Sola Scriptura is nonsense, isn't it?

[charsan]

CAN we know anything for sure? 100% certainty?

Yes through the Church

 

[JAL]

If Scripture isn't our highest authority to appeal to, then it is no longer God's word, whose word should be supreme above all human institutions.

Ok I responded to this post in my posts 23 and 33, but I promised to follow up with a discussion of conscience.

Stated simply, my position is that conscience - defined as a feeling of certainty as to what is morally right or wrong - is the only proper authority in our lives. As a result, even God must speak to our conscience. Direct revelation addresses conscience by modifying and/or increasing our feelings of certainty. I gave an example in post 33.

Why is conscience the most plausible candidate as the final authority in our lives? Basically for tautological reasons.
(1) Authoritative conscience is the tautological claim, 'I am obligated to currently believe that which I currently believe'. Or to restate it, 'I am obligated to currently feel certain about that which I currently feel certain about.' Thus, conscience must ALWAYS dictate what I believe. For example suppose, in seminary, I reason my way to a conclusion. And yet, suddenly I feel certain of the opposite conclusion. Someone asks me, 'What do you believe on that issue?' Shall I lie? Does not conscience in fact dictate what I believe?
(2) It seems tautological that justice is predicated on conscience as our only authority. Suppose a man says to his son, 'Clean your room every day'. He meant 7 days of the week but the boy felt certain his father meant 'every week day' and thus 5 days of a week. So he cleans it five days a week - he's acting in good conscience. What shall the father do? Beat his son with many stripes? Only an unjust, evil father would do such a thing. God is just. Therefore he must honor conscience as our highest authority.

 

[Original Happy Camper]

I don't know anything 100% certain.

I DO

Jesus saves us from our sins.

If you are not 100% certain on that statement what are you doing on this forum?

 

[HatGuy]

God is holy. Therefore, churches built on a platform of intellectual dishonesty are probably distancing themselves from His sanctifying revivals, healing graces and evangelistic unction.

Let's be honest, therefore, about the fact that we don't know what we're doing. We don't really know anything for sure, certainly not how to run a church.

Let us be especially honest about the fact that several popular doctrines are so problematical as to almost certainly be nonsense, case in point Sola Scriptura.

Sola Scriptura appears to be a logical absurdity that contradicts common sense and repudiates conversion. Evangelicals conveniently overlook this fact whenever they cite verses supposedly in favor of this 'doctrine' (if we even want to call it that).

Sola Scriptura was 'founded' (for lack of a better term) precisely because we can't know anything for sure. While we don't know, God knows, and therefore we ought to go back to what it is He gave us, in an effort to study and discover what it is He is telling us.

I'm not sure why this would be nonsense. It's simply saying that the source document is true, whether we understand or not, and if we're ever confused, we ought to be engage with the source document as much as we possibly can. That sounds reasonable to me.

Remember, Sola Scriptura does not negate tradition or experience, but it simply says the Bible is primary, others are secondary. Again, I fail to see why this isn't reasonable.

 

[JAL]

I DO

Jesus saves us from our sins.

If you are not 100% certain on that statement what are you doing on this forum?

Scripture speaks of measures of faith and exhorts us to press on to the full assurance of faith. I find it interesting that you tout yourself to have already arrived.

 

[JAL]

Sola Scriptura was 'founded' (for lack of a better term) precisely because we can't know anything for sure. While we don't know, God knows, and therefore we ought to go back to what it is He gave us, in an effort to study and discover what it is He is telling us.

I'm not sure why this would be nonsense. It's simply saying that the source document is true, whether we understand or not, and if we're ever confused, we ought to be engage with the source document as much as we possibly can. That sounds reasonable to me.

Remember, Sola Scriptura does not negate tradition or experience, but it simply says the Bible is primary, others are secondary. Again, I fail to see why this isn't reasonable.

See post 33 where I demonstrated the nonsense. Please address the arguments of that post directly.

