Understanding Sola Scriptura in Christianity

People who say you can't understand the Bible without church tradition make it sound like the church fathers are better at communicating than God. Hey guys, welcome back to Kingdom Craft, where we build churches in Minecraft while talking about Christianity, and today we are talking about the belief that makes Protestants Protestant. The thing that sets us apart from all other Christian groups, whether Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox, we are talking about sola scriptura, which is Latin for the Bible alone. This doesn't mean that the Bible is our only authority. It does mean that the Bible is our only infallible authority, which means it's our highest authority that all other lesser authorities must submit to. There is no authority that is equal to or higher than the Bible. Because the Bible is the Word of God. That is what Sola Scriptura means. And I'm going to give three reasons for why Sola Scriptura is true, and why you should therefore be Protestant. Because if you believe in Sola Scriptura, then your ideas are Protestant. That's the one thing that sets Protestants apart from all other Christians. So reason number one is that religious authorities, even religious authorities ordained directly by God, still sin and go astray. Reason number two is that all of the arguments against Sola Scriptura could have been used by the Pharisees against our Lord Jesus himself. And reason number three is that everyone already implicitly believes in Sola Scriptura, even if they don't know it yet. So let's start with reason number one. You know, the reason I am Protestant The fundamental reason, even though there's many reasons, for example, I think Protestants have the best architecture and music. I know that given there's a lot of contemporary Protestant churches with terrible architecture and music, that can be hard to believe. But come on, J.S. Bach and Handel were both Protestant, I think, way better composers than any Catholic religious composers. And, you know, before 1960, basically every Protestant church looked like this, looked like my Presbyterian church in Minecraft here. So it's a very new trend for new Protestant denominations to have bad aesthetics. So, yes, that is one of the reasons I like being Protestant, but it is not the biggest reason at all. The biggest theological reason for why I am Protestant is because Protestants take sin the most seriously, especially the classical Reformation Protestant traditions, like the Lutheran tradition and the Reformed tradition. They have a very strong doctrine of original sin and total depravity. which means that sin affects absolutely every part of us. There is not a single part of us that is not sinful. I was recently doing a debate with a liberal gay-affirming pastor, and he was like, have you ever considered what it's like to be queer and be told that a part of you is sinful? And I was like, dude, every part of me is sinful. I'm a Calvinist. I believe in total depravity. That's a very Protestant idea. that sin affects everything. And if sin affects everything, then sin also affects the church. And if sin affects the church, then that means the church is not infallible. The church still has authority. The Bible gives authority to a lot of other things apart from the Bible. The Bible says parents have authority over their children. The Bible says the government has authority over you. You hear that libertarians? Yes. The Bible says to submit to the government, Romans 13. But it's not claiming that the government is infallible. The Bible says submit to your parents. It does not mean that your parents are infallible. The government clearly does make mistakes. Your parents can make mistakes. So just because God gives authority to something doesn't mean that thing is infallible. And in the Bible, God gives authority to a lot of religious leaders, but that does not make them infallible. And this is a pattern that we see all throughout the scriptures, both the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God gives authority to Moses and Aaron, but Aaron sins and worships the golden calf. So that means Aaron was not infallible. God gives authority to the judges, but the judges regularly sin, go astray, and worship false gods. So that means the judges were not infallible. then God gives authority to the kings, but the kings go astray and worship false gods. That means the kings were not infallible. And every time one of these religious authorities, keep in mind, God ordained religious authorities, every time one of them goes astray, they constantly need to be corrected by the word of God, spoken through the prophets, and when the prophets speak the word of God, Yes, they are producing new revelation from God in a sense, but they're always drawing upon old revelation that was given to them. given to Moses. So in the scriptures, we see religious authorities, all religious authorities, being called to submit to the word of God, which is what the scriptures are. The scriptures are the word of God, the highest authority that basically norms all other religious authorities. So like I said, sola scriptura does not mean that we don't think the church has any authority. That's what Catholic and Orthodox straw men of Protestant beliefs