How does Sola Scriptura work?

1. We go by the books that the whole church decided upon in the 4th century. I suppose the delegates could have been wrong. But all the books chosen coordinate with the others and all were accepted by the various Christian churches of the Roman Empire, etc. before that time anyway.

2. The translation to be used is partly a matter of accuracy and party a matter of readability. Truthfully, none of the best-known versions or any that your local church uses are going to be much different from the others except for ease of reading. You can easily check three or four translations when you are looking something up. There are a few that many people say to avoid. These are paraphrased translations, not literal ones. The Living Bible is an example.

3. What "amoral lifestyle"' are you referring to in regard to the almost 50 Bible experts who worked on the King James version? Or of the king himself?? He, by the way, did not personally participate in the translating.

I'd say simply that for any Sola-Scriptura embracing Christian, it's not so much about trying to evidentially back-up a translation or certain accuracies according to textual criticism with historic or archeologic proof, as it is about having faith in God's promise to preserve his Word perfectly forever (Psalms 12:6-7, Psalms 33:11, Psalms 100:5, Matthew 24:35, 1 Peter 1:23-25), and that God's word stands forever as the supreme truth and authority for anything to do with matters of faith and life.

There are two very separate issues.

First.. how the canon came to be, and how we can know it is inspired.

Second and completely separate -Can scripture stand alone?

Here the Catholic and early church view,

The problem for those who believe the second is they have no basis to decide the first. Although scripture gives the answer to both.


Jesus did not give us a book , he gave us apostles and successors to hand down the truth, a process known as " paradosis" sometimes translated as " tradition". They were not instructed to write and history shows most apostles did not.
They passed on the truth by word of mouth and letter,

Tradition carried not just the words but the meaning of doctrine. Take the Eucharist.. there is no doubt that the early church handed down from first generations the real presence in a sacramental Eucharist, believed to be the real flesh of Jesus. valid only if performed by a bishop, read ignatius and polycarp to see what was taught by John the apostle .

And there's the problem with sola scriptura - scripture needs valid meaning to interpret,You cannot do what reformationists have done and assign any meaning you think scripture can mean. They have many conflicting views for example on Eucharist and baptism because they lost tradition that carries the meaning of scripture, indeed they disagree on every aspect of doctrine,

The answer is authority,
Jesus also gave the apostles and successor of Peter the power to " bind and loose" which meant to the Jews the power to give definitive doctrinal interpretation.

THAT was the power exercised at council, the authority by which we know the canon is true. And what is valid scripture, Which is also why scripture says " the pillar of truth is the church" ( not scripture!) , hence scripture proves sola scriptura false, it points at truth outside of it.

In short - nowhere in scripture does it say it has to be in scripture to be true. So disproving sola scriptura by logic. So the authority of the church " the pillar of truth" , held by valid succession from early times is how we can know the canon is true, and also what doctrine is true,

At philosophical level..Scripture is " materially sufficient" not formally sufficient.

And is also why reformationists fracture into thousands of denominations and disagree profoundly on every aspect of doctrine, they have no authority to ask.so schism repeatedly on doctrinal difference.

umbrabates said:

How do you even determine what is a Bible? What books belong in a Bible? Is Tobin a legitimate book of the Bible? Is the Gospel of Mary? The Gospel of Peter?

How do you determine which translation to use? How about which translation not to use? Does King James' tinkering with certain verses make his version illegitimate? What about his amoral lifestyle or that of some of his translators?

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umbrabates said:

How do you even determine what is a Bible? What books belong in a Bible? Is Tobin a legitimate book of the Bible? Is the Gospel of Mary? The Gospel of Peter?

How do you determine which translation to use? How about which translation not to use? Does King James' tinkering with certain verses make his version illegitimate? What about his amoral lifestyle or that of some of his translators?

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As for the sufficiency of scripture ...

John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

Acts 17:11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

1 John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don't need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true--it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.

I'm wondering why the OP doesn't seem to have anything directly to do with the title of the thread.

umbrabates said:

How do you even determine what is a Bible? What books belong in a Bible? Is Tobin a legitimate book of the Bible? Is the Gospel of Mary? The Gospel of Peter?

How do you determine which translation to use? How about which translation not to use? Does King James' tinkering with certain verses make his version illegitimate? What about his amoral lifestyle or that of some of his translators?

Click to expand...

People tend to run with the pack.

People tend to ignore truth when their running with the pack.

Canonization of the Bible was necessary to prevent spurious letters from themselves becoming canon.