 

[hedrick]

No, sola scriptura isn’t nonsense. But it’s also not a guarantee of knowing every we want to know.

There are two levels. First, people who learn about God from Scripture should get enough for salvation. There are lots of odd ideas that come from Scripture, but everyone from the snake handlers in Appalachia to the liberal mainliners knows enough for salvation.

The difficulty comes because there are lots of questions we want to know the answers to which either aren’t answered or where people come away with different answers.

Scripture doesn’t tell us whether to baptize infants, how to reconcile God’s grace with human responsibility, whether the wicked are destroyed or everyone is saved, or even whether abortion is wrong. There are good reasons we want answers to these questions, and Scripture includes principals that are relevant, but not the answers. But in a desire to find the answers, people see things that aren’t there, and come away with the false assurance that they have the Scriptural answer when they don’t.

What’s worse,Scripture says things that are wrong. Much of the OT history simply didn’t happen as recorded.

But this doesn’t take away from the fact that it has what is needed for salvation. Nor does the fact that it was written by humans make it useless. God is our authority, not Scripture. God largely revealed himself in history. Scripture it a human witness to that. Sure, it’s not a perfect witness, but we make lots of important decisions based on evidence that isn’t perfect.

Why didn’t God give us an inerrant theology text? Why all these stories, told in multiple versions? I’m not God. But I suspect he was looking for a kind of faith that is more likely to develop from hearing from those who have known him than from a theology textbook. Even if those people have some wrong ideas.

 

[JAL]

No, sola scriptura isn’t nonsense. But it’s also not a guarantee of knowing every we want to know.

There are two levels. First, people who learn about God from Scripture should get enough for salvation. There are lots of odd ideas that come from Scripture, but everyone from the snake handlers in Appalachia to the liberal mainliners knows enough for salvation.

The difficulty comes because there are lots of questions we want to know the answers to which either aren’t answered or where people come away with different answers.

Scripture doesn’t tell us whether to baptize infants, how to reconcile God’s grace with human responsibility, whether the wicked are destroyed or everyone is saved, or even whether abortion is wrong. There are good reasons we want answers to these questions, and Scripture includes principals that are relevant, but not the answers. But in a desire to find the answers, people see things that aren’t there, and come away with the false assurance that they have the Scriptural answer when they don’t.

What’s worse,Scripture says things that are wrong. Much of the OT history simply didn’t happen as recorded.

But this doesn’t take away from the fact that it has what is needed for salvation. Nor does the fact that it was written by humans make it useless. God is our authority, not Scripture. God largely revealed himself in history. Scripture it a human witness to that. Sure, it’s not a perfect witness, but we make lots of important decisions based on evidence that isn’t perfect.

Why didn’t God give us an inerrant theology text? Why all these stories, told in multiple versions? I’m not God. But I suspect he was looking for a kind of faith that is more likely to develop from hearing from those who have known him than from a theology textbook. Even if those people have some wrong ideas.

See post 33 where I demonstrated the nonsense of Sola Scriptura.
Also in post 42 I clarified my basis for authoritative conscience.
Please address the arguments of those posts directly.

 

[JAL]

Nice little article:

“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all. Yet, those things that are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or another, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” - WCF 1:7

(1) Let me finish his statement properly, "Yet, those things that are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation...are come to us by direct revelation (the Inward Witness) before we learned Greek and Hebrew.


Sola Scriptura is the claim that Scriptura is the ONLY final authority. That's nonsense as shown by my completion of his statement.

 

[Dave G.]

Ok I responded to this post in my posts 23 and 33, but I promised to follow up with a discussion of conscience.

Stated simply, my position is that conscience - defined as a feeling of certainty as to what is morally right or wrong - is the only proper authority in our lives. As a result, even God must speak to our conscience. Direct revelation addresses conscience by modifying and/or increasing our feelings of certainty. I gave an example in post 33.