are. They think we don't think the church has authority at all. So then they can just try and point to a text like where Paul says the church is the pillar and foundation of truth. And we're like, yeah, we know that. We know the church has authority, but it's not a perfect authority. I'm making this video right after the whole, you know, all the drama with Pope Francis writing a statement that about same-sex unions and it's not. clear whether he's endorsing the union itself or just endorsing the, or just saying you can bless the individuals in the union, and a lot of people are freaking out over the idea that the Pope of the Catholic Church might have said something that's not in accordance with church teaching. So I'm not saying Pope Francis did say the wrong thing or not, because I think the whole reason there's so much drama is it's not clear what Pope Francis was saying, but if you're a Protestant like me... You don't have such an existential crisis when one of your leaders says something wrong, or might have said something wrong. Because I'm in the PCUSA, the Presbyterian Church USA. Our leaders suck. Our leaders are heretics much of the time. They say a lot of theologically liberal stuff. They seem way more invested in left-wing social justice. The material put out by the higher-ups in the denomination is basically just the 2024 Democratic platform. So because I'm a Protestant, I'm fine with criticizing my church leaders. I'm fine with the idea that my religious leaders could go astray and worship false gods because we see that happening all over the Bible. And the fact that they're doing that doesn't mean I have to split off and join a different denomination. Because no matter what you do, no matter where you go, religious leaders will always go astray. Because as Protestants, we believe the Bible when it says that sin affects... absolutely everything. So yeah, the first reason why Sola Scriptura is true is that no institution, no religious leaders are free from sin, and not just sin in terms of moral actions, but sin having impacts on their credibility as a leader. All religious authorities can make mistakes, but God never makes mistakes. That's why the word of God must always be trusted above words of men. So that means, I made a video a couple episodes ago about ecumenical councils. Ecumenical councils are very useful in helping us understand the Word of God, but there are some ecumenical councils where they are clearly departing from the Word of God, and then we don't accept those. We accept ecumenical councils when they help clarify what the Word of God means, and they're very useful for that. The Nicene Creed is almost a perfect litmus test for whether someone believes the Gospel or not. And some people will say, oh, it's like, if you're not submitting to a church authority, how do you know which councils to accept and which councils to reject? Okay, if you're saying that, you're basically saying the councils are better at communicating than God himself through his own words. So I don't think you want to be saying that. That's reason number one. It's that all religious authorities can make mistakes, can go astray, and they very frequently do. Okay, next reason. Basically, all arguments against Sola Scriptura could have been used by the Pharisees to argue against Christ. Here is the biggest example of that. The number one argument against Sola Scriptura is the question of the canon, the canon of scripture, because as you guys know, as I hope you guys know, the Bible does not contain a table of contents in the beginning. It's not like before Genesis 1, God says, okay, these are all the books that should be included in your Bibles, so make sure you take a note of this. That's not what happened. There is no table of contents in the Bible. So how do we know which books belong in the Bible? So what the Catholic and Orthodox people will say is, oh yeah, you need to rely on church tradition for your canon of scripture, because church tradition assembled the Bible and gave you the Bible, so that means you must submit to our church, because without our church you wouldn't have your Bible that you love so much. That's what they say. And they are absolutely right. that we depend on church tradition for the canon of scripture. However, that does not mean church tradition is infallible. God can use a fallible authority to deliver you an infallible document. Here's an example. Like, let's say you submit to a king, and the king has authority over you. The king's messengers don't have authority over you, but you could still trust the king's messengers to deliver you messages from the king. So of course, God is the king and the message that he is delivering is the Bible, and the messenger that is delivering that message is the church, church tradition. Another example is your pastor preaches the word of God to you. Your pastor delivers the Bible to you when he preaches the word of God to you. That does not mean your pastor has the same authority as the word of God, just because he delivers the word of God to you. But they'll still say, oh, there's a difference between normative authority and existential authority. You still need to... you still need to give an infallible authority to the church if you trust the church to produce an infallible document