Is Sola Scriptura True?

The pillar and bulwark of the truth

“… you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.”

1 Timothy 3:15

A note on this page and its companion. Almost everything else in this section examines a teaching of the Watchtower. This page and the one on sola fide do not. Sola scriptura — Scripture alone as the sole infallible rule of faith — is a Protestant doctrine, formulated in the sixteenth century, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are not Protestants. The left panel here is therefore headed Protestant View, and it states the doctrine as its own defenders state it.

It belongs on this site anyway, for two reasons. The first is that it is the question underneath every other question here: if Scripture alone settles doctrine, then the Catholic appeal to Tradition and to a teaching Church is illegitimate before the argument starts, and if it does not, the Reformation’s founding principle needs defending.

The second reason is closer to home. Jehovah’s Witnesses profess something that sounds like sola scriptura — that the Bible alone is their authority and that they hold no human traditions — while in practice requiring the interpretation supplied by the Governing Body, and disciplining those who read differently. That is not a hypocrisy so much as an illustration, and it is the most instructive one available: a body which sincerely believes Scripture interprets itself, and which cannot operate for a decade without an interpreter.

Let’s take the doctrine as its defenders state it, and ask …

  • Where does Scripture teach that Scripture alone is the rule of faith — and if it does not, what is the doctrine resting on?
  • And how does a reader know which books are Scripture in the first place, given that no book of the Bible contains a list of them?

I invite your engagement with me on these questions. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Protestant View

Protestants hold that Holy Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the Church. Not the only authority of any kind — creeds, councils, confessions and pastors all have real if derived authority — but the only one that cannot err, and therefore the standard by which all the others must be judged. The classic statement is the Westminster Confession’s: the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for salvation is either expressly set down in Scripture or may be deduced from it.1

What They Affirm

Scripture is God-breathed, and nothing else is. Paul tells Timothy that “all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). What is God-breathed cannot fail; what is merely human can. No tradition, council or bishop is anywhere said to be inspired.2

Christ condemned tradition set beside the word of God. To the Pharisees He said, “You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men” and “thus making void the word of God through your tradition” (Mark 7:8, 13). A body which adds to Scripture a second stream of unwritten teaching, and then interprets Scripture by it, is doing what He rebuked.

The Bereans are commended for checking. When Paul preached at Beroea the hearers “examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so,” and Luke calls them more noble than those at Thessalonica for it (Acts 17:11). They were not told to accept apostolic preaching on authority; they were praised for testing it against a text they already had.

Scripture is clear in what matters. The doctrine does not claim every passage is easy — the Reformers said plainly that some are obscure. It claims that what is necessary for salvation is set out plainly enough that an ordinary reader with the help of the Holy Spirit can grasp it. Scripture is addressed to the whole people of God, not to a class of experts, and the psalmist says the word is a lamp to the feet of anyone who reads it (Ps. 119:105).3

How They Argue It

The alternative has no fixed content. Ask what “Tradition” contains and no list can be produced. It turns out to mean whatever the teaching authority says it means at a given moment, which makes the appeal unfalsifiable: a doctrine with no scriptural basis and no early attestation can always be said to have been handed down orally. Scripture at least sits on the table where both parties can read it.

And the teaching Church has demonstrably erred. If an infallible interpreter were necessary, Christians would be spared the disputes that divide them; instead the body claiming that office sold indulgences, condemned Galileo, and produced popes whose lives were a scandal. An authority that can be wrong about such things is not the remedy for private judgment. It is private judgment with a larger budget.4

Endnotes
  1. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), I.6: “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.” ↩
  2. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 is the passage most often cited for the doctrine; see James R. White, Scripture Alone (Bethany House, 2004), and R. C. Sproul, Scripture Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine (P&R, 2005). ↩
  3. On the perspicuity of Scripture, see the Westminster Confession I.7, which grants that “all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all,” while holding that what must be known for salvation is set out plainly somewhere in it. ↩
  4. The historical argument is standard in Reformation polemic and recurs in modern evangelical treatments; White, Scripture Alone, chs. 4–5, presses both the indulgence controversy and the claim that an infallible interpreter has not in fact produced unity. ↩

Catholic View

The Catholic Church holds that Scripture is inspired, inerrant, and the word of God written — and that it was never given to the world as a free-standing rulebook. It came out of a believing community, was recognized as Scripture by that community, and was meant to be read inside it. The objection to sola scriptura is not that the Bible is unreliable. It is that the doctrine cannot satisfy its own standard, and does not describe how the Church actually received the Bible.