Why is conscience the most plausible candidate as the final authority in our lives? Basically for tautological reasons.
(1) Authoritative conscience is the tautological claim, 'I am obligated to currently believe that which I currently believe'. Or to restate it, 'I am obligated to currently feel certain about that which I currently feel certain about.' Thus, conscience must ALWAYS dictate what I believe. For example suppose, in seminary, I reason my way to a conclusion. And yet, suddenly I feel certain of the opposite conclusion. Someone asks me, 'What do you believe on that issue?' Shall I lie? Does not conscience in fact dictate what I believe?
(2) It seems tautological that justice is predicated on conscience as our only authority. Suppose a man says to his son, 'Clean your room every day'. He meant 7 days of the week but the boy felt certain his father mean 'every week day' and thus 5 days of a week. So he cleans it five days a week - he's acting in good conscience. What shall the father do? Beat his son with many stripes? Only an unjust, evil father would do such a thing. God is just. Therefore he must honor conscience as our highest authority.

So you base your authority and assurance on feelings with no confirmation other than from within yourself, making the assumption that it is from God. This is a sure recipe to disaster in it's own due time... Seen it many times, it's similar to the idea that we are all little gods with the true and living God in the background someplace. You need a means of justifying those feelings, we always need to test the spirit that is feeding into us. So happens we have a manual.

I think we have all lost track of how many people come to this forum "thinking" they had the Holy Spirit because of feelings they had going on inside, that now have faded. Their conclusion is they lost the Holy Spirit. The question is, did they ever have it ? That's running ones spiritual life by the seat of the pants with no knowledge of how God even works. Anything can be feeding into your feelings and gut instinct, God, an agent of Satan, the world or yourself. Feelings are useful but not reliable, the word of God is true, tested and cuts like a two edged sword to the truth.

 

[Athanasius377]

God is holy. Therefore, churches built on a platform of intellectual dishonesty are probably distancing themselves from His sanctifying revivals, healing graces and evangelistic unction.

Let's be honest, therefore, about the fact that we don't know what we're doing. We don't really know anything for sure, certainly not how to run a church.

Let us be especially honest about the fact that several popular doctrines are so problematical as to almost certainly be nonsense, case in point Sola Scriptura.

Sola Scriptura appears to be a logical absurdity that contradicts common sense and repudiates conversion. Evangelicals conveniently overlook this fact whenever they cite verses supposedly in favor of this 'doctrine' (if we even want to call it that).

You seem awful certain about what you believe. Rather ironic and self defeating don’t you think?

 

[GirdYourLoins]

Yes anything new to you will be confusing, but some clarification ensued, if you had time to read all my posts.

Well, first of all you have taken a term, Sola scripture, and twisted its meaning to fit your argument. As others have said, Sola Scripture is the belief that the Bible is the only infallible authority, not as you said the only source of authority. The difference being that those who believe Sola Scripture believe that any other sources of authority should be in line with scripture and should not contradict it. To say that you can contradict scripture is to say that God can contradict God. Do you believe this to be true?

You in another post have argued that your conscience is the final source of authority. Do you therefore believe that your conscience is holy and sinless? Does your flesh not have any influence on your feelings? Your conscience obviously has no regard for writing off whole denominations, do you believe this is holy?

 

[HatGuy]

See post 33 where I demonstrated the nonsense. Please address the arguments of that post directly.

Before I do that, I must note a couple of problems with the argument(s) you've presented thus far as a whole.

A. To claim Sola Scriptura is nonsense is a rather assured claim (you have stated we can't be sure of everything).
B. Your OP starts with presupposing the authority of scripture. Your very first sentence is "God is holy" and you build things from there. How do you know God is Holy? Where did you get that idea from? Where did you get the words or the concept from? (Hint: the Bible)
C. In post #15 you speak about how the prophetic experience may be infallible, but you use scripture to try prove such a point. That automatically makes scripture a higher authority, even in your own argument.