There are a number of different Bibles, the Catholic Bible for example; contains more books than the Protestant Bible.

Some people are taught that God decreed the canon of the Bible.

We base the Biblical canon primarily on early church letters, first, second and third century letters that is.

Right or wrong, that is what the Bible in front of you represents.

In my opinion, the Bible is far to big a book to be readily read and understood, by the general public.

As far as a useful source of information on the revelation of Jesus Christ, more than adequate. In fact, the revelation of the Christ is far beyond amazing.

Then again, is the Bible straight forward regarding church doctrine, certainly not.

Is the King James version adequate, it depends on how exacting you are.

I would recommend the ESV or the NASB.

For even further precision, use the Septuagint and not the Masoretic text.

Albion said:

I'm wondering why the OP doesn't seem to have anything directly to do with the title of the thread.

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I was wondering the same thing.

umbrabates said:

I don't understand.

I am curious about people who use the Bible-only in their religious practices. I've asked some of these questions directly, but I haven't gotten an answer that satisfies my curiosity. So, I thought this would be a good place to find knowledgeable people to ask. I also thought my questions would be welcome. Was I mistaken?

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I see. The term Sola Scriptura means that Scripture is the ultimate authority when it comes to determining doctrine. That's it. It doesn't mean that everything we do must have an explicit Biblical authorization or that every reader will be able to understand the Bible -- just by reading it unaided--or will come to the same understanding as every other reader. And it does not imply anything about particular translations or whether the historic choice of books is correct or not.

So when you moved directly to such issues that, yes, are related to the use of the Bible but are not about Sola Scriptura itself, some of us were caught off guard.

umbrabates said:

How do you even determine what is a Bible? What books belong in a Bible? Is Tobin a legitimate book of the Bible? Is the Gospel of Mary? The Gospel of Peter?

How do you determine which translation to use? How about which translation not to use? Does King James' tinkering with certain verses make his version illegitimate? What about his amoral lifestyle or that of some of his translators?

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Hello umbrabates,

What I'd like to know is: 'why' is this set of questions specifically placed in the Restoration Movement's Forum of CF? Are you wanting to compare how someone from these churches "does theology" with how Christians from other denominations do it?

2PhiloVoid

umbrabates said:

I don't understand.

I am curious about people who use the Bible-only in their religious practices. I've asked some of these questions directly, but I haven't gotten an answer that satisfies my curiosity. So, I thought this would be a good place to find knowledgeable people to ask. I also thought my questions would be welcome. Was I mistaken?

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Do you think that all Restorationists take a tact that implies for them to use the Bible only, and no other resources by which to understand the historic significance of their faith? I ask because I've had a year at a Restorationist Bible college, and I can tell you that the study there is anything but simply looking and reading the Bible ... all by its little lonesome.

umbrabates said:

Honestly, I didn't put a lot of thought into which sub-category to post in. I thought any number of these sub-forums would be visited by helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable people who would be happy to answer questions. The forum title says "No creed but Christ". That in particular attracted me. I'm sorry, I meant no offense.

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No offense taken, but I'm just trying to be clear if you were wanting to ask all Christians here at CF about how they 'decide' upon their usage of the Bible, or you were just interested in answers from those Christians who happen to be in the Restoration Movement, because that's what "No Creed but Christ" refers to.

umbrabates said:

How do you even determine what is a Bible? What books belong in a Bible? Is Tobin a legitimate book of the Bible? Is the Gospel of Mary? The Gospel of Peter?

How do you determine which translation to use? How about which translation not to use? Does King James' tinkering with certain verses make his version illegitimate? What about his amoral lifestyle or that of some of his translators?

Click to expand...

You do what the Bereans were praised for doing in Acts 17:11 by diligently testing everything someone says against OT Scripture to see if what they said is true. Most of the books of the NT were quickly and widely recognized by the population as being authoritative, so the issue of whether to use the NT canon is based on the standard that they used rather than on anyone's authority.

The four canonical Gospels contain many incidental details about the land which have been independently verified, such as about agriculture, architecture, botany, culture, economics, geography, language, law, personal names, politics, religion, social stratification, topography, and weather. The fact that they consistently get these sorts of details right in spite of being written outside of the land strongly suggests that we have high quality eyewitness accounts, and the fact that almost all of these sorts of details about the land drop out in apocryphal gospels gives us a good baseline on what to expect if something were written much later by someone who was unfamiliar with the events that they were narrating.