What Is Granted

A great deal. Scripture is God-breathed, and no Catholic may say otherwise. Christ’s rebuke of the Pharisees in Mark 7 is a standing warning, and any tradition that contradicts the written word is condemned by it. The Bereans were commended. And the historical complaints are not fantasies: indulgences were sold, the Galileo affair was a disgrace, and some who held the office of Peter lived scandalously. Catholics have also, in living memory, been poor readers of Scripture — a fault the Church herself has named and set about repairing.

The Doctrine Fails Its Own Test

Begin with the difficulty that has never been answered. If no doctrine may be held unless it is taught in Scripture, then sola scriptura must be taught in Scripture. Where? No passage states that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith, and none could easily do so while the New Testament was still being written.

The verse always produced is 2 Timothy 3:16–17, and it does not say it. It says Scripture is profitable for teaching and reproof and correction, and that it equips the man of God for every good work — which is true, and which no Catholic denies. Profitable is not the same word as sufficient; a thing can be indispensable without being the only thing. And the passage has a further problem for the doctrine: the Scripture Timothy had known “from childhood” (v. 15) was the Old Testament, since the New did not yet exist. Read as the doctrine needs it read, the verse proves the Old Testament sufficient and the New unnecessary.

The Canon Cannot Be Got From the Book

No book of the Bible contains a list of the books of the Bible. The table of contents is not inspired; it is a conclusion reached by the Church over the first four centuries, and finally settled by councils of the very bishops the Reformers were prepared to call corrupt.

So the reader who holds Scripture alone must already know, from somewhere other than Scripture, which writings are Scripture. There were serious candidates that lost — the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement — and serious books that were long doubted, including Hebrews, James, 2 Peter and Revelation. Whatever settled those questions was not the Bible. This is the point at which the doctrine turns back on itself: it must borrow from Tradition the one thing it cannot do without.

What the New Testament Says About Its Own Transmission

Paul does not describe a Church living from a book. He tells the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15) — two channels, named together, neither subordinated to the other. He tells Timothy to entrust what he has heard to faithful men who will teach others (2 Tim. 2:2), which is a description of succession, not of publishing. And he calls the Church, not the Scriptures, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

The Bereans do not tell against this. They were checking a new apostolic claim against the Scriptures they had, which is exactly what the Church has always said the faithful should do; and Luke records that the result was that they believed Paul. He does not record them concluding that they needed no apostle.

Clarity, Tested by Its Results

The claim that Scripture is clear in what matters is testable, and the test has been running for five centuries. Sincere, learned, prayerful readers of the same text disagree irreconcilably about baptism, the Eucharist, church government, predestination, the perseverance of the saints, and whether baptism saves. These are not trivia; each side holds its position to be plainly taught.

Scripture itself is less confident about its own transparency than the doctrine requires. Philip asks the Ethiopian whether he understands what he is reading, and the answer is: “How can I, unless some one guides me?” (Acts 8:31). Peter says Paul’s letters contain “some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16). That is an apostle saying the apostolic writings are misread by people reading them sincerely.

The Doctrine Has a Date

The early Church did not settle disputes this way. Confronted by Gnostics who also quoted Scripture — and who claimed a secret apostolic tradition of their own — Irenaeus did not answer with the text alone. He answered by pointing to the churches founded by apostles and to the public succession of their bishops, which he treats as the test of whether a reading of Scripture is authentic (Against Heresies 3.3). That argument makes no sense on sola scriptura, and it is the argument the second century actually used.