In all of this, it's a bit like the post-modern liberal who wants to claim that we should ditch the Bible's moral authority because "God is love" but yet forgets that the very idea of "God is love" comes from the very Bible they want to ditch. Without the Bible they want to ditch, where would they have ever even come up with the idea that God is love?

Having said that, let's address the argument on post #33 you've outlayed and see how it goes:

As mentioned earlier, Sola Scriptura is the claim that the Bible is the only final authority on all major religious issues. Thus if I cannot find scriptural proof, I should withdraw an assertion. And what is proof? After all, a single Greek verb has over one hundred forms in its conjugation, as opposed to a simple language like English (say 4 or 5 forms). Without spending several years at seminary mastering Hebrew and Greek,therefore, how can I really claim to have 'proof'?

Yes, I follow you here.

Consider conversion. During conversion, the unbeliever typically reaches several major religious conclusions/doctrines - BEFORE learning any Hebrew or Greek, or even having read the Bible.
(1) Jesus is God.
(2) Jesus died for my sins.
(3) Jesus plans to take me to heaven forever.
(4) The Bible is His written Word.

Notice he drew ALL his most major religious conclusions - a liftime's worth - BEFORE studying Greek and Hebrew! Conversion is often instananeous - one short preached message and - that's all!

How is this possible? Calvin had the answer. Direct revelation - he called it the Inward Witness of the Holy Spirit, and probably 99% of evangelical theologians have (rightly) agreed with him since then.

HOW does it work? Simple. As Calvin stated, it boils down to a feeling of certainty. The Holy Spirit operates in in the heart of mind persuasively, causing the unbeliever to begin feeling certain of the gospel. We say that the Holy Spirit convicts (convinces) the unbeliever.

Implied corollaries:
(1) Christ - via direct revelation - is the foundation of the church. Scripture is NOT that foundation, in fact it was only widely available 500 years ago when the printing press appeared.
(2) Feelings of certainty are therefore authoritative in religious matters. Recall that conversion is not of your past, you in fact DAILY assert those 4 conclusions. If your original authority (feeling of certainty) has been impugned, then you should recant those 4 beliefs.
(3) Conscience is authoritative. In my next post I'll explain why #3 is just a paraphrase of #2.

I still don't see how any of this negates the Bible being the final (or primary) authority in the life of the believer.

Firstly, I agree that the Holy Spirit brings direct revelation to the believer, but such revelation is brought through a vehicle at least 99 percent of the time.

Romans 10:17 tells us that faith comes from hearing the Word of God (which is referring to the gospel, the message of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that powerfully convicts through the living Word that comes from the spoken / written word). In other words, the content of the revelation usually comes to a person through various means. No one sits in the bath and suddenly gets all four of those points in their heart. Each point may come gradually, or they may come fairly quickly at a revival meeting or something. But the fact is that there is content in those four points that the conscience itself does not simply conjure up for itself without some sort of external means.

All Sola Scriptura is saying is that the purest form of the message is found in the Bible, not that Scripture is the foundation of the church (negating the relevance of you point (1) above). I've never heard anyone ever preach that scripture is the foundation of the Church. I've only ever heard it preached that Christ is - but incidentally, people usually preach that because the Bible says it and God has spoken to them through the words of the Bible in some way.

(2) and (3) above are equally too simplistic. Conscience is certainly authoritative to a certain degree to an individual believer, but what of the community? Or the Church universal? My conscience has no real authority over you, correct? So what is the authority we can all at least agree on?

While I am more or less a fan of existential philosophy, we can't reduce Christianity to merely existential modes of thought (i.e. the conscience being a final authority). There is far more at stake than just me and my own spiritual walk.

 

[Francis Drake]

Faith comes from scripture. Anything beyond scripture robs people of faith.

