Jay Dyer has a new three hour long video where he lists the top ten bad arguments for Sola Scriptura. Let's take a look at them. The video can be be found here:
His top ten list starts at the 1:47:24 mark.
The first bad argument is, "The Bible is the Word of God." Jay says this is a bad argument because Jesus is the Word of God and so are the words of Paul. There is more than one word of God and to restrict it to the Bible is dumb.
The second argument is, "You guys follow the traditions of men and we follow the Bible." Jay says this is bad because everyone follows traditions of some sort even Protestants.
The third argument is from 2 Timothy 3:16-17 where Paul says the scripture makes one sufficient for every good work. This is bad for a number of reasons which include the scriptures Paul is talking about is the OT which means we don't need the NT, the Protestant reasoning is exclusionary and presents a false dichotomy, and it's a corrupt translation.
The fourth argument is, "We should follow the Masoretic text which excludes the deuterocanon." This is bad because we don't follow the Jews but the Apostles and they used the Septuagint.
The fifth argument is, "Isaiah says to the law and to the prophets (testimony) so that's all we need." This is bad because the testimony could refer to unwritten traditions.
The sixth argument is, "If we can appeal to the texts before there was a closed canon then why can't we appeal to texts in the NT period so you can't make the argument that we need a closed canon." This is bad because it presupposes that the doctrine of sola scriptura was in the mind of those who wrote the Bible. Nobody denies you can appeal to scripture anyway.
The seventh argument is the doctrine of the right of private judgement. Jay says this is a reformation/enlightenment presupposition.
The eighth argument is the perspicuity of the scriptures. Jay says this is bad because the scriptures aren't clear in some places and the history of the church is one of conflict over interpretation of the text.
If you notice there are no arguments here about sola scriptura. There is a lot of talk about sola scriptura and things around it but not the doctrine in and of itself. If you listen to the audio you will hear mocking and a lot of irony as Jay and his friends use the scriptures to refute sola scriptura. The fact that Jay goes to the scriptures to prove his doctrine is the essence of sola scriptura. He is not merely appealing to the text but basing his doctrine on what is in the text. But more about that below.
One guy even mentions his Orthodox Study Bible apparently unaware that the OSB is the product of Protestant converts to Orthodoxy. Specifically Peter Gillquist. It is also published by Protestant publisher Thomas Nelson! The whole idea of an Orthodox Study Bible is Protestant through and through because it is only Protestants who place great value on reading and studying the Bible. The very first study Bible was the 1560 Geneva Bible which Calvin approved of and which contained the deuterocanon.
The Orthodox are generally not a Bible reading people. Hear what Seraphim Rose, who was baptized as a Methodist, has to say about the Russian Orthodox he encountered when he converted.
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| Father Seraphim Rose, pg 277 |
Eugene attended the courses for three years. One thing that struck hm early on was the other students' lack of knowledge of the Bible. "The Russians ask such obvious questions," he told Gleb, "as if they never read the Scriptures.""They don't," Gleb responded. "It's not a habit for them. They follow the traditional forms of worship, which no one can deny is a good thing, but they neglect the Scriptures." This discovery strengthened Eugene's conviction about the need for Orthodox missionary work-for the sake of those in the church as well as those outside it.
The very notion of Orthodox laity reading the Bible is forbidden per the Confession of Dositheus.
Should the Divine Scriptures be read in the vulgar tongue [common language] by all Christians?
No. Because all Scripture is divinely-inspired and profitable {cf. 2 Timothy 3:16}, we know, and necessarily so, that without [Scripture] it is impossible to be Orthodox at all. Nevertheless they should not be read by all, but only by those who with fitting research have inquired into the deep things of the Spirit, and who know in what manner the Divine Scriptures ought to be searched, and taught, and finally read. But to those who are not so disciplined, or who cannot distinguish, or who understand only literally, or in any other way contrary to Orthodoxy what is contained in the Scriptures, the Catholic Church, knowing by experience the damage that can cause, forbids them to read [Scripture]. Indeed, tt is permitted to every Orthodox to hear the Scriptures, that he may believe with the heart unto righteousness, and confess with the mouth unto salvation {Romans 10:10}. But to read some parts of the Scriptures, and especially of the Old [Testament], is forbidden for these and other similar reasons. For it is the same thing to prohibit undisciplined persons from reading all the Sacred Scriptures, as to require infants to abstain from strong meats.
There are also several bizarre instances where Fr. Dcn Ananias and another commenter accuse Protestants of being Muslims and turning the Bible into a Koran. I would comment but they don't explain so I'm not going to wade into those waters. I will say that such an accusation is false and calumnious. Such a charge shows a lack of comprehension of what sola scriptura means and the roots of this doctrine which is not at all something which sprang out of nowhere in the sixteenth century.
Probably the only argument that gets anywhere near touching the heart of the matter about sola scriptura is the first one. The Bible is indeed the Word of God. And so is Jesus Christ. And no Protestant has ever said otherwise. In fact the Reformers and their successors wrestled with this very concept. For Jay to assert that saying the Bible is the Word of God excludes other things from being the Word of God is nonsense.
