After I became a Christian
I struggled with whether I should keep attending a
Catholic Church.
As I sat in church and watched incense rise
up
from the altar, I felt an urge to stay and be part of what
felt
like a sacred mystery.On the other
hand, there were a lot of Catholic beliefs
that
I could not find in the Bible, which made me think they
were just man-made
traditions.
I eventually decided that it didn’t
matter which church I joined so long as I only
believed in what the Bible taught. But then I
ran into a roadblock: I couldn’t
find a single Bible verse that said everything
I believed had to be found in the Bible. And
the
more
I studied history,the
more I
saw it was the
Catholic Church
that gave us the Bible.
If I believed in God’s
word, then why
wouldn’t
I join the church that
gave us this word in the form of Sacred
Scripture?
The Unbiblical Idea of
Sola Scriptura
In the sixteenth century,
Christians like Martin Luther and John Calvin opposed
what they thought were “man-made traditions”
of the Catholic Church.Because
of their protest against
the Church, they came to
be known as the
Protestant
Reformers. However,
instead of reforming the Catholic Church,
they
rejected the Church’s
authority
and replaced it with the idea that all
Christian teaching, or doctrine,
should
come from the Bible alone.This
principle later came to be called sola
scriptura (Latin for “by
Scripture alone”).
But if all
doctrine is supposed to come from the Bible, then where
does the Bible teach the doctrine of
sola
scriptura?
It’s
true that Revelation 22:18 warns that“every
one
who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any
one
adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.”
But John, the author of Revelation, was just prohibiting the addition of words
to the visions he received. He was not denying that the
word
of
God exists
outside the Bible,
or even outside his
own revelation.
The passage most often cited in defense
of sola scriptura is
2 Timothy 3:16-17:“All
Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be
complete, equipped for every good work.”
Catholics agree that all Scripture is inspired by God.Scripture
is also
useful,
but this doesn’t
mean Scripture is the only
thing that helps us teach the
faith or
grow in holiness. We also need
an active prayer life and advice from other mature Christians. In 2 Timothy 2:21,
Paul says that if Timothy cleanses himself from bad influences
he will be a vessel ready for “every good work.”Of
course, that doesn’t
mean that
if
Timothy stays away from bad influences,
he
will automatically know every essential doctrine of the
Faith.
The Bible teaches that Scripture is one
tool that equips us to
do
good works, but it is not the only tool that makes
us ready for that task.In fact, the
Bible teaches that God’s word is not
restricted to the written word alone.
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