Faith does not come from scripture, otherwise the scribes of Jesus's time would not have received such a roasting for their unbelief! Jesus held them personally responsible for rejecting what the scriptures say.

It is the inner witness of our spirit, not the intellect, that convinces us of God, and that has been happening for millennia before the scriptures were ever written down. That's why Paul wrote Romans1.

Romans1v18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19because that which may be known of God is manifest among them, for God has revealed it to them. 20For from the creation of the world His invisible qualities, both His eternal power and divinity, are clearly seen, being understood by the things made, so they are without excuse.

A look at the night sky, a sunset, a new born baby, a dragonfly etc. these things all open the willing heart to the whisper of God's spirit. And that's where it all starts, long before scripture is brought forth.
The hard heart looking at these same wonders, and knowingly rejects the God who created them, and does so by his own free choice.
That's why God allows no excuses.

And that's why Sola scripture is wrong. God's spirit always trumps scripture, because nobody understands what the scripture is saying without his spirit!

 

[hedrick]

See post 33 where I demonstrated the nonsense of Sola Scriptura.
Also in post 42 I clarified my basis for authoritative conscience.
Please address the arguments of those posts directly.

No, in 33 you demonstrate that we can't find answers to every question that we think should be answered. But that's not the only understanding of sola scriptura.

To me sola scriptura says that Scripture is the only direct witness to God's acts in history. But the witnesses aren't inerrant, nor do they answer any question we want them to. But it's still where we need to go to find out what Jesus taught and what he did.

There's a lot to be said for the Wesleyan quadrilateral or the Anglican equivalent. Jesus, after all, left the Church with the authority to make decisions. But they should make those decisions grounded in Jesus' life and teachings.

The difficulty with 42 is that conscience is formed by our culture and our experiences. Those could be misleading if our culture has different priorities than God's.

 

[JAL]

No, sola scriptura isn’t nonsense. But it’s also not a guarantee of knowing every we want to know.

There are two levels. First, people who learn about God from Scripture should get enough for salvation. There are lots of odd ideas that come from Scripture, but everyone from the snake handlers in Appalachia to the liberal mainliners knows enough for salvation.

The difficulty comes because there are lots of questions we want to know the answers to which either aren’t answered or where people come away with different answers.

Scripture doesn’t tell us whether to baptize infants, how to reconcile God’s grace with human responsibility, whether the wicked are destroyed or everyone is saved, or even whether abortion is wrong. There are good reasons we want answers to these questions, and Scripture includes principals that are relevant, but not the answers. But in a desire to find the answers, people see things that aren’t there, and come away with the false assurance that they have the Scriptural answer when they don’t.

What’s worse,Scripture says things that are wrong. Much of the OT history simply didn’t happen as recorded.

But this doesn’t take away from the fact that it has what is needed for salvation. Nor does the fact that it was written by humans make it useless. God is our authority, not Scripture. God largely revealed himself in history. Scripture it a human witness to that. Sure, it’s not a perfect witness, but we make lots of important decisions based on evidence that isn’t perfect.

Why didn’t God give us an inerrant theology text? Why all these stories, told in multiple versions? I’m not God. But I suspect he was looking for a kind of faith that is more likely to develop from hearing from those who have known him than from a theology textbook. Even if those people have some wrong ideas.

Shall I intend on doing evil? If my conscience is currently convinced (feels certain), when faced with two choices A and B, that action A is evil and action B is good, what shall I do? Action A? Thus we see at every turn that authoritative conscience seems to be tautologically true (as I suggested in post 42) and thus doesn't seem to need any proof.

Now suppose someone put a book in front of you. He says, 'That should be your only authority'. Is that a tautological claim? Wouldn't you want to investigate its contents and then DECIDE based on some evidentiary rationale - some basis - that such is true? And what will be your basis? Reason? Blind faith? Scholarship? Conscience? (Pick whatever you like).

