Replies

I’d be glad to. Since you didn’t respond to what I wrote about the Catholic Church’s interpretation of Islam, though, I will limit the time and effort I put into the reply.

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

No, of course it isn’t “the only source for teaching on doctrine and morality.” There are pastors, elders, teachers in the church, and all believers have spiritual authority, too, in that they are born again in Christ, having the Holy Spirit within them and the mind of Christ. There are also sources that provide information on the Church and Jewish history. And then nature, too, since it was purposefully designed by God, can be a source. And even those outside of the Church can be sources as well. Can policemen and teachers, even if they’re not Christian, have something to say on morality? Of course. What the Bible is is the only ultimate source, meaning that all other sources have to be appraised according to what it says. When any of the other sources conflict in any way with the Bible, then what the Bible says is to believed, not the other source.

>> 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.”<<

Most doctrines aren’t expressly stated in Scripture, and Sola Scriptura doesn’t say they have to be. The Trinity isn’t, and from that there have come professing Christian groups with cultic origins, probably most notably Jehovah’s Witnesses, who deny it. Yet the most truthful reading of the Bible, including but not at all limited to such passages in which Jesus accepted worship of Himself, which if He wasn’t God would have made Him guilty of the most blatant of idolatries, supports the Trinity. In the same way, Sola Scriptura isn’t just a line taken from the Bible (which is often a way to error since one line, if not considered along with the whole, can be misleading). Instead, it simply arises as a conclusion from reading and believing the entire Bible. You come to understand and really appreciate its supernatural inspiration, and that it is God’s Word. “All Scripture is God-breathed,” and “The Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” It is the Sword of the Spirit. “Man must not live by bread alone, but every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.” Sin and death came to us all through Eve not using the Word of God (His commandment not to eat from the forbidden tree) against Satan, while the Word of God is what Jesus used against Him. And Jesus, says John 1, is the very Word. God created and accomplishes through His Word, and He says in Isaiah 55 that His Word shall not return to Him void. But all this is only just a very small start of what supports Sola Scriptura in the Bible. But again, it arises from looking at what God has revealed about Himself, particularly in what He has revealed about His nature in revealing things about His Word, and how His Word relates to us. God’s Word is life to us, and what He has said to us, including what He has had recorded for us in the Bible (He also speaks through us in other ways, including by Nature and our consciences, for example) teach us things that are of divine, not human, origin. But again, the whole Bible tesitifies of itself that it is God’s Word, and there can be no higher authority than that, or as high as that.

>> 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.<<

Again, the Bible is still the only ultimate authority, and those who are genuinely seeking to follow it agree on its most important teachings. The Catholic Church leadership, however, considers itself to still be writing God’s Word, in essence; for example, by creating certain doctrines about Mary. Yet they are of a different character from the Bible (created and delivered to people differently) and also on many points contradict it. While the Bible again and again proves that Jesus is the Messiah (as God’s nature and plan for our salvation can be traced throughout all of Scripture, and it all points to Jesus), that God is a Trinity, and that God’s Word is divine and the life-giving (or condemning, through judgment) authority over us, the Mary doctrines are contradicted by all the failures to proclaim Mary’s importance in Scripture as Roman Catholicism has invented them over time.

Those who wrote the New Testament, divinely guided by the Holy Spirit, didn’t include the superficial, trivial, or egotistical. Human-inspired histories would have included more about Jesus, including things like His appearance (and not included the Isaiah 53 descriptions). In the New Testament, we see the burdens places on the apostles and the early Church by God Himself, and in their concerns and actions we see what they considered the essentials. Mary wasn’t and isn’t unimportant, but the Bible often uses the word “magnify,” typically in saying to “magnify the Lord,” and what seems to have happened is that the Catholic Church has gone through many rounds of magnification of Mary to the point she is magnified out of all proportion.

>> 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.<<

So the Catholic Church argues that, in accordance with John 21, not everything Jesus said or did is in Scripture (so even things that seem blatantly to contradict He might have said), but Jesus didn’t command “a book” be written about Him because that command isn’t in the Bible? Jesus is God, and while on earth He demonstrated that He knew all about His apostles and all people, seeing Nathanael under the fig tree, and telling the Samaritan woman about what she’d done in her life. He also said He knew the Father and knew His plan of salvation and that He was and is it. He allowed Himself to be arrested and killed, as God’s plan. Truly insane if He wasn’t God, but He was and is, and was not the least insane. “Before Abraham was,” He said, “I am.” The world was created through Him. Yet the Bible is just a book that arose by happenstance, and wasn’t part of God’s plan all along, and directed by Him? That’s utter nonsense that disrespects God.

>> 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?<<

How could Jesus be “the way, the truth, and the life” when mankind was here long before the Messiah’s coming, sacrificial death, and resurrection?

And, Jewish boys managed to memorize the Torah before there was widespread reading and writing.

The last time I checked, all Catholics don’t hold all things in common, with people selling all they had and giving the proceeds to it, as the early Church did.

In building a house, there’s a difference between the foundation and the walls and other parts of it. God, in wisdom, and with foresight knowing all in advance, changes how He builds as time goes on. That’s not because He changes, but things actually change, because He changes them. Man can’t change human nature, but God can change it. He brought the Messiah into the world after He’d chosen a people for Himself who would be close to Him and who would get to know Him over centuries, a people prepared for the Messiah. Then a handful of those people, who were awaiting the Messiah, got to know His Son and became His witnesses, and the next part of God’s plan was revealed to them. And they set down those experiences for generations to come, generations even all these years later.