Sola Scriptura Not Compatible with Modern Bibliology

In recent years, I’m sure my reader has seen, like I have, a mass return to more traditional sects of Christianity such as Orthodoxy or Catholicism. One of the claims both of these churches make is the antiquity of their religion and the authority of their counsels. This is one of the counter-reformation arguments that still rings loud today. A church without centralized authority is subject to the whims of cultural decay and depravity. Now I can’t speak for evangelicals, but Protestants and other conservative independent denominations both hinge their arguments of authority on a doctrine known as Sola Scriptura. In other words, Scripture alone determines the authority of what the people of God believe and how they practice Christianity.

This doctrine is founded on 2 Timothy 3:16, which states, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Modern bibliology, often called the doctrine of ” biblical inerrancy” is historically different than the doctrine of the protestants as defined in the 17th century confessions and catechisms (WCF 1.6-7). Both 2 Timothy and WCF 1.6 assume that “scripture” is a defined object. The protestant and post-reformation theologians also considered the original texts to include the copies or apographs. “By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and of the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (Francis Turretin. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. I, 106.)

The Chicago Statement, and thus the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, does not assert that the scriptures available today are inspired. Only the autographs were inspired, and the material we have today is greatly accurate. “We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original” (Chicago Statement, article X). In other words, the bibles that we have today are only considered scripture insofar as these texts can be ascertained from extant manuscripts.

At the time of writing the Chicago Statement, the authors deemed the process of textual criticism “greatly accurate.” If we take the standard definition of this phrase, it means “correct in all the details, exact.” There is not a single biblical or textual scholar alive today who would say that the text of scripture is “exact” or “correct in all the details.” In fact, the scholars say precisely the opposite. Let me list several examples for my reader.

“We do not have now – in any of our critical Greek texts or in any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain” (Elijah Hixson & Peter Gurry. Myths & Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism. xii. Quote by Dan Wallace.)

“I do not believe that God is under any obligation to preserve every detail of Scripture for us, even though he granted us good access to the text of the New Testament.” (Dirk Jongkind. An Introduction to the Greek New Testament. 90.)

“The New Testament philologist’s task is not to recover an original authorial text, not only because we cannot at present know on philological grounds what the original text might have been, nor even because there may have been several forms to the tradition, but because philology is not able to make a pronouncement as to whether or not there was such an authorial text” (DC Parker. Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament. 27.)

“We are trying to piece together a puzzle with only some of the pieces” (Peter Gurry. A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence Based Genealogical Method. 112.)

So we see clearly the evolution of modern bibliology. When the Chicago Statement was penned, there was a strong belief that textual criticism had produced a greatly accurate, or exact text. Yet the theological wording of the statement left the door open for this to change based on the effort of textual scholarship. As we can see above, it is not just one lone scholar who believes that scripture is not exact. Scholars who share this opinion are Dirk Jongkind, editor of the Tyndale House Greek New Testament and senior research fellow in New Testament Text and Language at Cambridge. I do not share these quotations to bash these men, but rather to highlight that this is the mainstream evangelical position and not some fringe ideology. The opinions of men like James White, Mark Ward, Dan Wallace, Richard Brash, and every person who advocates for the modern critical text are informed by these men and their cohorts. Nearly every seminary espouses this view of Scripture, and this is irrefutably taught in pulpits and classrooms everywhere.

The main concern with this view is that it is completely incompatible with the doctrine known as Sola Scriptura. In order for Christians to have authority in their doctrine without a pope or centralized church, there must be an infallible source of doctrinal truth. That is the premise for Sola Scriptura. The Reformers claimed that counsels and popes can fail, but God and His scripture cannot. Therefore, all matters of faith and practice should be founded on infallible scripture, not the authority of men. If it is the case that scripture cannot be accurately ascertained, then this doctrine crumbles. It is evident for all to see that the modern evangelical church has no authority. Churches teach whatever they want, ordain whoever they want, and organize however they want. There is no regulating principle around which evangelical churches organize, because there is no authority. There is no Sola Scriptura without scripture, and therefore churches that believe in modern bibliology are without authority.

In order to have authority as a post-Protestant church, that church needs to reject modern bibliology and embrace the sound doctrine of the Protestant Reformation or return to Rome. That is why I have come up with new terminology for those who believe in modern bibliology, post-Protestants. Post-Protestants, commonly called evangelicals, do not believe that the bibles we have today are completely inspired, and therefore have no authority. They believe that the ideas are inspired, but that is a post-Protestant doctrine found nowhere in scripture. In order for the churches to be healthy and authoritative again, post-Protestant bibliology must be rejected.