The authority of Scripture rests both on its identity as Word and its inspiration by the Spirit; and, equally so, the unity of the testaments rests both on Christ, who is their scope and foundation, and on the inspiration of the prophets and the apostles by the same Spirit. Scripture is Word because, in its entirety, it rests on the redemptive Word and Wisdom of God finally and fully revealed in Christ.
Richard Muller is definitely a much needed corrective to Jay and his friend's misconceptions of the Reformed faith. Having read what appears to be all the primary sources of Reformed theology Muller, in four volumes, deftly weaves together a reassessment of Reformed prolegomena, doctrine of scripture, and doctrine of God and the Trinity that upsets conventional wisdom.
One of the most important things Muller brings up in his magnum opus is the continuity between the Reformed and the medievals. Anyone who has read medieval and Reformed theology would recognize the similarities they share in the doctrine of God and even predestination. The book "Luther: Right or Wrong" has as it's thesis that Luther's "Bondage of the Will" is not at all out of synch with Aquinas.
Recognizing the continuities between Reformed theology and Medieval and Patristic theology is just as important, if not even more so, as pointing out the discontinuities.
“The early Reformation view of Scripture, for all that it arose in the midst of conflict with the churchly tradition of the later Middle Ages, stands in strong continuity with the issues raised in the theological debates of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The late medieval debate over tradition and the late medieval and Renaissance approach to the literal sense of the text of Scripture in its original languages had together raised questions over the relationships between Scripture and churchly theology, between the individual exegete and the text, and between the exegete and established doctrine that looked directly toward the issues and problems addressed by the early Reformers. It is, thus, entirely anachronistic to view the sola scriptura of Luther and his contemporaries as a declaration that all of theology ought to be constructed anew, without reference to the church’s tradition of interpretation, by the lonely exegete confronting the naked text. It is equally anachronistic to assume that Scripture functioned for the Reformers like a set of numbered facts or propositions suitable for use as ready-made solutions to any and all questions capable of arising in the course of human history. Both the language of sola scriptura and the actual use of the text of scripture by the Reformers can be explained only in terms of the questions of authority and interpretation posed by the developments of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Even so, close study of the actual exegetical results of the Reformers manifests strong interpretive and doctrinal continuities with the exegetical results of the fathers and the medieval doctors.”
Elsewhere Jay has acknowledged that the Reformation did not pop out of nowhere but has its roots in the middle ages. It is rather strange then that Jay prefers to focus on discontinuities as if that alone proves his point.
One book Jay loves to bring up is Lee McDonald's "The Biblical Canon." In this book are various canonical lists which do not all agree. Jay latches on to these lists and says that this proves there was no fixed canon and because there was no fixed canon sola scriptura is invalid. This is actually wrong and McDonald on pages 216 and 217 writes the following:
There is little doubt that the core of the biblical collection of authoritative books is essentially the same collection that we no have in the Protestant OT collection. What is in question in canonical studies are book on the fringe. These fringe books included both canonical and apocryphal books, were disputed among Jews and Christians for centuries, even though many leaders in the church and synagogue freely quoted these writings in an authoritative manner, sometimes even using the designations Scripture or as it is written to refer to them. Remarkably, these disputes took place for centuries after decisions were supposedly made about its canonicity. Yet in neither group - those who accepted and those who rejected the authority of this literature - was there any noticeable change in theology.
“The decision whether to accept or reject the deuterocanonical literature is not at the core of what Christianity is all about. As the Law of Moses formed the core of the OT, so also the Gospels and Paul have been at the heart of the NT biblical canon since the second century, even though there was a great deal of dispute over the deutero-Pauline epistles (especially the Pastorals), Hebrews, the Catholic (or General) Epistles, and Revelation. The Jews and later the Christians fully accepted the Law of Moses as the core of their sacred Scriptures. Soon thereafter, most if not all of the traditional Prophets and many of the Writings were accepted as canonical, but at a secondary level of scriptural authority among the Jews. Not everyone agreed on the contents of the Writings, especially not before the time of Jesus, but the division of opinion was not over the core, but over the fringe.”
The issue, writes McDonald, is fringe books and not the core. There has always been a core of canonical scripture for both Christians and Jews. At first the Christians adopted the Septuagint. Later they held the Gospels and the letters of Paul to be central to their doctrines. The very fact that there are lists at all indicates that Scripture was being appealed to as an authoritative source of doctrine. Not merely appealed to but actually built upon. Irenaus says this very thing:
We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1
The Scriptures are the ground and pillar of our faith. That is the very essence of sola scriptura.
Perhaps it would do well to abandon the term sola scriptura which conjures up all kinds of false notions about "my bible and me." The technical term Principium Cognoscendi is much more accurate.