for you. But here's the thing. Jesus depended on the religious authorities, the religious traditions of his day, for his canon of scripture. Jesus' canon of scripture was the Old Testament, and just like the New Testament doesn't have a table of contents, neither does the Old Testament. So how did people in Jesus' time know which books were part of the Old Testament canon? They relied on the Jewish traditions of their time to know which books belong in the Old Testament, which, for them, was just their Bible. And the gatekeepers, the keepers of the Jewish tradition, were largely the Pharisees. However, if you read absolutely any part of the Gospels at all, Jesus clearly did not think the Pharisees had infallible authority. However, Jesus still recognized that the Pharisees had some authority. Jesus told the disciples, do what the Pharisees tell you. You know, we think of the Pharisees as these villains. They ended up being villains in their rejection of the Messiah, but according to all the every good Israelite at the time, the Pharisees did have authority, and Jesus didn't necessarily contradict that. What Jesus did contradict was the idea that they had infallible authority. The Pharisees claimed to have an oral Torah, meaning, basically the equivalent of Moses' written Torah, the equivalent of the first five books of the Bible, but passed down via oral tradition instead of writing. And that sounds very similar to when Catholics and Orthodox people say that their unwritten traditions have equal authority to the Word of God. They'll say, oh, St. Paul gave us his letters, which are in the New Testament, but he also gave us certain unwritten traditions that we're the keepers of. That sounds basically exactly like when the Pharisees say, we have an oral Torah, which was handed down by Moses. Now, I am not saying by any means that the Catholics and Orthodox are like the Pharisees. I am saying, when defending their views, when attacking Sola Scriptura, they often use similar arguments that the Pharisees did. So, if Jesus could depend on the Pharisees for their canon of Scripture, without giving them the infallible authority that they might have claimed for themselves, then we can also depend on the Church. We can depend on the early Church for our canon of Scripture without giving the early Church infallible authority. And by the way, the Catholics will say, oh, it was us that produced the Bible, and the Orthodox will say, no, it was us that produced the Bible, and the Oriental Orthodox will say, no, it was us that produced the Bible. And Catholics, Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox, all have slightly different canons of scripture, just the way Protestants have a different canon of scripture from all of them. But the thing is, none of them can really claim to be the exact same church as the early church. I know they will all claim that, oh, we're the original ones, and all of you guys just split from us. But the truth is, it's a lot more like a tree with many branches. The early church is the, you know, bottom trunk of the tree. And Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, those are all branches that grew out of the same trunk. So all these, you know, branches of Christianity came from the same early church. So it's not like we're relying on the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church for our canon of scripture. We are simply relying on the early church because we all share a common heritage. Now, if you go to Billy Bob's non-denominational Bible church, yeah, you can't really say you have any rootedness in the early church. But classical Protestantism does have rudeness in the early church. Protestantism did not start in the 1500s. Of course, the Protestant movement happened then, but the Protestant churches did not start then. It was the same churches before and after the Reformation. They just separated themselves from the authority of the Pope. But they were not starting brand new churches. Compare that to modern non-denominationalism, which really does start new churches. And that brings me to the third argument for Sola Scriptura, and it's that everyone kind of already believes in it in some way. And let me explain, even if you're Catholic or Orthodox. So, the Catholics claim, you know, the Bible is not the only infallible authority, our church is also an infallible authority. However, if the church is the infallible authority, then only one church body can have that infallible authority. So, the Catholics claim we are the infallible church. All of you other churches split from us, the Orthodox will claim, no, no, no, no, no. We are the infallible church. All of you guys split from us. And the Oriental Orthodox will then go and claim, no, we are the infallible authority. All of you guys split from us. And then the Assyrian church of the East will go, no, no, no, we are the infallible authority. All you guys split from us. You guys see where this is going, right? They all claim to be the infallible authority that everyone else split from. So if you have... different churches that claim to be the one true church founded by Jesus and the apostles, and different churches can really claim apostolic succession back to the early church, how do you know which one is correct? How do you know which