Sola scriptura (Latin ablative, “by
Scripture alone”) is the Evangelical/Protestant Christian doctrine that the
Bible contains all knowledge necessary for salvation and holiness.
Well meaning Evangelicals say today:
- “The Catholic church teaches many things that are honorable and moral”.
- “Instead of using a sweeping statement that it is wrong on all it teaches, it would be better to find areas of agreement, establish some common ground, and build from there”.
- “We should also keep in mind that Catholics and Evangelicals hold a number of major beliefs in common”.
- “Today’s Vatican is eager to join hands with Protestants worldwide”.
- “The Catholic church has changed”, is what we hear on and on…
A series of articles [#The Catholic Church and the Last Days] in which we will sift through biblical truth and Catholic doctrine to present a
well-defined portrait of this “church” and answer, among many others, these
questions: Can a true born-again Christian have anything to do with Roman
Catholicism? Should Catholics be evangelized? Are there differences between
Catholics and biblical Christians? What does it really mean to be a Christian?
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The corruption of power reaches its greatest height in Catholicism's bold claim
that its members cannot
understand the Bible for themselves but must accept unquestioningly the Church's interpretation: “The task of giving
an authentic interpretation of the Word of God...has been entrusted
to the living teaching
office of the Church alone”
[Ibid,
p.755]. With that edict, God's
Word, the one repository of truth and liberty which is capable of destroying
despotism, is kept under Church control and shrouded in mystery. This leaves
devout Catholics at the mercy of their clergy, a clergy which, as we have seen, is all too readily corrupted.
Blind Acceptance
To escape that destructive enslavement, the
Reformers
urged submission to God's pure Word
as the ultimate authority rather than to the Church or the pope. The basic issue that sparked the
Reformation (and which remains the basic issue today) was whether to continue in blind submission to Rome's
dogmas, even though they contradicted the Bible, or to submit to God's
Word alone as the final authority. Menno Simons's biographer relates the conflict he faced:
“The real problem
came when Menno, having dared to open the lids of the Bible,
discovered that it contained nothing of the
traditional teaching of the
Church on the Mass. By that discovery his inner
conflict was brought to
a climax, for he now was compelled to decide which of two authorities was to be supreme in his life, the Church or the Holy
Scriptures” [From Harold S. Bender, A Brief Biography of Menno Simons, p. 5,
at beginning of The Complete Writings of Menno
Simons, c.1496-1561 (Herald Press, 1956) (translated from the Dutch by
Leonard Verduin and edited by J.C. Wenger, with a biography by Harold S.
Bender)].
The Reformers
made
that choice in favor of Scripture and their central cry became Sola
Scriptura! That liberating truth was rejected
at the Council of Trent by bishops who were
unwilling to surrender control of the people under them. It was even considered
to be harmful for
the people to possess the Bible in their own tongue
because they might take it literally, which Rome argues even today must not be done. From her viewpoint only a specially trained elite can understand the Bible:
“The interpreter must.... go back wholly in spirit to
those remote centuries ... with the aid
of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences,
accurately determine what modes
of writing the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use” [Pope Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu,
no. 34-35, 1943].
Trent's
view that the authority for the Catholic is the Church, not the Bible, remains in force today. Only Scripture scholars trained at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome with “a degree in theology [and] mastery of six or seven languages (including Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek...)” are capable of understanding the Bible. Having earned “a Licentiate in Sacred
Scripture...the Catholic Church's license to teach Scripture”,
[George Martin, "Is There a Catholic Way to Read the Bible?" New Covenant, June 1993, p. 13]
they alone can teach the Bible. No layman is qualified.
Vatican II insists:
“It is for the bishops, with whom the apostolic
doctrine resides, suitably to instruct
the faithful entrusted to them in the correct
use of…the New Testament…by
giving them translations of the sacred texts which are equipped with necessary and really adequate
explanations” [ Flannery, op. Cit., vol. 1, pp.
764-65].
What the Bible Says
The Bible was given by God to all mankind, not to an elite group to explain it to others. It is to be a lamp on the path (Psalm 119:105) of all who heed it. Moses proclaimed that man shall
not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds
from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3) - and not a whisper
about that word being interpreted by an elite hierarchy. Psalm 1 speaks of
the blessed man who meditates
upon God's Word
(variously called the law, statutes,
judgments, commandments, etc.) day and night. “Man” surely includes woman, but cannot possibly be interpreted to mean only a special class of highly
educated experts.
