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Sola Scriptura and its Pitfalls
By Steve Jones
"God says it, I believe it and that settles it."
Most of us have seen the bumper sticker. But the saying is far from an idle cliché. Beneath it is a theological root-system that feeds the faith of many thousands.
For most who style themselves “Bible-believing” Christians, the completed Scripture is nothing less than the divine manual. God gave us the book for detailed, infallible direction. It is all-sufficient, addressing every problem we face in life. Every doctrine God wants us to believe is settled forever, laid out plainly for the faithful to receive.
The common view of sola scriptura is based on several statements, each of which is held as axiomatic by conservative Protestant Christians. They are as follows:
1. The Bible was written through supernatural means. God used men to pen these writings, but they are as much God's own words as men's.
2. The canonical writings make up one divine book, a "manual" of Christian faith.
3. The Bible is, accordingly, free of error.
4. All questions of belief are to be brought to its pages. That which can be upheld by chapter and verse must be believed by all Christians. That which is contradicted there must be rejected.
5. Its precepts are relevant and binding through all ages. The Bible addresses us in this century as much as it did the primitive church.
It is my position that none of the above five statements is entirely true. Each is flawed – far from self-evident. I say this as a serious Christian who believes in God, Christ and holiness. And I have no fear that holding such a view puts me in danger of embracing damnable error. On the contrary, I would argue that people have embraced the most outrageous of errors while holding fast the idea of absolute biblical authority. And it can scarcely be affirmed that the old view of the Bible has produced unity of belief. Churches all claiming to believe "nothing but the Bible" hold views so far apart that outsiders might wonder if they hold the same religion.
The Bible is of inestimable worth to the church. There is no dispute about that. But I cannot embrace the six "biblicist" statements mentioned above, for the following reasons:
1. Nowhere do the authors of Scripture ever indicate that they are writing supernaturally. The prophets, of course, made this claim about their speech (2 Pet. 1:21). But no author ever describes the assumed plenary inspiration of the writings. Peter tells us that men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, but not that anyone ever wrote in such a manner.
It is not enough to highlight Paul's declaration to Timothy that the Scriptures are "God-breathed" or "inspired" (2 Tim. 3:16). Paul never defines that term for us. He says nothing of the supernatural process assumed by so many. Besides, the context indicates he was talking about the Old Testament, not the New (see verse 15 – "the Scriptures you have known from infancy…"). The famous proof-text proves nothing about the four Gospels or even Paul's own writings.
Experience teaches us how something can be God-breathed – that is, produced by God through his providence, enlightenment, wisdom – without being wrought in a directly supernatural way. A teacher gets up the deliver a message on Sunday. It comes with force, relevance. Afterward, members of the congregation comment on how the teaching was "from the Lord," because of its effect on them. But no one views it as a matter of special metaphysics. Nor does anyone considers the utterance infallible. It was simply a blessed message, one that uplifts and empowers the hearers, moving them closer to the Sacred.
Why must we regard the Scriptures as an entirely different kind of inspiration than this? Whatever Paul meant by "God-breathed," the context tells us it is a property that makes the Scriptures "profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness." At this point, we stop our inquiry. To delve into metaphysics, based on one expression, is surely a questionable course.
The burden of proof is on those who disagree. Show us one text where Paul or anyone else says anything like, "The Spirit came upon me and I began to write the very words of God." Surely no such assertion ever occurs in the Bible. It is devoid of such extravagant claims as inerrancy or all-sufficiency.
Among other things, this means the Bible is not the Word of God in the strictest sense. "Word of God" is used variously in Scripture. In the Old Testament, the law is called the Word of God (see Psalm 119: 113,144, e.g.). Of course, the Scriptures contain this law and, therefore, contain the Word of God. And so, it is really more accurate to say that the God's Word is in the Bible, than to say that it is the Bible.
The prophets of Judah and Israel also recognized the Word of God as a revelatory principle that came upon them. It moved their inner being, prompting them to speak the divine message to the redeemed community: "The Word of the Lord came to me, saying…"
In the New Testament, Jesus is called the Word of God (Rev. 19:13), for he is the embodiment of the divine will. Most often, the Word of God is the gospel message. The reference in 1 Peter is typical: "…the word of the Lord endures forever. That word is the good news that was preached to you" (1:25)." The earliest Christians equated the Word of God with the "glad tidings of Jesus," not with a collection of "inerrant" writings.
2. The Bible should never be viewed as a single book. It is an anthology, a collection of sacred writings. Far too many Christians speak as if the 66 books descended from heaven attended by angels, smoke and lightning. Of course, this is far from the case. The early church compiled the books. There was no absolute consensus on which books ought to be elevated above others. Some rejected Revelation, Hebrews, 2 Peter. The apocalyptic book of Enoch (quoted in the book of Jude) appears in some early canons, though it is absent from our Bible.