church split from which, if they both have basically equally credible historical claims to having been rooted in the original church? You need to appeal to the Bible. You need to see which church's claims are more biblical. This is what we call private judgment. Private judgment means figuring out truth for yourself rather than having someone else do it for you. And, you know, Catholics and Orthodox will attack Protestants for using private judgment, for having private interpretations of scripture. But the thing is, Catholics and Orthodox people, they do that too. You know, if you converted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, you relied on your own reasoning. to discern which of those two churches was really the one true church, because they both claim to be the one true church. So you either had to rely on your own private judgment, or you searched the scriptures to see which of those churches follows the Bible more closely. And if you're doing so, if you're judging church authority by the authority of the Bible, then congrats, you believe in sola scriptura, and you should be a Protestant. Now, some of them... And this is where I say everyone believes in sola scriptura in some sense. Some of them will say, oh no, we don't appeal to the Bible alone to see which church is the true one. We see which one follows the earliest tradition. So for example, I talked about the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox. Those churches split in the 5th century at the Council of Chalcedon. The Council of Chalcedon was where the church split into the Chalcedonians. that affirmed the council, and the Meophysites that denied and rejected the council. Why did they reject the council? Because they said the council of Chalcedon was contradicting the previous council, which is the council of Ephesus. And then the Chalcedonian side was like, no, we're not contradicting Ephesus, we're affirming what Ephesus said, you guys are contradicting Ephesus. So basically, the fight between the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox is which one of them agreed with the earlier tradition. So they're establishing this principle that earlier traditions need to be appealed to when you have a dispute over which later tradition is correct. The question is, okay, which tradition is more in line with the earlier tradition? And similarly, the Council of Ephesus, the earlier one, that was where the Nestorians split from everyone else. And the argument there was, okay, which one of us... agrees more with the Council of Nicaea, which is an even earlier tradition than the Council of Ephesus. And at the Council of Nicaea, that's where all of the Christians split from the Arians, the people following Arius. And the debates at the Council of Nicaea were which side follows the Bible, because the Bible is an earlier tradition than all of the church councils. All these churches that claim to be the one true church. Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, sorry, not Protestants. Protestants don't claim to be the one true church. All these churches that claim to be the one true church, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and the Assyrian Church of the East, they all accept a different set of councils. So how do you know which set of councils is the correct set of councils? You need to appeal to the scriptures, because all the scriptures came before the councils. Yes, you could say they were maybe canonized. assembled after some of those councils, but the scriptures are an older authority than any of the church councils. And that basically proves Sola Scriptura, because you are saying that older traditions are more authoritative than newer ones, so therefore the Bible is more authoritative than any church council, because you need to privately judge which church councils are correct using the Bible, because different church bodies will accept different numbers of councils. And this was also a general principle even in the Old Testament. Generally, even though the writings of the prophets were considered scripture, they were still subject to the writings of the law, the law of Moses. And even though like the Psalms and the Proverbs, the writings, they were still subject to the authority of the law and the prophets. So like the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures, they were sort of like, you know, a planet with like the core being the law of Moses, being the Torah, the mantle being, you know, the prophets and the crust being like the writings. So there's always been this principle that older... revelation is more authoritative than newer stuff. And here's, I think, my favorite biblical example of sola scriptura actively being employed in the Bible. There was a group called the Bereans. Basically, in the book of Acts, they tested what the apostles were saying according to the Old Testament scriptures that they already had. They searched the scriptures to see if what the apostles were saying is true. Likewise, anytime we encounter a church tradition or council, we should test it by the scriptures, by the scriptures that we have, to see if that tradition is in accordance with the word of God. So thank you guys for watching, and I will speed this up while I do more working on the outside of my church.

