Jay Dyer Continues to Lie About Sola Scriptura - Claims Protestants Believe the Bible is God!!

Jay Dyer is an ex-Protestant turned Roman Catholic turned Eastern Orthodox. He knows the traditions of all three major branches of the Church. (No, I am not advocating the branch theory here.) Yet for some reason he continues to lie about Sola Scriptura and how Protestants view the Bible saying their doctrine leads to making the Bible God. Let's listen.

Bless God / Ruslan / Gavin Ortlund REFUTED: Sola Scriptura & QNA! -Jay Dyer

47:57 It's just so funny because as you think about this the whole methodology of the Protestant and their whole approach here is literally to make the book God. I mean they actually think that this is God. And that's super duper irony because, number one, it's against their iconoclasm position because if this is God then your God is a creature. And the book is full of images, words. Those are images if you didn't know, they're iconographic. And they're depicting the thing that you say can't be depicted. So, actually you're just a book idolator is all you are even though Jesus said, and he quoted John 10 citing Gavin Ortlund word you know. He cited that where Jesus said "the scriptures cannot be broken." But he also says that You search the scriptures because you think that it is in them that you have eternal life. Oh, but you didn't cite that one did you Ruslan? Did you Gavin? When it is they that bear witness to me.

So, this is like a letter. Imagine mistaking a letter for the person. That's the mistake they're doing here. It's that silly. Right? Somebody writes you a letter about how good of a rapper I am. Now, we all know I'm probably the best. I mean, we all know it's not Lil' AIDS aka Tristana. So, who's left? Me. That's it. Easy equation there. Cancel out the second greatest rapper and you only got one left. So but if somebody writes a big letter explaining how good I am with my vocal bars and skills and you get this letter and you read the letter and you're like "Aww dude I know Jay now. I know all about his freestyle. I know all about his flow cus I read the letter." 

And you're like, "But do you know him?" "Yeah I read the letter, dude." But you don't know me. You read a letter about me. This is how silly it is. 

This video was a livestream and in the comments Rachel Wilson piped up with this ridiculousness:

Rachel Wilson is also a former Protestant of the Dutch Reformed persuasion so she too knows this is a lie yet she says it anyway. Why? Is her book Occult Feminism also this transparently dishonest? 

The short of it is Protestants DO NOT BELIVE THE BIBLE IS GOD. Nor does Sola Scriptura philosophically lead to declaring the Bible is God or worshipping it as an idol. Protestants do not teach the Bible is the Word in exclusion to Jesus Christ. Richard Muller wrote about this issue in the second volume of his Post Reformed Reformed Dogmatics. 

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. 

Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, Richard Muller, pg 206

Richard Muller is definitely a much needed corrective to Jay and his friend's misconceptions and misrepresentations of the Protestant 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.”

Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol.2, Richard Muller, pg 51-52

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. 

If anyone can be called a book idolator it would be the Orthodox who parade it around the sanctuary, smoke it with incense, and kiss it. 

https://holytrinity.ia.goarch.org/our-faith/liturgy

Now, there is a lot that could be written about Sola Scriptura but the real question here is why does Jay Dyer continue to lie about Sola Scriptura and Protestantism in general? When discussing Protestantism I have yet to hear Jay discuss the confessions and what Protestants actually believe. But he is quick to cite silly evangelicals and make false philosophical extrapolations like saying Sola Scriptura makes the Bible God. 

One wonders if Jay will ever discuss Protestantism or even Eastern Orthodoxy, he has yet to talk about the Confession of Dositheus, in an honest manner.