The obvious question is, who gave the church the authority to produce an objective, absolute standard of belief? Certainly Jesus never said anything about a coming addition to the Scriptures, nor did any other apostolic writer. Here evangelical inerrantists find themselves in a conundrum. They reject the notion of "church authority," dismissing it as a Roman Catholic invention that threatens sola scriptura. But they are stuck when it comes to the canon's formulation. Here they must say that the church did act authoritatively. God must have guided the Church Universal perfectly to make a decision binding on all generations – and never worked that way with her again.
There is no doubt that the canon is a valuable thing. It is important for us to know that the books we have today were generally accepted by the majority of early Christians. Thanks to the canon, we know that the Gnostic writings, for example, were not regarded as harmonious with the earliest Christian faith.
However, a reading of the New Testament reveals no trace that the authors considered their writings part of a larger work. You might even say the idea of a 66-book Bible is unbiblical.
3. The Bible bears the imperfections of its human authors. Few dogmas of Christianity have caused so much embarrassment as the infallibility of the Bible. The doctrine has become a belief of necessity, running something like this: (a) Christians need an external, objective standard of belief in order to be secure in the faith, (b) the Bible contains words of Jesus and his early followers, (c) therefore, it is a perfect standard of faith, free of all error.
The doctrine is entirely deductive, not inductive. No one seems to look at the Scriptures first to see if they really are manifestly inerrant before forming this belief. It is not based on a careful examination of the text, but on an assumption: We need a perfect standard, therefore, God must have given us one. Is this at all logical? Who are we to decide what God should give us?
The theory of biblical inerrancy collapses when subjected to critical examination. The Bible contains obvious contradictions in its parallel accounts (such as the four resurrection accounts, which are irreconcilable). Within the pages of Scripture are scientific inaccuracies based upon ancient understanding. Yet, no matter how long a list of these we produce, the inerrantist will never accept a single one. Why? Because he knows that, even though it looks like an error, it cannot be. The inerrantist has a foregone conclusion that God must secure a perfect standard.
It is really not necessary to list biblical contradictions and problems here. Most reflective Bible students are painfully aware of them. The difficulties fill volumes of apologetic works, such as Haley's Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible. Champions of inerrancy have wasted countless hours reconciling difficulties of the most trivial order.
The most damaging feature of inerrancy, however, is the tying of the Christian gospel's veracity to the perfection of the Bible. If we find one real error in its pages, we hear from preachers, then the entire Christian faith crumbles into ruins. What a precarious faith! No wonder apologists spend so much ink trying reconcile minutiae – they think the truth of the gospel hinges on whether a hare chews cud or whether the mustard seed is really the smallest of seeds.
4. There is a diversity of theological thought in the Bible. Individual Scripture verses cannot really be the touchstone, the "final court of appeal" for Christian doctrines and practices, because not all authors of Scripture agreed on all details. True, there are grand unifying elements in the Bible's pages: the divine mission of Jesus, the imperative of love, the fatherhood of God, the fellowship of the Spirit, the need for holiness, the promise of a future life, the death and resurrection of Christ. These themes are far more authoritative than the citation of a single, detached passage. Considering individual verses, there are some differences among Scriptural authors. Paul and James, for example, appear to differ on the mode of justification. The books of Revelation and 1 Corinthians have opposing views on whether Christians should eat meat sacrificed to idols.
5. The Bible, in many ways, reflects the culture and time in which its individual books were written. There is no doubt that the Bible contains lessons and precepts that apply to humanity in all ages. But was the Bible written for us in modern America as much as for the first century church? The idea, upon examination, turns out to be unconvincing. For example, how can Paul's personal instructions – bring a cloak and parchments, or to greet certain individuals – be instructions for us? Paul addresses specific problems in specific churches. Those problems, though they may have some parallels in today's congregations, really don't address us per se. The specifics simply do not apply. Problems over Jewish exclusiveness, for example, have long passed out of the church at large.
The Bible is a tremendous aid in our spiritual walk. It helps to conform us to the way of Christ. It reveals the earliest Christian teaching, as well as the life and character of Jesus Christ. The church cannot do without the volume of its holiest writings.
But it does not belong in the center of our spiritual lives, a place reserved for God alone. Our first priority should not be “know your Bible,” important as this may be. It should ever be love and following after the peaceable Galilean Teacher who graces its pages.
About the Author
Steve Jones has made his living as a writer since 1989. He spent part of his career as religion editor for a daily newspaper. In the mid-1990s, he also was an interim pastor for a small congregation in Michigan.
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