This doesn't mean that the Bible is our only authority. It does mean that the Bible is our only infallible authority, which means it's our highest authority that all other lesser authorities must submit to. There is no authority that is equal to or higher than the Bible.

Because the Bible is the Word of God. That is what Sola Scriptura means. And I'm going to give three reasons for why Sola Scriptura is true, and why you should therefore be Protestant. Because if you believe in Sola Scriptura, then your ideas are Protestant. That's the one thing that sets Protestants apart from all other Christians.

So reason number one is that religious authorities, even religious authorities ordained directly by God, still sin and go astray. Reason number two is that all of the arguments against Sola Scriptura could have been used by the Pharisees against our Lord Jesus himself. And reason number three is that everyone already implicitly believes in Sola Scriptura, even if they don't know it yet. So let's start with reason number one. You know, the reason I am Protestant The fundamental reason, even though there's many reasons, for example, I think Protestants have the best architecture and music.

I know that given there's a lot of contemporary Protestant churches with terrible architecture and music, that can be hard to believe. But come on, J.S. Bach and Handel were both Protestant, I think, way better composers than any Catholic religious composers.

And, you know, before 1960, basically every Protestant church looked like this, looked like my Presbyterian church in Minecraft here. So it's a very new trend for new Protestant denominations to have bad aesthetics. So, yes, that is one of the reasons I like being Protestant, but it is not the biggest reason at all. The biggest theological reason for why I am Protestant is because Protestants take sin the most seriously, especially the classical Reformation Protestant traditions, like the Lutheran tradition and the Reformed tradition.

They have a very strong doctrine of original sin and total depravity. which means that sin affects absolutely every part of us. There is not a single part of us that is not sinful.

I was recently doing a debate with a liberal gay-affirming pastor, and he was like, have you ever considered what it's like to be queer and be told that a part of you is sinful? And I was like, dude, every part of me is sinful. I'm a Calvinist. I believe in total depravity. That's a very Protestant idea.

that sin affects everything. And if sin affects everything, then sin also affects the church. And if sin affects the church, then that means the church is not infallible. The church still has authority.

The Bible gives authority to a lot of other things apart from the Bible. The Bible says parents have authority over their children. The Bible says the government has authority over you. You hear that libertarians? Yes.

The Bible says to submit to the government, Romans 13. But it's not claiming that the government is infallible. The Bible says submit to your parents. It does not mean that your parents are infallible. The government clearly does make mistakes. Your parents can make mistakes.

So just because God gives authority to something doesn't mean that thing is infallible. And in the Bible, God gives authority to a lot of religious leaders, but that does not make them infallible. And this is a pattern that we see all throughout the scriptures, both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, God gives authority to Moses and Aaron, but Aaron sins and worships the golden calf. So that means Aaron was not infallible. God gives authority to the judges, but the judges regularly sin, go astray, and worship false gods.

So that means the judges were not infallible. then God gives authority to the kings, but the kings go astray and worship false gods. That means the kings were not infallible.

And every time one of these religious authorities, keep in mind, God ordained religious authorities, every time one of them goes astray, they constantly need to be corrected by the word of God, spoken through the prophets, and when the prophets speak the word of God, Yes, they are producing new revelation from God in a sense, but they're always drawing upon old revelation that was given to them. given to Moses. So in the scriptures, we see religious authorities, all religious authorities, being called to submit to the word of God, which is what the scriptures are. The scriptures are the word of God, the highest authority that basically norms all other religious authorities.

So like I said, sola scriptura does not mean that we don't think the church has any authority. That's what Catholic and Orthodox straw men of Protestant beliefs are. They think we don't think the church has authority at all. So then they can just try and point to a text like where Paul says the church is the pillar and foundation of truth.