We get the impression
from reading Paul's epistles
that those to whom they were written
were expected to understand them. The epistles are not
addressed to a bishop or select group of leaders but to all of the Christians at Corinth, Ephesus, etc. Each Christian is given an
understanding by the indwelling Holy
Spirit of the words which the same Spirit
inspired “holy men of God” to
write (2 Peter 1:21).
Even a “young man” is expected to “heed” God's Word (Psalm 119:9). Again, not a hint is given
that it must be explained to him by a rabbi. Christ, quoting Moses, affirmed that man is to feed upon the Bible for his very life
(Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). Job considered God's Word “more than my necessary
food” (Job 23:12). Never a word about consulting a hierarchy for its meaning!
Trusting
the Church Instead
of the Bible
The pope, in his August 15, 1993, “address to representatives of the Vietnamese community” at Denver, told them: “The challenge before you is to keep pure and lively your Catholic
identity...” [The Pope Speaks, March/April, vol. 39, no. 2, 1994, p. 93].
One seldom if ever hears Catholic leaders
exhorting the flock to be true simply to Christ
or to God's Word, but
always to the Church. Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II's 1993 treatise on morals, refers to
the truth taught by Christ and mediated by the Church. Without that
mediation the Catholic cannot know God's truth simply by reading God's Word. Only by such a doctrine can Rome keep its adherents blindly following its corrupt and
unbiblical teachings.
Cardinal Ratzinger [Ex-pope Benedict XVI],
watchdog of orthodoxy, exemplifies this blind faith in
Catholicism. He tells
of a theology professor who admitted that
the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, declared a Roman Catholic dogma in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, could
not be supported by Scripture, yet decided to believe it because “the Church is wiser than I”. Sadly, he is actually acknowledging the
Church to be wiser than the Bible and
thus capable of contradicting it!
Ratzinger
has that same unwarranted total trust in Catholicism and
pledges “to follow the
Catholic faith and not my own opinions” [Time, December 6, 1993, p. 60]. Thus
he guards the “faith” not by making certain
that what is taught in Catholic seminaries,
universities, and pulpits around the world agrees with the Word of God, but that it conforms to Catholic tradition taught by popes,
councils, and church fathers-and much of it in false
decretals. Vatican II
says that “both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal feelings of devotion and reverence”
[ Flannery, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 755].
The new universal Catechism
of the Catholic Church recently
released by the Vatican states:
“The Church to which is confided
the transmission and the rendering of the Revelation does not draw solely
from the Holy Scriptures her certainty on all points of Revelation [but also from Tradition and the magisterium]…[Cateschisme de L'Eglise Catholique, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993, p. 32.
Taken from the French ed., trans. privately by Yves Brault-the English edition
was not yet available].
The Church Stands
in the Way of Truth
Christ declared, “If ye continue
in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth [no hint of another source of truth]” (John 8:31,32). He did not make that
statement to the 12 apostles,
but to common people who had just “believed
on him” (John 8:30). He said
nothing of His truth having to be interpreted by the rabbis, and of course the
Roman Catholic hierarchy didn't
even exist then. God's Word was
available to and was to be understood, believed, and obeyed by even the newest converts.
That was what Christ expected of His followers then and it is what He expects of us today as well.
Rome blocks the individual's access to the truth. The Catholic can't learn directly from Christ's words, but only from the interpretation thereof by the Church. Christ said, “Come unto me... I will give you rest” (Matthew
11:28). Rome allows no one to come directly to Christ, but has set itself up
as the intermediary channel of God's grace necessary
for knowing God's truth and
for salvation. On this point Rome is adamant.
Otherwise she would lose her hold on the
people, who could then do without her.
Would God inspire
infallible Scripture and then
deny to all except an elite
few the ability to
understand it, requiring billions of people to surrender their minds to a hierarchy by blindly
accepting their interpretation
of His Word? If the Holy Spirit can convince the world
“of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8), then surely He
can teach all those in whom He dwells. John says that the Christians to whom he
writes don't have to look to some special
class of men for teaching but have an “anointing
[of the Holy Spirit which] teacheth
you of all things” (1 John 2:27).
