Sunday, July 24, 2016

Answering an attempt to rehabilitate Revelation 22:18-19

In a rather weak attempt to use Rev 22:18-19 in some way (1) in favour of sola scriptura and (2) against the LDS view of the canon including the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, we read, in part:

These repeated warnings make it clear that it is a very serious thing to add to or take away from God’s word, wherever it is in Scripture. Again, people do this in various ways: by refusing to obey what God commands; by teaching things contrary to God’s word; and (more rarely) by deliberately altering the text of Scripture to change its meaning. If it is wrong to add words to individual books such as Deuteronomy or Revelation, then it is also wrong to add whole new books to Scripture that God has not inspired. In other words, while these warnings don’t tell us that the canon is closed, they warn us of God’s condemnation of anyone who presumes to pass off as Scripture words or books that God did not in fact inspire.

As I noted in response to this author’s previous attempt to defend this man-made tradition, this is just fallacious reasoning to the nth degree. Yes, God commands against adding works that are not inspired of God to the canon. However, even allowing the “Bible” to be the totality of Scripture does not result in sola scriptura—Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy, for instance, would agree with this apologist that special revelation ceased with the completion of the final book of the New Testament and yet these groups clearly do not hold to sola scriptura.

Furthermore, nothing in these warning passages tells us that content of the biblical canon. For sola scriptura to be true, there must be access to tota scriptura.


Again, this is a pathetic attempt to defend the formal doctrine of Protestantism.