And we're like, yeah, we know that. We know the church has authority, but it's not a perfect authority. I'm making this video right after the whole, you know, all the drama with Pope Francis writing a statement that about same-sex unions and it's not. clear whether he's endorsing the union itself or just endorsing the, or just saying you can bless the individuals in the union, and a lot of people are freaking out over the idea that the Pope of the Catholic Church might have said something that's not in accordance with church teaching. So I'm not saying Pope Francis did say the wrong thing or not, because I think the whole reason there's so much drama is it's not clear what Pope Francis was saying, but if you're a Protestant like me...

You don't have such an existential crisis when one of your leaders says something wrong, or might have said something wrong. Because I'm in the PCUSA, the Presbyterian Church USA. Our leaders suck. Our leaders are heretics much of the time. They say a lot of theologically liberal stuff.

They seem way more invested in left-wing social justice. The material put out by the higher-ups in the denomination is basically just the 2024 Democratic platform. So because I'm a Protestant, I'm fine with criticizing my church leaders. I'm fine with the idea that my religious leaders could go astray and worship false gods because we see that happening all over the Bible.

And the fact that they're doing that doesn't mean I have to split off and join a different denomination. Because no matter what you do, no matter where you go, religious leaders will always go astray. Because as Protestants, we believe the Bible when it says that sin affects... absolutely everything. So yeah, the first reason why Sola Scriptura is true is that no institution, no religious leaders are free from sin, and not just sin in terms of moral actions, but sin having impacts on their credibility as a leader.

All religious authorities can make mistakes, but God never makes mistakes. That's why the word of God must always be trusted above words of men. So that means, I made a video a couple episodes ago about ecumenical councils.

Ecumenical councils are very useful in helping us understand the Word of God, but there are some ecumenical councils where they are clearly departing from the Word of God, and then we don't accept those. We accept ecumenical councils when they help clarify what the Word of God means, and they're very useful for that. The Nicene Creed is almost a perfect litmus test for whether someone believes the Gospel or not.

And some people will say, oh, it's like, if you're not submitting to a church authority, how do you know which councils to accept and which councils to reject? Okay, if you're saying that, you're basically saying the councils are better at communicating than God himself through his own words. So I don't think you want to be saying that.

That's reason number one. It's that all religious authorities can make mistakes, can go astray, and they very frequently do. Okay, next reason.

Basically, all arguments against Sola Scriptura could have been used by the Pharisees to argue against Christ. Here is the biggest example of that. The number one argument against Sola Scriptura is the question of the canon, the canon of scripture, because as you guys know, as I hope you guys know, the Bible does not contain a table of contents in the beginning.

It's not like before Genesis 1, God says, okay, these are all the books that should be included in your Bibles, so make sure you take a note of this. That's not what happened. There is no table of contents in the Bible.

So how do we know which books belong in the Bible? So what the Catholic and Orthodox people will say is, oh yeah, you need to rely on church tradition for your canon of scripture, because church tradition assembled the Bible and gave you the Bible, so that means you must submit to our church, because without our church you wouldn't have your Bible that you love so much. That's what they say.

And they are absolutely right. that we depend on church tradition for the canon of scripture. However, that does not mean church tradition is infallible.

God can use a fallible authority to deliver you an infallible document. Here's an example. Like, let's say you submit to a king, and the king has authority over you.

The king's messengers don't have authority over you, but you could still trust the king's messengers to deliver you messages from the king. So of course, God is the king and the message that he is delivering is the Bible, and the messenger that is delivering that message is the church, church tradition. Another example is your pastor preaches the word of God to you. Your pastor delivers the Bible to you when he preaches the word of God to you. That does not mean your pastor has the same authority as the word of God, just because he delivers the word of God to you.

But they'll still say, oh, there's a difference between normative authority and existential authority. You still need to... you still need to give an infallible authority to the church if you trust the church to produce an infallible document for you.

