The Sola Scriptura Shell Game

The Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) always was a sham. I don’t simply mean that it’s an error, one that has been misleading millions of Christians for five centuries. I mean it’s a subterfuge, a shell game that Martin Luther used to substitute himself for Rome as the ultimate authority over Christian doctrine. Scripture would speak clearly, but with his voice, not fifteen centuries of bishops, scholars, and saints. However, Luther didn’t foresee that others could displace him as readily as he displaced the pope. Now Scripture speaks in a Babel of voices, for self-appointed authorities are legion.

Naomi Wolf Discovers NT Translation Errors

Recently, Christians on X (The Platform Formerly Known As Twitter) were bemused to get a series of tweets from feminist author Naomi Wolf. In this blast, she revealed that she was reading an interlinear Greek New Testament, “and what am I to do—so much of the NT has been mistranslated, or, shall I say, creatively translated, in addition to the OT having often been mistranslated.” Among the corrections she thought we needed was that Jesus wasn’t approached by “disciples” but rather by “learners,” which is of course what a disciple (L. discipulus) was.

(Ironically, Wolf has not yet claimed conversion to Christianity from Judaism.)

There were a lot of riffs on this from Catholics and Protestants. Journalist Susannah Black Roberts observed that Wolf has specialized in misinformation and crank theories ever since her breakout book The Beauty Myth. My favorite quip came from theologian Laura Robinson: “Naomi Wolf has evolved into her final form, a seminarian with six weeks of Greek who thinks the entire New Testament has been translated wrong.” But then I found a Wolf dittohead:

She’s so right: Get around the gatekeepers—learn how to read Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek. Then read your Bible every day. Pray without ceasing. Go to church. They don’t want you to do this.

Certainly, this is not the end of the bizarre takes that I’ve seen on Scripture in a week of having my feed flooded by Protestants, especially Calvinists (for some reason known only to Elon Musk). One trans writer argued that Paul’s warning against unworthily participating in Communion (1 Corinthians 11:-27-29) was a demand for an affirming theology. Another denied the universality of Christ’s sacrifice because “Imagine thinking that Jesus died for people he would later cast into hell.” Still a third considered that stating one’s reasons for doing X or Y was an implicit denial of free will.

By What Authority?

So let’s start with a common proof text for sola scriptura, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (all quotations from the New International Version unless otherwise noted):

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

Every English version translates pâs as “all” and ōphélimos as “useful” or “profitable.” But all and only aren’t interchangeable concepts in any language, and to be useful or profitable is not the same as to be sufficient. Moreover, the citation leaves out a previous sentence in which St. Paul tells St. Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it” (v. 15, emphasis mine). Paul isn’t appealing to a written tradition but rather to personal witness and oral tradition.

In context, then, the proof text doesn’t support sola scriptura. However, my point goes beyond that: The doctrine argues that only Scripture is “God-breathed” and therefore divinely authoritative. But if that’s the case, then from whence comes the Protestant’s authority to tell us that the text does prove the doctrine? And why should we consider him any less fallible than our bishops? For that matter, from whence comes his authority to determine whether or not the Old Testament “Apocrypha” belongs in the Bible? Or to decide that battalogeō in Matthew 6:7 is better translated as “repetition” rather than “babble”?

In other words, the Evangelical’s claim that “Scripture is my authority” is disingenuous. Their very activity presumes the right and authority to manipulate Scripture to their purpose. Certainly, Scripture is the inspired Word of God; but it can no more give a reader authority over its meaning than it can give a cocktail party or a piano recital. The authority to decide what writings are legitimate Scripture and how they should be interpreted must come from outside Scripture. The Evangelical may claim their authority comes from the Holy Spirit. However, that claim would expose sola scriptura’s basic self-contradiction.

The Central Flaw of Sola Scriptura

When we say Scripture is infallible, we mean that it speaks with the reliability of divine inspiration. Sola scriptura was intended to deny the Catholic Church’s religious authority by permitting infallibility only to Scripture. However, this leads to an intolerable logical dilemma:

• If the Holy Spirit guides the Church (John 14:26,16:13) and the Holy Spirit is reliable because of God’s fidelity (Romans 3:3-4; 2 Timothy 2:13), and the Church is “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15), then the Church’s teachings are reliable.
• The Church’s teachings are not reliable (sola scriptura).
• Therefore, either the Holy Spirit’s guidance is unreliable, or the Holy Spirit does not guide the Church. In either case, Paul’s claim about the Church being the “pillar and foundation” cannot be true.

In other words, asserting that the Church cannot be infallible contradicts Scripture in the name of asserting Scripture’s primacy. In the process of doing so, it unintentionally denies God’s fidelity and nullifies promises made by Christ. Moreover, if the Holy Spirit can’t protect Christ’s Church from error, He can’t protect the Protestant evangelist. The same rule used to deny authority to the Vatican also denies authority to Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Armstrong, and so many others. But if the minor counterproposition is false and the Church’s teachings are reliable, then the whole Protestant “Reformation” was a foolish and unnecessary rebellion.

The Source and Transmission of Apostolic Authority

Sola scriptura has other flaws, such as the material and formal insufficiency of Scripture to act as the sole regula fidei. But its central, fatal flaw is its rejection of an infallible human authority. The Protestants can’t give a credible source for their authority, even with often creative revisions of Church history. As author Jennifer Greenberg admitted, “Unless Jesus comes down and pours oil on his head, a pastor is just a Regular Joe preaching God’s Word. He is not more chosen than you or I, or any of God’s other children.”

This is where apostolic succession steps in. Right at the beginning of Acts, we find the apostles choosing a successor to Judas Iscariot, Matthias (Acts 1:15-26). In Acts 18:24-28, Apollos is a recent convert who is a skilled debater but needs a little more instruction. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of Apollos as if he were an apostle like himself and Peter. Although Scripture doesn’t explicitly say it, the inference that the apostles considered their authority transferable is plausible. And we can cite several Church Fathers in support of this contention; Catholic Answers has a selection.

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are the only two Christian communions that can plausibly claim succession from the original apostles. Moreover, the passing of that succession involves anointment with oils by other bishops, in a manner not unlike prophets and kings of old. With that anointment comes the divine authority of Christ himself, who gave the apostles authority to make, baptize, and teach new disciples (Matthew 28:19-20), the power to forgive sins (John 20:22-23), the authority to speak with his voice (Luke 10:16), and to legislate and discipline (Matthew 18:17-18). We can safely assume this includes authority over Scriptural interpretation.

Conclusion: “The Rule for the Right Understanding”

Many people chuckled over Naomi Wolf’s neophyte hubris who themselves are intellectual heirs of arrogant men who thought they knew better than fourteen centuries of bishops and scholars. I write as one of many Catholics who have sat at the feet of the Anglican C. S. Lewis. G. K. Chesterton’s pre-conversion apologetics inspired me as much as his post-conversion works. There are many Protestant scholars better educated than I am. Many Protestants’ lives are better exemplars of Christian love than mine. Nevertheless, sola scriptura is still a shell game, a dishonest device to usurp the Church’s authority.

The fifth-century monk St. Vincent of Lérins still gives the best explanation of why Scriptural interpretation is best determined by an authoritative Church:

… [Owing] to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. … Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesial and Catholic interpretation. (Commonitory 2:5)