If all Christians are “led by the Spirit
of God” (Romans 8:14), then surely all must be able to
understand the Scriptures which the Spirit of God has inspired.
Christians “have received ... the
Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things
that are freely
given to us of God” (1
Corinthians 2:12). There is no hint that a group of
clergy must interpret the Scriptures for everyone else. And why should they? All Christians “have the mind
of Christ” (verse 16). Rome
dare not acknowledge this truth, for then those under her would be set free.
Rome is still searching for truth outside God's Word. Consider Rome's Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
(the Angelicum). Pope John Paul II is a graduate. Its 1200 students
from 135 countries have made
“the search for truth” through the thousands
of volumes on theology and philosophy
in its library and elsewhere their
“life-objective”. [Inside the Vatican,
April 1994, pp. 50-52]. Contrast
Christ's statement,
that by obeying His Word one knows the truth, with the
complexity of the “search
for truth” by Catholic scholars. Both can't be right.
A Deadly Spiritual
Bondage
Ordinary Bereans checked Paul's teachings not with a hierarchy in Rome, which didn't even exist, but against the Bible (Acts 17:11). That practice was commended then and it is
still each individual's responsibility to know God's Word and to test every
spiritual leader by it, no matter who
he may be. This is what the Bible
declares.
Roman
Catholics, however (like Mormons,
Jehovah's Witnesses and members
of various cults), must accept, not check, their Church's teachings. The very Book that would bring life,
light, and freedom to individuals and nations is spiritually chained out of reach even as it was once
literally chained. Of course, such withholding
of God's Word from the laity is consistent
with Catholicism's persistent
suppression of the basic human freedoms
of conscience, religion, and the press.
Among the crimes for
which believers
were committed to the
flames in
the Spanish Inquisition was the
distribution and reading of the Bible. Smuggling
Bibles into Communist or Muslim countries such as China
or Iran is understandable, but imagine having
to smuggle Bibles into a “Christian” country such as Spain, and being put to death for doing so! Yet in an Auto de Fe in Seville on December 22, 1560, Julian Hernandez, one of those burned at the stake on that occasion, was declared to be an arch-heretic because “through his great efforts and incomprehensible stealth he introduced into Spain prohibited books [Bibles and New Testaments] that he brought from far away places [Germany]
where they give protection to the ungodly [Protestants].... He firmly believes that God,
by means of the Scriptures, communicates
to
the laity just the same as He communicates
to the priest” [Emelio Martinez, Recuerdos (Memoirs) de Antano (CLIE,
1909), p. 390].
To believe that God could communicate His truth through
the Bible not only to
the clergy but to ordinary believers
was a crime punishable by death! Rome has not changed, though the Bible
is no
longer banned overtly as
in the past. To do so today would be the wrong tactic and likely
create the opposite reaction to the one desired. There is a better way: Let the
people have the Bible in their hands, and even encourage
them to read it, but keep it from their
hearts by insisting
that only the Church can interpret it.
At the same time, confidence in Scripture is undermined by Rome's teaching that the Bible is not trustworthy in its pronouncements on history or science. Catholicism takes a symbolic meaning from the book of Jonah concerning
“the universality of salvation”
and denies that a
literal prophet named Jonah was swallowed by a literal fish [Our Sunday
Visitor, June 5, 1994, p. 613]. The early chapters of Genesis are likewise viewed as symbolic rather than accounts of actual creation
of the world and man, leaving the door open to evolution.
Even the rapture is seen as symbolic and not referring to a literal catching up of Christians to heaven, an idea which Catholics consider to be a delusion
[New Covenant, June 1993, p. 12].
The 1964 Instruction of the Biblical
Commission declared
that the literalist view of the Bible
adopted by Fundamentalists “actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide” [Our Sunday Visitor, June 5, 1994, p. 6].
Did the Catholic
Church Give Us the Bible?
It is claimed that only the Church can interpret
the Bible because it was the Church which gave it to us. That is like saying that because
Paul wrote his epistles we need him to interpret them. Furthermore, the Church did not give
us the Bible-certainly not the Old Testament, for there
was no Church in those days. And if the Roman Catholic Church was not needed to give us the Old Testament, then clearly it was not needed to give us
the New either.
A favorite question of Catholic apologists
is, “How do you know that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke or that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew?” They claim that Roman Catholic tradition contains this information. Yet no tradition proves who wrote Hebrews, Job, Esther,
or various Psalms. Nor does it matter. That the authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit
is what counts. This inspiration
bears witness within readers
who are themselves indwelt by the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of Scripture.
Catholicism's
claim that the New Testament comes from the Church by decision of the councils
is false. No early council
even ruled on what
was canonical; yet in these councils,
to support their arguments,
both sides quoted the New Testament, which had obviously
been accepted by general consensus
without any conciliar definition
of the canon. The Synod of Antioch, in A.D. 266, denounced the doctrine of Paul of Samosata as “foreign to the
ecclesiastical canon”. The Council of Nicea in 325 refers
to “the canon”; and the Council of
Laodicea in 363 exhorted that “only the `canonized' books of both Old and New Testaments be
read in the church”. Yet none of those councils
deemed it necessary to list the canonized
books, indicating that they were already
well-known and accepted by the common consent of
Christians indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Not until the Third Council
of Carthage, in A.D.
397, do we have the first
conciliar decision on the canon [Henry Clarence Theissen, Introduction to the New Testament (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1943), p. 26]. That
is rather late if without it Christians
didn't know what books were in the
New Testament and therefore couldn't use them, as Rome claims today! History proves that the
books of the New Testament were known and accepted by Christians and in wide circulation and use at least 300 years
before Carthage listed them. Historian
W.H.C. Frend writes:
“The Gospels and epistles were circulating
in Asia, Syria, and Alexandria (less certainly
in Rome), and being read and discussed in the Christian
synagogues there by about 100.
In Polycarp's short letter there is an astonishing amount of direct and indirect quotation
from the New Testament: Matthew, Luke, and John, Acts, the letters to the Galatians,
Thessalonians, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Romans, the Pastorals,
1 Peter particularly, and 1 and 2 John are all
used...The Christian Scriptures were quoted so familiarly as to suggest that they had been in regular use a long time”
[W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity
(Philadelphia, 1984), p. 135].
No rabbinical body decided
upon
the canon of the Old Testament.
That
canon
was
recognized by Israel and available
as it was being written. Daniel, a captive in Babylon, had a copy of Jeremiah written
only a few years earlier and was studying it as Scripture (Daniel 9:2). We are certain that the entire Old
Testament was well-known when Christ
was here and undoubtedly long before, for every Israelite was required to meditate upon it day and
night.
God's Word Speaks Directly
to All
In Old Testament times the common people
were
expected to know God's Word, not through rabbinical interpretation but for
themselves, and were able to know
it. That fact, as well as its availability to all, is very clear from Christ's rebuke of the two disciples on the road to
Emmaus: “0 fools, and slow of heart
to believe all that the
prophets have spoken...” (Luke
24:25). He would not have used such harsh language in holding these two ordinary people responsible for their
ignorance of prophecies had not all
of the Old Testament Scriptures been readily available, familiar, and understandable to the ordinary
Jew. He then expounded
unto them in all the
Scriptures (which must therefore have been known) “the things concerning himself” (Luke
24:25-27). All of the Scriptures were even available
to the faraway Bereans north of Greece, who, as we have seen, “searched the
Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11).
The same evidence is found in the fact that Timothy knew the Old Testament from
early childhood (2 Timothy 3:15) and that it was taught to him not
by the rabbis in the synagogue
but at home by his mother and grandmother, who themselves
were women of faith (2 Timothy 1:5). It is certainly
clear that no one in Old Testament times looked to any hierarchy for an official
interpretation of Scripture. Nor did the
early church. Nor should we today.
The plain words of the Bible, without
Rome's domineering
interpretation, give the lie
to the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church and the authoritarianism
of its clergy. Priscilla and Aquila were an ordinary
husband and wife who labored
daily at tentmaking (Acts 18:3). Yet a “church [met] in their house” (1 Corinthians 16:19) and they were capable teachers of God's Word, even instructing a man so eloquent
as Apollos (Acts 18:26).
