“What is Truth?” - An
Examination of Sola Scriptura
By Dwight Longenecker
Pontius Pilate asked the basic
question for all humanity when he asked Jesus, “What is Truth?” The irony of the scene
is powerful and poignant because the Eternal Truth stood
before him incarnate as a human person. In John 14 Jesus
had said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” Later in
the gospel Peter said, “Where else shall we go Lord, but
to you? You alone have the words of eternal life.” So the
Christian answer is that Jesus himself is the Truth. If you
want the Truth come to him.
That’s something all Christians agree on, but that answer
raises more questions. The next question is—how do we come
to know Jesus as truth? How do we get in touch with this
Jesus who is truth? We need answers to specific questions—what
should we believe? How shall we behave? How shall we run
the church? Jesus may be the Truth, but how do we get hold
of that truth? How do we know that what we believe is his
truth?
In my evangelical days I was
told the truth was to be found in the Bible and in the
Bible alone. In my Bible lessons
at Bob Jones I memorized a famous and important verse—2 Timothy
3.16-17: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God
and is useful for doctrine, for instruction, for correction
and training in righteousness so the man of God man be fully
equipped for every good work.”
In other words—the Bible was
where we turned to learn what to believe and how to behave.
And we believe the Bible
because it is inspired—it is God-breathed. But there are
some problems with this view. A simple problem is that since
2 Timothy 3.16-17 is in the New Testament it can’t refer
to the New Testament. Paul—in writing to Timothy—is only
talking about the Old Testament Scriptures.
But let’s say for the sake of argument that it does refer
to the New Testament too. While the verse certainly says
the Scripture is inspired and that it should be used to determine
doctrine and Christian behavior—it doesn’t say that Scripture
is the ONLY authority for God’s truth. And in fact nowhere
in the Bible do you find such a thing stated. In addition—if
this is the only evidence for Biblical inspiration a problem
arises as soon as you start to push things a little.
The problem is this: 2 Timothy 3.16 says, “All
Scripture is given by inspiration of God...” And this is used
to prove that Scripture is inspired. But how do we know
that 2 Timothy 3.16 is itself inspired? The reasoning is
circular. It goes like this:
We believe the Bible. OK—why
is that? Because it is inspired. Why do we believe it is
inspired? Because the Bible says
it is inspired and we believe the Bible. OK, how do we know
the Bible is inspired? Because the Bible says it is inspired
and we believe the Bible because it is inspired. Too much
of this type of reasoning makes you dizzy. There has to be
a better answer.
If that was one problem I also had another difficulty by
the time I got to Bible college. I had always been taught
that the Bible was simple to understand, and the simple gospel
message was straightforward. But this caused a problem. If
the gospel message was simple and straightforward why were
there so many different Christian denominations all in disagreement
with each other?
When I asked a teacher I was
told that the different denominations agreed on the basics—which were plain and simply understood
from Scripture, but they disagreed on the extras. But when
I examined what the different denominations taught they not
only disagreed on little things like whether women should
wear hats to church or whether you had to be baptized by
immersion or sprinkling, but they also disagreed on important
things like baptism, communion, how you should be saved,
who was in charge of the church, who was going to heaven
and many other things. If Scripture was the only source of
authority shouldn’t the Church be united around one simple,
clear teaching from Scripture?
Another verse I had to memorize was 2 Peter 1.20: “No
scripture is of any private interpretation, but holy men
of God spake as the Holy Spirit instructed them.” Obviously
all the different Christian denominations disagreed because
they all had different interpretations of the Bible, and
they were all convinced that their interpretation was right.
And if they all had different interpretations of the Bible
then they must be interpreting them on their own—but 2
Peter 1.20 says that the Bible cannot be interpreted privately.
Something was wrong here.
So I wound up with two basic problems:
1. If
the Bible gave the only support for its own inspiration then
it was proving
itself and that didn’t seem to work. There had to be some
other authority which could validate the inspiration of the
Bible.
2. If
the Bible was the only source of authority for Christians,
then why were all the different churches so divided? There
had to be some other authority which could decide how the
Bible was to be understood.
LIVE WITH DISAGREEMENTS?
In the face of these questions
a lot of people nowadays give up believing in the inspiration
of the Bible. About
the disagreements in the Church they say, “Well, you can’t
really know the right interpretation—we have to live with
these disagreements.”
But can that be true? Is it
possible that Jesus called himself the Way, the Truth and
the Life and commanded his
apostles to go out into all the world to preach the gospel
if, at the end of the day, we can’t really know what is true
after all? Is it possible that we have a gospel to proclaim,
but God hasn’t provided a certain way for us to know what
that gospel consists of and how it is applied? We’ve ended
up like Pontius Pilate—shrugging our shoulders and saying
cynically—“Ahh—What is ‘truth’ anyway?”
In fact there are some excellent rock-solid answers for
these questions. The Bible IS inspired, but the evidence
for its inspiration rests on something more than 2 Timothy
3.16. There is also a sure-fire way to know the right interpretation
of the Bible, but the evidence for that sure interpretation
is profound and goes to the very roots of Scripture itself.
The Bible didn’t just drop down out of heaven. Although
we believe it was inspired by God, this inspiration happened
through real people in real situations in real place and
time. The Scriptures were written by the people of God, for
the people of God. They were read by the people of God, used
to teach the people of God, and used for the worship of the
people of God. Maybe the best way to describe the Bible is
to say that it is the ‘story of the people of God’—the Church—both
the Old Testament Church and the New Testament Church.’ The
Bible was never just a list of things about God which His
people must believe. Neither was it a set of rules to be
obeyed. Instead the Bible was first and foremost the story
of God’s loving relationship with humanity.
Furthermore, the same people
who wrote the Scriptures—used
the Scriptures, prayed the Scriptures and learned from the
Scriptures—chose which holy writings should be included as
Scripture. By the end of the first century after Christ the
Jews made the final decision about which of their writings
were to make up the Old Testament. By the year 130 AD the
early Christians were unanimous in accepting the four gospels
and the thirteen letters of Paul. By 170 the church leaders
had put these writings on the same level as the Old Testament,
and within another two hundred years—by the year 369 we have
the first list of the same New Testament books which we all
agree on. Then in 382 at the Council of Rome the whole church
agreed on a list of all the Old and New Testament books.
History shows that from the
beginning there has been an extraordinary group of people
who claimed to be God’s chosen
people. The Christian church was founded by a clear and direct
act of God’s inspiration at Pentecost. Just as the Old Testament
people of God were guided by a pillar of fire—representing
the Holy Spirit—so the New Testament Church is a holy people—guided
by the Holy Spirit of Pentecost. This community of faith
is a fact of history. That it is guided and protected by
God is historically evident. Because it speaks with Spirit-filled
authority the Church—the people of God who were inspired
to write the Scriptures—can also validate the inspiration
of the Bible.
So Catholics say the Bible is inspired NOT just because
2 Timothy 3.16 says so, but also because the Bible is the
product of the people of God. The Bible is inspired because
it is the product of the Spirit-filled Church. The inspired
people of God wrote the Scriptures, used the Scriptures,
prayed the Scriptures and chose which writings were to be
considered Scripture, and that is why we believe the Bible
to be inspired.
The Authority of the Church
The truth in the Bible comes
to us through the experience of the Church and this matches
up exactly with Paul’s view.
In 1 Timothy 3.15 he says something very important “...God’s
church is the household of the living God, the pillar and
foundation of truth.” and in Ephesians 3.10 he says that
it is God’s ”…intent that through the church the manifold
wisdom of God should be made known.”
In other words it is through
the Church that we learn the truth about Jesus—not just the Bible. It is by belonging
to the living body of Christ—the Church—that we come to understand
and know the mystery of Jesus Christ himself.
Paul says the Church is the
pillar and foundation of truth. So the Church is the basis
for the truth, the support for
the truth, it is on the Church that the whole edifice rests
and is supported. Without the Church the whole thing is built
on sand. Not only does the Church establish and validate
the inspiration of the Bible, and not only was the Bible
the product of the Church’s life, but the Church also determined
which books went into the Bible. It’s no exaggeration to
say that without the Church we wouldn’t have a Bible at all.
As a result Catholics conclude
that you cannot have the Scriptures without the Church
even today. The two pillars
of Scripture and the Church’s teaching stand together. The
Scriptures offer the inspired Word of God and the Church’s
Teaching offers the God-given interpretation of the Word.
Catholics believe the Bible is interpreted by a living, dynamic,
spirit-filled Church, and from Pentecost onward this Church
has always passed its teaching on from one generation to
the next in both written form.
Oral Tradition
But the church did not only
pass the teaching on in written form. From the earliest
days the teaching was also passed
on through an oral tradition. By ‘Tradition’ Catholics don’t
mean dead religious customs, ceremonies, rules and regulations.
Instead when Catholics speak of ‘tradition’ we are referring
to a body of teaching which is formed by the experience of
the Church. A body of teaching which is at once ancient and
yet fresh and alive.
Is this what the early Church believed? Did Paul rest his
faith only in the Scriptures? He certainly rested them in
the Old Testament Scriptures. He told Timothy, “devote
yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching
and to teaching.” Elsewhere he told Timothy to “continue
in what you have learned... because you know those from whom
you learned it and how from infancy you have known the holy
Scriptures.”
Paul believed in the Old Testament.
He also believed that his own writings were to be taken
as authoritative for determining
doctrine and right Christian behavior. But he also believed
his other teachings were authoritative. This strand of apostolic
teaching isn’t written down. It is the inspired preaching
of the apostles, and this oral teaching and preaching comes
directly from God as does the written word.
