In my
book-length critique of Sola Scriptura (Not
by Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura) I
addressed the common Protestant abuse of Matt 4:1-11//Luke 4:1-13 to support
the doctrine. The argument goes that, as Jesus used Scripture and no other
source in his debate with Satan in the wilderness, ipso facto, scripture is the final authority.
To
understand the stupidity of this argument, let me make the following case in favour of the following doctrine:
"The Apostle
Paul teaches that pagan philosophers are the ultimate authority."
Notice how in
Acts 17:22-28, Paul quoted three pagan philosophers, Epimenides, Menander,
Aratus:
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the
Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that in every way you are
very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of
worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you
are ignorant of the very thing you worship-- and this is what I am going to
proclaim to you. "The God who made the world and everything in it is the
Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And
he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself
gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all
the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their
appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so
that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he
is not far from any one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our
being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' (NIV)
Here, Paul
uses pagan philosophers alone; he
does not appeal to the Bible, proving that he believed pagan philosophers were the
final, ultimate authority.
Does this
sound stupid? Bingo! So is the Protestant case for Sola Scriptura from Jesus’
encounter with Satan (who himself used scripture alone, too!) in the
wilderness.