But having selected a basis, examine now where you stand. You stand now on some authoritative basis deemed worthy of evaluating the book. In other words you've endorsed an authority OTHER than the book. Which means that the book cannot claim to be 'your only final authority'..

Yes indeed, Sola Scriptura is absolute nonsense.

 

[Albion]

Sola Scriptura appears to be a logical absurdity that contradicts common sense and repudiates conversion. Evangelicals conveniently overlook this fact whenever they cite verses supposedly in favor of this 'doctrine' (if we even want to call it that).

God's revelation is the most reliable source of information that we can have.

That's the proposition.

What's so "absurd" about that? If we didn't believe in the existence of a God, then of course your criticism would be reasonable, but since we do....?

 

[HatGuy]

And that's why Sola scripture is wrong. God's spirit always trumps scripture, because nobody understands what the scripture is saying without his spirit!

This last statement is a false dichotomy.

John 6:63

Ephesians 6:17

And many others.

 

[Francis Drake]

That's an epistemological question - and one of the main topics of this thread. Unfortunately I'm in only a few posts deep so far, I haven't had time to fully address it.

Can I prove my position 100% incontrovertibly to you? No. What I'm after on this thread:
(1) Honesty about the fact that Sola Scriptura appears to be logical absurdity.
(2) Honesty about the fact that my epistemology (yet to be clarified) is NOT absurd and is probably the most plausible alternative to #1.

In broad terms I accept Sola Scripture. However I only do so as a check on those who claim the church as the final authority.

However, the problem with Sola Scripture lies between what God intended when it was written, and our flawed understanding of it.
Ultimately, our understanding has to come with Holy Spirit guidance, otherwise we are no better than faithless naturally minded intellectuals, and no matter how much we know of scripture, it is of little value before the Lord.

1Cor2v14The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Paul makes it clear that the Spirit of God is the final authority, because without revelation, God's intentions will remain foolishness to us.

And of course, there are countless things that God would reveal through his spiritual gifts that can never be judged against scripture.
For the last 40 odd years, the path of my life has been guided through prophecy, visions, dreams, words of knowledge, etc. The majority of which have concerned things like starting businesses, inventing things, buying cars, finding a wife, moving house, and having my life saved by a word of knowledge.

None of the above would be found by Sola Scripture.

 

[JAL]

Well, first of all you have taken a term, Sola scripture, and twisted its meaning to fit your argument. As others have said, Sola Scripture is the belief that the Bible is the only infallible authority, not as you said the only source of authority. The difference being that those who believe Sola Scripture believe that any other sources of authority should be in line with scripture and should not contradict it. To say that you can contradict scripture is to say that God can contradict God. Do you believe this to be true?

In other words, Scripture has the final say. If I don't first check it out with Scripture, I shouldn't make a religious assertion, at least not a major one. I refuted that nonsense in post 33 (see also posts 23, 42, 56).

You in another post have argued that your conscience is the final source of authority. Do you therefore believe that your conscience is holy and sinless? Does your flesh not have any influence on your feelings? Your conscience obviously has no regard for writing off whole denominations, do you believe this is holy?

Shall I intend on doing evil? No. Therefore feelings of certainty are authoritative even for an imperfect conscience. Suppose I feel certain that action A is evil and action B is good. Shall I do A or B? I shall do B, regardless whether my conscience is misinformed.

I need to be honest however. I shall admit, if I only have 99% certainty about B, that I'm not ENTIRELY sure it's the right thing to do.

Basically it works like this. When faced with multiple choices, I shall go with the one I feel MOST certain about, and bearing in mind one of the choices is this, 'Maybe I don't have enough certainty to embrace ANY of those options right now. Therefore I shall wait on God in prayer for more certainty, or at least look somwhere for more certainty.' That somewhere can include Bible-study of course, but let's be realistic by admitting that Bible-study will never likely lead to 100% certainty as it is known to be fallible. Direct revelation is our best hope therefore (1Cor 14:1).