The logical priority of Scripture over all other means of religious knowing in the church—tradition, present-day corporate or official doctrine, and individual insight or illumination—lies at the heart of the teaching of the Reformation and of its great confessional documents. Indeed, it is the unanimous declaration of the Protestant confessions that Scripture is the sole authoritative norm of saving knowledge of God. The Reformed confessions, moreover, tend to manifest this priority and normative character by placing it first in the order of confession, as the explicit ground and foundation of all that follows.
The more systematically ordered Reformed confessions, the First and Second Helvetic, the Gallican, the Belgic, juxtapose the doctrine of God with the doctrine of Scripture—a pattern followed in the seventeenth century by the Irish Articles and the Westminster Confession. This confessional pattern holds considerable significance for the development of Reformed theology, since it provides the basic form of the orthodox theological system: the confessions present the cognitive foundation or principium cognoscendi of revealed theology, the Holy Scriptures, and, based upon Scripture, the essential foundation or principium essendi of all theology, which is to say, God himself. Without the former, theology could not know the truth of God—without the latter, there could be no theology, indeed, no revelation. The movement of faith from one principium to the other is noted explicitly by the Belgic Confession: “According to this truth and this Word of God, we believe in one only God who is one single essence, in whom there are three persons, really, truly and eternally distinguished according to their incommunicable properties, namely, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Thus, Scripture leads us to the consideration of the unity and trinity of God, specifically of the essential unity and personal trinity of God.
To say, as Ireanaus does, that the scriptures are the ground and pillar of our faith is not at all different from calling them the cognitive foundation of revealed theology. God has revealed himself to us through the law, the prophets, and the Gospels. Irenaus and the other Fathers do not merely appeal to scripture. They BUILD their doctrine on scripture. That is the source for all their doctrines. The two best examples are Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho and Ireanus' Proof of the Apostolic Preaching. Proof of the Apostolic Preaching is basically an exposition of the OT. All the doctrine in this book is built on the OT.
In the each of the 38 volumes of the Early Church Fathers set of books there are huge indexes showing all the scriptures quoted in each book. One only need flip through those lists, as well as read the writings, to see that the Fathers without exception build their doctrine on scripture. It is also funny to see that the deuterocanon is hardly utilized. Neither Justin nor Ireanus cite it once.
Origen is also a compelling model of how the Fathers did theology. His entire theological enterprise was built on the scriptures. From massive commentaries to the hexapla everything he did was based on the scriptures. He was constantly mining them for doctrine. That he was condemned as a heretic at the sixth council is of no matter as he was condemned not for his devotion to scripture but for false doctrines he taught. I do not think he would say, as Metropolitan Jonah says, "We don't have an infallible bible." Nor could he possibly agree with Jay who says:
The doctrine of sola scriptura which is what we're rebutting and refuting, not appealing to scripture. The doctrine of sola scriptura, which is that scripture alone is the infallible final authority for faith morals and doctrine, that's what we're rejecting.
If the scriptures are the ground and pillar of our faith as Irenaus says then yes they are the infallible final authority for faith, morals, and doctrine.
Much ado is made about Paul telling Timothy to keep the oral traditions. Jay says the following:
Paul is teaching for three years catechizing timothy in the the Pauline catechesis and interpretation and mindset because he's an apostle, right? So there’s a an interpretive framework because remember these are real people, Timothy's a human Saint Timothy's a real guy that Paul catechizes ordains and then tells him to lay hands on a successor after him who's able to pass on that deposit. In 1 Thessalonians 2:13 he says the exact same thing to the Thessalonians. I'm not talking about the second Thessalonians text about the written word we all know that one that one’s always appealed to, “stand fast in the traditions that you heard whether or written 2 Thesseloanias 2:15. In 1 Thessalonians 2:13 Paul makes another important statement he says, “for this reason we thank god without ceasing because you received the word of god that you heard from us you welcomed what you heard not as the word of men but as the word of god.” So you notice Paul explicitly identifies his oral preaching and teaching with the word of God.
Of course Paul identified his teaching with the word of God. That's because he was teaching from the Septuagint! His letters are full of the Septuagint. The prophets and the law are all explained by him as pointing to Christ. This should not be a surprise to anyone. His doctrine is built on the foundation of the scriptures. All those oral traditions are nothing more than Paul's teaching from the Septuagint explaining the gospel.
Let's conclude here. None of the arguments that Jay and his friends brought up have anything to do with sola scriptura in and of itself. What is at issue is how does one do theology? What are the sources? Where do we go to learn theology? The answer is the scriptures and that is absolutely not a position the Reformers came up with whole cloth! Richard Muller's four volume Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, especially volume 2 which is about Holy Scripture, would certainly correct Jay on that point.
Hopefully if Jay ever speaks on this topic again he will actually deal with the matter at hand. Let's hear him bring up what the Reformed actually teach, which means what is in the confessions, and not nonexistent bugbears. Let's hear him engage with Turretin on the matter or even Bavinck. There are much better arguments out there for sola scriptura than the eight listed above.
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