But here's the thing. Jesus depended on the religious authorities, the religious traditions of his day, for his canon of scripture. Jesus' canon of scripture was the Old Testament, and just like the New Testament doesn't have a table of contents, neither does the Old Testament. So how did people in Jesus' time know which books were part of the Old Testament canon?

They relied on the Jewish traditions of their time to know which books belong in the Old Testament, which, for them, was just their Bible. And the gatekeepers, the keepers of the Jewish tradition, were largely the Pharisees. However, if you read absolutely any part of the Gospels at all, Jesus clearly did not think the Pharisees had infallible authority. However, Jesus still recognized that the Pharisees had some authority.

Jesus told the disciples, do what the Pharisees tell you. You know, we think of the Pharisees as these villains. They ended up being villains in their rejection of the Messiah, but according to all the every good Israelite at the time, the Pharisees did have authority, and Jesus didn't necessarily contradict that.

What Jesus did contradict was the idea that they had infallible authority. The Pharisees claimed to have an oral Torah, meaning, basically the equivalent of Moses' written Torah, the equivalent of the first five books of the Bible, but passed down via oral tradition instead of writing. And that sounds very similar to when Catholics and Orthodox people say that their unwritten traditions have equal authority to the Word of God. They'll say, oh, St. Paul gave us his letters, which are in the New Testament, but he also gave us certain unwritten traditions that we're the keepers of. That sounds basically exactly like when the Pharisees say, we have an oral Torah, which was handed down by Moses.

Now, I am not saying by any means that the Catholics and Orthodox are like the Pharisees. I am saying, when defending their views, when attacking Sola Scriptura, they often use similar arguments that the Pharisees did. So, if Jesus could depend on the Pharisees for their canon of Scripture, without giving them the infallible authority that they might have claimed for themselves, then we can also depend on the Church.

We can depend on the early Church for our canon of Scripture without giving the early Church infallible authority. And by the way, the Catholics will say, oh, it was us that produced the Bible, and the Orthodox will say, no, it was us that produced the Bible, and the Oriental Orthodox will say, no, it was us that produced the Bible. And Catholics, Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox, all have slightly different canons of scripture, just the way Protestants have a different canon of scripture from all of them. But the thing is, none of them can really claim to be the exact same church as the early church.

I know they will all claim that, oh, we're the original ones, and all of you guys just split from us. But the truth is, it's a lot more like a tree with many branches. The early church is the, you know, bottom trunk of the tree. And Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, those are all branches that grew out of the same trunk. So all these, you know, branches of Christianity came from the same early church.

So it's not like we're relying on the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church for our canon of scripture. We are simply relying on the early church because we all share a common heritage. Now, if you go to Billy Bob's non-denominational Bible church, yeah, you can't really say you have any rootedness in the early church. But classical Protestantism does have rudeness in the early church.

Protestantism did not start in the 1500s. Of course, the Protestant movement happened then, but the Protestant churches did not start then. It was the same churches before and after the Reformation. They just separated themselves from the authority of the Pope.

But they were not starting brand new churches. Compare that to modern non-denominationalism, which really does start new churches. And that brings me to the third argument for Sola Scriptura, and it's that everyone kind of already believes in it in some way. And let me explain, even if you're Catholic or Orthodox.

So, the Catholics claim, you know, the Bible is not the only infallible authority, our church is also an infallible authority. However, if the church is the infallible authority, then only one church body can have that infallible authority. So, the Catholics claim we are the infallible church. All of you other churches split from us, the Orthodox will claim, no, no, no, no, no.

We are the infallible church. All of you guys split from us. And the Oriental Orthodox will then go and claim, no, we are the infallible authority. All of you guys split from us.

And then the Assyrian church of the East will go, no, no, no, we are the infallible authority. All you guys split from us. You guys see where this is going, right? They all claim to be the infallible authority that everyone else split from. So if you have...

different churches that claim to be the one true church founded by Jesus and the apostles, and different churches can really claim apostolic succession back to the early church, how do you know which one is correct? How do you know which church split from which, if they both have basically equally credible historical claims to having been rooted in the original church? You need to appeal to the Bible. You need to see which church's claims are more biblical.