Paul referred to them
as “my helpers in Christ
Jesus” (Romans 16:3).
They had never
been to seminary and
were not part of a clerical hierarchy
(which didn't exist), but they knew God and His Word by the Holy Spirit indwelling them. So
should all Christians today.
According
to Paul, ordinary
Christians are to judge whether
a preacher is speaking God's
truth. Paul submitted his writings
to the same criteria, inviting his readers to judge by the Holy
Spirit within them whether
his epistles were from
God or not: “If any man think himself to be a prophet
or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord”
(1 Corinthians 14:37). It was by the same witness of the Holy Spirit within each individual believer that the first-century church decided
which books were canonical. In exactly the same way Christians today
recognize the Bible as God's inspired
Word.
The Sad Consequences
Unfortunately, the average Catholic has been taught to look to the Church hierarchy for the
instruction which the Holy Spirit desires to give directly to believers. To
Rome, to suggest that the
Holy Spirit speaks to individuals through the words of the Bible
is anathema. Karl Keating, one of the leading Catholic lay apologists, writes:
“The Catholic believes in inspiration because the Church tells him so-that is putting
it bluntly-and that same church has the authority to interpret
the inspired text. Fundamentalists have no interpreting authority other than themselves [Karl
Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism:
The Attack on "Romanist" by “Bible Christians” (Ignatius Press, 1988),
pp. 125-27].
In fact, “Fundamentalists” look to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Catholicism also claims
that guidance, but only for its hierarchy, who alone can be led of the Spirit to understand the Bible. Yet the Bible says
every Christian is indwelt, empowered, and led of the Holy Spirit. In
fact, one is not even a Christian
without this inner witness and leading of the
Holy Spirit:
“Now if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his....
For as many as are led
by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.... The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God...” (Romans 8:9,14,16).
“But God hath revealed
them
[the “things of God”] unto us by his Spirit; for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea,
the deep things of God.... the things of God
knoweth no man but [by] the Spirit of God.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that
we might know the things that are freely
given to us of God. Which things also we speak,
not in the words which
man's wisdom teacheth, but which
the Holy Spirit teacheth” (1 Corinthians 2:10-13).
Having been convinced
that he cannot understand the Bible for himself, the devout Catholic
is at the mercy of his Church and must believe
whatever it teaches. The Convert's Catechism of Catholic Doctrine bluntly declares:
“Man can obtain
a knowledge of God's Word [only from the Catholic Church
and through its duly constituted channels. When he has once mastered
this principle of divine authority [residing
in the Church], the inquirer is prepared to accept whatever
the divine Church teaches of faith, morals and the
means of grace” [Rev.
Peter Geiermann, C. SS. R., The Convert's
Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1977), Imprimatur
Joseph E. Ritter, S.T.D., Archbishop of St. Louis), pp. vi, 25-27].
Here again, brazenly stated, is the first principle of every cult: “Check your mind
at the door and believe whatever the group or church or guru or prophet in charge says”. The idea appeals
to those who think that by thus surrendering
their minds to an infallible
authority they escape their individual moral responsibility to God. Others are afraid to think
for themselves because that would put them outside the Church, where “there is no salvation”
[This teaching is all through Vatican II. E.g. see Flannery, op. cit., vol. 1,
pp. 365, 381]. By this means God's
Word, which should speak powerfully to
each individual, is held just out of reach of individual Catholics by their Church.
When Was the New Testament Canon Established?
That the
New Testament canon, exactly like the Old, was _accepted
and recognized by a consensus of the believers as it was being written is clear from
the historic evidence we have
given above. Further proof comes from the testimony of Peter:
“Even as our beloved brother Paul also according
to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things,
in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest [twist], as they do also the other
Scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15,16).
Peter acknowledges Paul's writings
to be Scripture. So has, apparently, the entire
body of believers at this time. “The other Scriptures” by that time would have included most of the remainder of the New Testament. Furthermore, these books were so readily available
and well- known by common
consensus already at this early date
(about A.D. 66) that Peter didn't
even need to name them. Christians knew what writings were inspired of God in the same way a native in the jungle knows that the gospel is true: by the convicting power
of the Holy Spirit.
Tragically, Catholicism
not only teaches that the Church
hierarchy alone can interpret the Bible, but that no one can
believe it without the Church
attesting to its authenticity. Keating suggests that the gospel itself
has no power without this endorsement.
He quotes St. Augustine: “I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority
of the Catholic Church did not move me to
do so” [Keating, op. cit., pp. 125-27].
If that is true, then no one prior to the Third Council
of Carthage in A.D. 397 could
have believed or preached the gospel!
Yet the gospel was preached
from the very beginning. Paul turned the world
upside down with the gospel (Acts 17:6). Within the first two centuries about 10 percent
of the Roman Empire became Christians
and studied, meditated upon, believed, and were led by
both the Old and New Testament Scriptures
exactly as we have them
today. If they could know what books were
inspired and could be guided by them without the authenticating stamp of the Roman
Catholic Church (which didn't yet exist), then so can we today.
The absurdity and destructiveness of
the view that God's Word must have Rome's
endorsement is immediately apparent. It is a blasphemous denial
that the gospel in itself has
power to save or that the Holy Spirit can use the Bible
to speak directly to hearers' hearts.
Under this view, one must twist
prove that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church,
that it is infallible, that
it says the Bible is true, and that
therefore the Bible and the gospel
must be believed; only then can the gospel be preached. How absurd!
Yet to a Catholic
this view makes perfect sense because
the Church is the vehicle of salvation. One's eternal
destiny depends not upon one's relationship to Christ, who is revealed in
His Word, but upon one's relationship to that Church and
participation in its sacraments.
This theory, of course, is refuted by
the Bible itself. Christ and His disciples preached the
gospel before any church was established. Early in His ministry, before even saying anything
about establishing His church, Christ sent His disciples forth, “and they departed, and went
through the towns, preaching the gospel” (Luke 9:6). Eleven times in the four Gospels we are
told that Christ and His disciples
were engaged in preaching the gospel, a gospel which is “the power of God unto
salvation” to those who believe it (Romans 1:16). Yet there was no Roman Catholic Church in existence
to verify that the
gospel was true. Nor does today's preaching need Rome's endorsement any more than it did in the beginning.
Three thousand souls were saved on the day of Pentecost
without Peter saying one word
about an infallible Church putting its approval on what he preached.
Even after Pentecost we find no attempt by Christians, who
“went everywhere preaching the Word” (Acts 8:4), to prove that an infallible Church existed and endorsed the gospel.
We
read of the preaching of Philip in
Samaria and of Paul in many places, where multitudes believed;
yet not once is the gospel supported by the statement that Christ established an infallible Church and that the bishops of
this Church had put their official stamp
of approval upon what was being preached. If the endorsement of the Roman Catholic
Church wasn't needed then,
neither is it needed now, for
the Word of God is “living and
powerful ... a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews
4:12).
The Sufficiency of Scripture
“Show us one verse in the Bible that clearly
declares Sola Scriptura, that the Bible is sufficient in
itself”, is the specious challenge thrown out by Catholic apologists. One might as well demand “just one verse that states that God is a triune being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”. No single verse says so, yet the doctrine of the trinity is accepted by both Catholics and Protestants as biblical. Nor is there a single verse which contains the words “the Bible is sufficient”. However, when we put
together the many verses in the Bible
on this topic it is clear that
the Bible teaches its own sufficiency both to authenticate itself to the reader and to lead to
spiritual maturity and effectiveness all who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and read it with open
hearts.
Paul declared that Scripture was given for “doctrine, for reproof,
for
correction,
for
instruction in righteousness” and that the Bible itself makes the man or woman of God “perfect [i.e., mature, complete, all that God intended], thoroughly furnished [equipped] unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16,17). In other words, the Bible contains all the doctrine,
correction, and instruction in
righteousness that is needed for those
who heed it to become complete in
Christ. Catholic apologists quote nineteeth-century Cardinal John Henry Newman to the effect that if this
passage proves the above, then it “proves too much”, that “the Old Testament alone would be sufficient as a rule of faith, the New Testament unnecessary” because all Timothy had was
the Old Testament [Ibid., pp. 140-41]. The
argument is fallacious for several
reasons.
First of all, Timothy had more than the Old Testament. This is Paul's second
epistle to him, so he has at least two epistles from
Paul in addition to the Old
Testament. Paul goes on to say that he is about to be martyred
(2 Timothy 4:6-8), making this the last epistle Paul wrote. So Timothy, obviously, has all of
Paul's epistles. The date is probably around A.D. 66, so he
also has the first three Gospels and
most of the rest of the New Testament.
Furthermore, when Paul says “all
Scripture” it is clear that he means the entire Bible, not merely
that which had been written up to that
time. Similar expressions are often
used in Scripture, but they never mean
only the Bible written
to that time. When Jesus said, “The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him
in the last day” (John 12:48), He didn't mean only what he had spoken to that time. Likewise, when he said, “Thy Word
is truth” (John 17:17) He obviously meant
all of God's Word, though all had not yet been written.
When the writer of Hebrews said, “The Word of God is living and powerful, sharper
than any two-edged sword”,
he didn't mean only that part of the Word of God that had been written to that time. Nor did Paul by “all Scripture” mean only that which had been written to that time.
He clearly meant all Scripture. So Cardinal Newman was wrong, and naively so. Yet Catholic apologists confidently quote his
folly to disprove the sufficiency of
Scripture.
“That the man of God may be perfect” simply
means that the Word of God is all one needs to
be “perfect” in the sense of being mature
and all that God wants a Christian to be. Catholic apologists refer to other verses where the word “perfect” is used, such as: “If you would be
perfect, sell all you have and give
to the poor”, or “Let patience
have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire”, etc. They then contend that if it can be argued from 2 Timothy 3:17
that the Bible is sufficient to perfect believers,
then selling everything one has and giving it to the poor or being patient is also
sufficient to make one perfect.
Again the argument fails. Suppose an athletic
trainer offers a perfect diet with all the nutritional elements one needs to produce a perfect body. This doesn't mean that other things, such as exercise, aren't necessary. Paul is saying that the doctrine, reproof,
correction, and instruction in righteousness contained in Scripture is sufficient teaching for the man
(or woman) of God to be all God desires. This does not mean that one doesn't have to exercise patience, faith, obedience, charity, etc., which themselves are taught by Scripture. It does mean that in the
area of doctrine, reproof, correction,
and instruction in righteousness the
Bible needs no supplementation from tradition or any other source.
Moreover,
Paul goes on to say that the man (or woman)
of God is, by
the
Scriptures themselves,
“thoroughly prepared unto every good work”. The Bible never makes such a statement about patience or love or charity or
tradition or anything else.
Paul is clearly teaching Sola Scriptura. This doctrine
was not invented by the Reformers; they derived it from Scripture.
The Central Issue –
A Clear Choice
When Thomas Howard, brother of Elizabeth Elliot (wife of martyred missionary Jim Elliot), became a Catholic, Gordon College removed him from its faculty. Among the reasons given
was the fact that the statement of faith which all faculty
had to sign affirmed the Bible as “the only infallible guide in faith and
practice”-impossible for a Catholic
to sign. Howard acknowledged that “the sole authority of Scripture is a principle unique to Protestantism, and that he, as a
Catholic, could not subscribe to it”
[Christianity Today, September 20,
1985].
Sola Scriptura remains
the central issue at the heart of
the Reformation. One must choose between submitting to the authority of
the Bible or to that of the Roman Catholic Church. One
cannot do both because of the clear
conflict between the two.
The choice one must make is obvious.
Blind submission to any earthly hierarchy in itself
contradicts the Bible. Moreover, we have given
more than sufficient evidence from history to show that the Roman Catholic Church, from
the
pope down, has forfeited any claim
it may ever have had to be trusted.
The most tragic consequence of the blind faith in their Church as
the sole interpreter of God's Word for mankind is that hundreds of millions of Catholics consequently trust it for their eternal destiny. The question
of salvation, therefore,
is also a key issue necessarily separating Catholics and evangelicals.
“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received
the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these
things were so” (Acts 17:11).
“For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read
and understand and I hope you will fully understand” (2 Corinthians
1:13).
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who
has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth”
(2 Timothy 2:15).