The Witness Next Door

There is a live demonstration of the difficulty, and it is the reason this page sits in this section. Jehovah’s Witnesses hold, with complete sincerity, that they follow the Bible alone and no human tradition. They also hold that the Bible cannot be rightly understood apart from the publications of the Governing Body, and a Witness who reads his way to a different conclusion is removed from the congregation for it.

That is not an accusation of bad faith. It is what happens when a group takes perspicuity seriously and then has to keep order: an interpreter appears, because one is needed. The Catholic claim is not that an interpreter is convenient, but that Christ provided one — and that the alternative to a Church with authority is not no authority, but an authority that has never been asked to justify itself.

The Reply in Brief

The doctrine is not taught in the book it makes the only teacher; the verse offered for it says profitable, not sufficient, and describes an Old Testament that on the same reading would make the New superfluous. Its canon must be received from outside itself, from the judgment of the Church. Paul names oral tradition and written letter side by side and calls the Church the pillar of the truth. And its promise of clarity has produced, among sincere readers of one text, the divisions it was supposed to prevent.

None of which lowers Scripture. The Catholic position is that the Bible is exactly what it claims to be, and that it was given to a people with a living voice, in whose hands it was written, gathered, preserved and read aloud long before anyone owned a copy. Take the book out of that community and it does not become clearer. It becomes whatever the reader already thought.

The full essay works through 2 Timothy 3 in its context, traces the formation of the canon from Irenaeus to Carthage, sets out Dei Verbum on the relation of Scripture and Tradition and what the Church does not claim, examines the Reformers’ own admissions about the clarity of Scripture, and takes up the strongest evangelical replies — James White’s in particular — at the length they deserve.

Summary

Sola scriptura holds that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith. The Catholic objection is not that the Bible is unreliable — it is inspired and inerrant, and no Catholic may say otherwise — but that the doctrine cannot meet its own standard, and does not describe how the Church actually received the Bible.

The doctrine is not in the book. If nothing may be held unless Scripture teaches it, sola scriptura must be taught in Scripture, and no passage says it. The verse always cited, 2 Timothy 3:16–17, says Scripture is profitable and equips for every good work. Profitable is not sufficient. And the Scripture Timothy knew “from childhood” was the Old Testament — so read as the doctrine requires, the verse makes the New Testament unnecessary.

The canon has to come from outside. No book of the Bible lists the books of the Bible. Hebrews, James, 2 Peter and Revelation were long disputed; the Shepherd of Hermas and 1 Clement were serious candidates that lost. Whatever settled those questions was not Scripture, which means the doctrine must borrow from Tradition the one thing it cannot do without.

Paul names two channels, not one. He tells the Thessalonians to hold the traditions taught “either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15), tells Timothy to entrust what he heard to men who will teach others (2 Tim. 2:2), and calls the Church — not the Scriptures — “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

Clarity has been tested for five centuries. Sincere, learned readers of one text divide irreconcilably over baptism, the Eucharist, church government and perseverance, each holding his view plainly taught. Scripture is less confident of its own transparency than the doctrine needs: “How can I, unless some one guides me?” (Acts 8:31), and Peter on Paul’s letters containing “things hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist” (2 Pet. 3:16).

The second century argued differently. Against Gnostics who also quoted Scripture, Irenaeus appealed to the churches founded by apostles and the public succession of their bishops as the test of an authentic reading (Against Heresies 3.3). That argument is unintelligible on sola scriptura, and it is the one the early Church used.

And there is a demonstration close at hand. Jehovah’s Witnesses sincerely profess the Bible alone and no human tradition — while requiring the Governing Body’s interpretation and removing those who read otherwise. Not hypocrisy: what happens when a group takes perspicuity seriously and still has to keep order. An interpreter appears, because one is needed.

In short: the objection is not to the Bible but to a rule about the Bible that the Bible does not state. Scripture was written, gathered, preserved and read aloud within a living community long before anyone owned a copy. Taken out of that community it does not become clearer — it becomes whatever the reader already thought.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download Is Sola Scriptura Scriptural? (.docx)