Monday, June 22, 2020

Reformed Protestant Apologist Admits the Bible Does Not Teach Sola Scriptura and the Formal Sufficiency of the Bible

R. Andrew DeFord, a former Christadelphian who is now a Reformed Protestant, made the following admission about Sola Scriptura and the (lack of) evidence thereof in the Bible:

 

Sola Scriptura generally is defined as “scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” There is a problem however. How do we arrive at Sola Scriptura? As our Roman Catholic (RC) friends will gladly point out, Sola Scriptura is not articulated in the bible either. There are passages in the bible that give a fairly clear definition of the divine nature of the holy scripture, but not any clear definitions of its scope (canon) or exclusivity for defining divine truth. To make matters worse, there is no general principle for a proper interpretation of the scriptures found within its pages. (R. Andrew DeFord, The Triune God and the Doctrine of the Covenant: Answering Unitarian Objections to the Doctrine of the Trinity [2018], 13, emphasis in bold added)

 

Notwithstanding his appeal to various “proof-texts” such as 2 Tim 3:16, coupled with his dependency upon James White’s 2004 Scripture Alone book, DeFord is forced to conclude that:

 

Still, we have no passage that directly states that the Scripture alone is the only rule of faith. The doctrine of Sola Scriptura is arrived at not by a codified explanation somewhere in the bible, but by the authority of its author. There is no Scripture that proclaims, “Because God wrote the bible, you must look to it and it alone for . . .” (Ibid., 17)

 

For a full discussion of Sola Scriptura, including an exegesis of 2 Tim 3:16-17 and other common “proof-texts” abused by Protestants to support this man-made tradition, see:

 

Not By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura