East and West obviously couldn't come to agreement.

(if such a thing can be passed down to the extent some try to maintain it is).

This comment goes directly to my view that for a Protestant polemicist like Webster to try to make some point about Catholic ecclesiology by appealing to the Church Fathers is but so much disingenuous crap. There may not have agreement about Peter's role within the Apostolic college and how that translates in their day to a primacy in the Roman Patriarchy. But these same Patristic writers Webster cites to most certainly agreed on an ecclesiology that 1) recognized Apostolic Succession ("if such a thing can be passed down" was never in question), 2) recognized that the Bishops of the Church were heirs to the original authority of the office of the Apostles, 3) recognized a hierarchy of bishop, priest, and deacon, and 4) recognized that Scripture was to be understood in accordance with Tradition. I submit there was a wide consensus, if not near total agreement, on these points.

So it's just silly for the likes of Webster to make such a big deal out of a supposed lack of Patristic consensus on Matt 16:18 and other verses as relates to the Roman Bishop. If a lack of consensus supposedly weakens one's claim to Truth, then one has to accept a consensus on other claims to truth as evidence of that truth. Otherwise it's just specious argumentation. But Webster certainly isn't going to go there. I suspect neither are you.

Webster is just taking a page out of the Orthodox playbook. He's appealing to Patristic sources who would most assuredly reject Protestant views on ecclesiology more certainly and swiftly then they'd reject Roman claims.

I seriously fail to see what his point it.

There were those others arising from within the Church, following their own reasoning and imaginings whom can be seen to have strayed.

I'm glad you bring up Arius as he much prove my point. In the resulting controversy, both side appealed heavily to Scripture, but in the end what was persuasive was those holding to the view of equality of the Christ within the Godhead were those who could show the strongest succession back to the communities known to have been founded by the Apostles. (On this point, see Irenaeus below)

We see plainly enough, that according to Ireneaus, the ground and pillar of our faith was the Gospel which was preached, not the preachers of it themselves being the ground and pillars.

This from the person who is accusing other of selective sampling. Let's take Irenaeus in fuller context:

"Through none others know we the disposition of our salvation, than those through whom the gospel came to us, first heralding it, then by the will of God delivering to us the Scriptures, which were to be the foundation and pillar of our faith....But when, the heretics are accusing the Scriptures, as if they were wrong, and unauthoritative, and were variable, and the truth could not be extracted from them by those who were ignorant of tradition...And when we challenge them in turn with that tradition, which is from the Apostles, which is guarded by the succession of elders in the churches, they oppose themselves to tradition, saying that they are wiser, not only than those elders, but even than the Apostles. Against Heresies, III,5,1

"The tradition of the Apostles, manifested 'on the contrary' in the whole world, is open in every Church to all who see the truth...And, since it is a long matter in a work like this to enumerate these successions, we will confute them by pointing to the tradition of that greatest and most ancient and universally known Church, founded and constituted at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, a tradition which she has had and a faith which she proclaims to all men from those Apostles" Against Heresies, III, 3, 1; III, 3, 2

The church, for Irenaeus, was the guardian of the Truth handed down from the Apostles through the succession of the elders. And he doesn't mean just that they preserved the Bible texts, but that they preserved the meaning of those texts.

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