This is what we call private judgment. Private judgment means figuring out truth for yourself rather than having someone else do it for you. And, you know, Catholics and Orthodox will attack Protestants for using private judgment, for having private interpretations of scripture.

But the thing is, Catholics and Orthodox people, they do that too. You know, if you converted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, you relied on your own reasoning. to discern which of those two churches was really the one true church, because they both claim to be the one true church. So you either had to rely on your own private judgment, or you searched the scriptures to see which of those churches follows the Bible more closely.

And if you're doing so, if you're judging church authority by the authority of the Bible, then congrats, you believe in sola scriptura, and you should be a Protestant. Now, some of them... And this is where I say everyone believes in sola scriptura in some sense. Some of them will say, oh no, we don't appeal to the Bible alone to see which church is the true one.

We see which one follows the earliest tradition. So for example, I talked about the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox. Those churches split in the 5th century at the Council of Chalcedon. The Council of Chalcedon was where the church split into the Chalcedonians.

that affirmed the council, and the Meophysites that denied and rejected the council. Why did they reject the council? Because they said the council of Chalcedon was contradicting the previous council, which is the council of Ephesus.

And then the Chalcedonian side was like, no, we're not contradicting Ephesus, we're affirming what Ephesus said, you guys are contradicting Ephesus. So basically, the fight between the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox is which one of them agreed with the earlier tradition. So they're establishing this principle that earlier traditions need to be appealed to when you have a dispute over which later tradition is correct.

The question is, okay, which tradition is more in line with the earlier tradition? And similarly, the Council of Ephesus, the earlier one, that was where the Nestorians split from everyone else. And the argument there was, okay, which one of us... agrees more with the Council of Nicaea, which is an even earlier tradition than the Council of Ephesus. And at the Council of Nicaea, that's where all of the Christians split from the Arians, the people following Arius.

And the debates at the Council of Nicaea were which side follows the Bible, because the Bible is an earlier tradition than all of the church councils. All these churches that claim to be the one true church. Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, sorry, not Protestants. Protestants don't claim to be the one true church.

All these churches that claim to be the one true church, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and the Assyrian Church of the East, they all accept a different set of councils. So how do you know which set of councils is the correct set of councils? You need to appeal to the scriptures, because all the scriptures came before the councils.

Yes, you could say they were maybe canonized. assembled after some of those councils, but the scriptures are an older authority than any of the church councils. And that basically proves Sola Scriptura, because you are saying that older traditions are more authoritative than newer ones, so therefore the Bible is more authoritative than any church council, because you need to privately judge which church councils are correct using the Bible, because different church bodies will accept different numbers of councils. And this was also a general principle even in the Old Testament. Generally, even though the writings of the prophets were considered scripture, they were still subject to the writings of the law, the law of Moses.

And even though like the Psalms and the Proverbs, the writings, they were still subject to the authority of the law and the prophets. So like the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures, they were sort of like, you know, a planet with like the core being the law of Moses, being the Torah, the mantle being, you know, the prophets and the crust being like the writings. So there's always been this principle that older...

revelation is more authoritative than newer stuff. And here's, I think, my favorite biblical example of sola scriptura actively being employed in the Bible. There was a group called the Bereans. Basically, in the book of Acts, they tested what the apostles were saying according to the Old Testament scriptures that they already had.

They searched the scriptures to see if what the apostles were saying is true. Likewise, anytime we encounter a church tradition or council, we should test it by the scriptures, by the scriptures that we have, to see if that tradition is in accordance with the word of God. So thank you guys for watching, and I will speed this up while I do more working on the outside of my church.

Transcript for:Understanding Sola Scriptura in Christianity

Transcript for:
Understanding Sola Scriptura in Christianity