Answering a challenge from a defender of Sola Scriptura

A Protestant apologist wrote the following against those who oppose the formal doctrine of Protestantism:

Advocates of sola scriptura also point out that their opponents have to rely on their own fallible interpretations, even if they don't want to. In order to reach the conclusion that an organization such as the Roman Catholic Church has the authority to infallibly interpret the Bible for us, we must interpret for ourselves the evidence that leads to that conclusion, including what the Bible teaches. Does a Catholic want to claim that Matthew 16 and the teachings of the church fathers prove that the papacy is a true doctrine? How does he make such an argument without using his own judgment to interpret Matthew 16 and to decide which church father teachings are accurate and which aren't? Personal, fallible interpretation is impossible to avoid.

While all of these arguments in defense of sola scriptura are valid, there's another approach that can be taken, which doesn't seem to be used much. It's true that groups such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have disagreements among themselves, just as there are disagreements among those who adhere to sola scriptura. In that sense, we're all on equal footing. But there's another sense in which adherents of sola scriptura are actually at an advantage.

While this article is focused on Roman Catholic opposition to sola scriptura, allow me to offer a response from a Latter-day Saint who openly rejects sola scriptura as a man-made tradition.

From an LDS framework, while it is true that Latter-day Saints can, and do, disagree with one another on a host of issues, we don’t have the same disagreements amongst Protestants on key theological issues; consider the following lists of doctrines Protestants disagree with one another over, both historically and in modern times, and results in some of the denominationalism thereof:

·       Baptismal regeneration
·       Mode of baptism
·       Infant Baptism
·       Eternal Security
·       Nature of the Eucharist (e.g., consubstantiation vs. spiritual presence view vs. purely symbolic view)
·       The nature of sola fide
·       The nature of “saving faith”
·       The intent of the atonement (limited vs. universal vs. hypothetical universal views)
·       Nature of predestination
·       Whether God is active or passive in reprobation (supralapsarian vs. infra/sublapsarian perspectives)
·       If God’s saving grace can be resisted
·       Whether repentance is necessary for salvation
·       Nature of justification
·       Nature of sanctification
·       Nature of “righteousness” in justification
·       Whether Christ has one will or two wills
·       The nature and limits of sola scriptura itself

One could go on, but these are not minor issues such as whether stringed instruments should be used in worship services, but issues that are of soteriological importance or some other great theological importance (e.g., Christological). Furthermore, there are many issues, within the realm of morality, that are also debated amongst Protestants due to the paucity of any explicit material in the Bible (sometimes, pure silence due to their being modern issues), such as homosexual adoption; transsexual issues; contraception; abortion on demand; masturbation; surrogate motherhood; euthanasia, etc. Again, these are not “minor issues,” and examples could be multiplied.

Unlike Protestants who rely on a passive source (Scripture has to be interpreted; Scripture does not actively interpret itself and give us the proper exegesis thereof), Latter-day Saints have an active authority alongside Scripture (which is broader than the Bible [Book of Mormon; Doctrine and Covenants; Pearl of Great Price]), something that has happened throughout its history, even in esoteric issues (e.g., the debate between Brigham Young and Orson Pratt on the question of whether the person of God should be the recipient of worship or his attributes—the church authoritatively declared the former to be orthodox, the latter heterodox).

This is similar to the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15 that dogmatically declared circumcision to not be a prerequisite for Gentile converts coming into the Church, in spite of the Old Testament’s silence about the then-future abrogation of circumcision under the New Covenant. This is something that Protestantism lacks, and as a result, will always be splintered, as key theological debates will forever remain unresolved, but for the Latter-day Saint, there is a source that can, when moved by the Holy Spirit, declare authoritatively on issues of morality and/or theology.