The limits of Sola Scriptura

The irony of Sola Scriptura ("by Scripture alone") is that it is a non-biblical doctrine. The premise is that everything we do as Christians has to be based on Scripture and nothing else. There are several problems with this logically.

First of all, the Bible never itself says this. In fact, the Bible says the opposite. St. Paul very clearly says to follow what he he writing there and all the other stuff the Apostles orally taught. Or, at the end of the Gospel when John says he basically has to stop writing at this point because if he were to write down everything that Jesus had said, it would fill whole libraries. But, regardless of how one interprets passages like that, at no time does the Bible specifically say, "You can only follow what is written in this book."

 

That is because there was no codified canon of the Bible. There were letters and Gospels written here, there, and everywhere. There were multiple Old Testament texts and books that were of Jewish religious origin floating about. Many of which we still have copies of that did not actually make it into the Bible. For instance, there is the Gospel of Thomas, The Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, The Book of Enoch, and the Apocalypse of Peter. There were hundreds, some of which were being treated as divinely inspired by a few congregations here and there in the Early Church. 

 

So, to say, Sola Scriptura...that's all well and good, but it assumes that there was one total complete "Bible" the Early Church found under a rock from the beginning as pointed out by some Angel or something, and that is not case. There were plenty of books that were claiming various degrees of divine inspiration, which the Church had to debate for quite a number of decades before the "canon" of books was completely agreed upon. Now, many books were pretty agreed upon fairly quickly by most people in the Church, but there was some debate for quite a while over books like Barnabas or Revelation. Some made it in, some did not. 

 

But how do we know that what is in the current Bible is in fact the unique Word of God? We have to rely on the Church and Tradition to tell us what the Bible is and what the Bible is not. The Bible does not in itself have a definitive list of what is and is not in the Bible. We have to rely on Church tradition to tell us this. So, therefore, Sola Scriptura is a problem at least in so far as defining what is in the Bible. Otherwise, we would be in a perpetually state of deciding every few years that Barnabas is in and James is out this year, but next year James might be in and Revelation and Ezekiel might be out.

 

And they most certainly had this discussion in the early Reformation period when everything was up for grabs. This is why the 7 books in the Catholic Old Testament canon got kicked out. Luther wanted James and Revelation removed from the Old Testament, but then he saw the danger of starting to remove books from the New Testament because you start taking out what you theologically don't like, you end up like Marcion and basically have Luke's Gospel and a few of Paul's Letters and burn everything else. Or you end up with Thomas Jefferson's Bible, which is basically some of Jesus' moral teachings (no miracles) and a few other excised works, but nothing else. 

 

Then there is also the level of degree of application of Sola Scriptura. Do you base everything solely on what you find in the Bible or are man made traditions like, say, an Advent Wreath or singing hymns whose text is not actually a metered version of a Bible passage alright as long as they don't contraindicate Scripture? If so, to what degree is tradition (small 't') ok? What's the cut off point? Hymns are ok but a Priest wearing a stole not ok? Is washing of feet a sacrament? There were many a Protestant church split when the degree of application of Sola Scriptura was being implemented in real time because, again, the Bible does not mandate Sola Scriptura, much less explain how to apply it in real time. There are some Protestants that throw out everything that is not specially found in Scripture. No hymns like Silent Night, no nothing. 

 

So, therein are but a few of the problems with Sola Scriptura.