Jesus said to his apostles in Luke 10.16 that “whoever
listens to you listens to me.” In 2 Peter 3.2 Peter
pointed out that the word of the apostles comes as from
the Lord himself and in Galatians 1.11-12 Paul proclaimed, “I
want you to know that the gospel I preached is not something
that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor
was I taught it; rather I received it by revelation from
Jesus Christ.” Peter in 1 Peter 1.24-25 called this
divinely inspired preaching the “living and enduring
word of God.” and said that it would stand for ever. So
along with the written word of God there was to be an enduring
oral tradition—a teaching which would be passed on from
generation to generation.
Paul stated this most clearly in 2 Thessalonians 2.15.
There he said, “So then brothers, stand firm and hold
to the traditions we passed on to you whether by word of
mouth or by letter.” So the teachings which Paul received
from Jesus he passed on both in writing and by word of mouth.
Some people say that the word of mouth tradition ceased
once the Bible books were written, but Paul acknowledges
that both sources of teaching existed when he wrote to the
Thessalonians. We also see that Paul not only received this
oral tradition from others, but he also passed it on to his
hearers. In I Corinthians 15. 2-3 he said, “By this gospel
you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to
you….For what I received I passed on to you as of the first
importance.”
Paul knows the importance of the oral teaching as well
as the written teaching because he tells Timothy in 2 Timothy
1.13 to faithfully guard the oral teaching which he had received.
So he writes, “What you heard from me keep as the pattern
of sound teaching with faith and love in Jesus Christ guard
the good deposit which is entrusted to you.” Elsewhere
he praises the Corinthians for ‘upholding the traditions
which I have passed on to you.’ (I Cor.11.2)
Catholics believe that this
ancient teaching of the apostles has been handed on from
generation to generation and kept
alive by the constant and continual life of the Church—the
new people of God. Did Paul think this oral teaching was
to be passed on? Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.2: “And
the things you have heard me say in the presence of many
witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified
to teach others.” In other words he commanded Timothy
to hand on the oral tradition which he had received from
Paul. Its interesting that in this passage Paul is referring
to four generations of succession—his own, Timothy’s, the
people Timothy would teach and the ones they would teach
in turn.
The Deposit of Faith in the Early Church Fathers
The documents of the early
Church in the years just after the death of the apostles
show that they believed their Church
leaders had inherited a precious deposit of faith—both in
the writings of the apostles and in the oral traditions of
the apostles. In about AD 95 a Church leader in Rome called
Clement wrote to the church at Corinth about his church, “the
faith of the gospels is established and the tradition of
the Apostles is revered.”
Writing about the year 189
Irenaeus—a bishop in the French
city of Lyons wrote: “What if the apostles had not left
writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order
of tradition which was handed down to those to whom they
entrusted the churches?” Elsewhere Irenaeus also pointed
out how important this apostolic tradition is for people
to know the full truth. “It is possible then for everyone
in every church who may wish to know the truth to contemplate
the Traditions of the Apostles which has been made known
throughout the whole world.”
This helps us answer the difficult
question—where do we
turn for a faithful interpretation of the Bible? Is there
a body of teaching which has been faithfully passed down
from the apostles that would help us to interpret the Scriptures
the right way? If such a body of teaching exists then it
provides a rich mine for us to turn to when we try to interpret
the Scripture. If an ancient strand of teaching exists which
goes back to the apostles themselves then we have not only
the Scripture for a source book, but we have a rich tapestry
of teaching which helps us to understand the Scripture.
As Catholics we believe that
we have just such a source for properly interpreting the
Bible. So when we have a difficult
question of Biblical interpretation we don’t just read the
rest of the Bible to find the answer to the difficult question.
We turn to the tradition to see what the people of God believed
before us. Did they face the same question? How did they
answer it? Did they face a similar circumstance? How did
they confront it? Did they face the same doubts, problems,
heresies and attacks? How did they stand up for the truth
in their day? How can it help us determine the truth today?
The Guidance of the Holy Spirit
From the beginning the gospel
of salvation was passed on by both word of mouth and by
a living oral tradition of teaching. Eventually
the written Word came to be collected together into what
we know as the New Testament, but that didn’t mean the dynamic,
infilling Holy Spirit ceased to function in the Church. We
know that the Spirit of Pentecost is still poured out on
the Church—guiding and protecting and teaching. In John 16.13
Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit—who guides the Church—would
lead his apostles into all truth, and in John 14.16 Jesus
promises that the Holy Spirit would be with the apostles
forever.
Second Peter states: “No prophecy of Scripture is of
any private interpretation.” So if we are not to interpret
the Scripture on our own, who is to interpret it for us?
Jesus said the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth,
so the Holy Spirit plays a part. But Peter himself answers
the question in the same epistle. In verse 16-18 of chapter
one Peter claimed teaching authority because he was an
eyewitness of Jesus’ life and glory and got the truth direct
from Jesus. He then said in verse 2 of chapter three that
the truth was spoken in the past by the holy prophets and
the commands are now given by Jesus Christ through the
apostles.
What is important to see here
is that Peter compares the role of the New Testament apostles
to the Old Testament prophets. The
prophets were directly inspired by God. Their preaching was
considered to be a direct word from God to the people of
God. We have already seen that Peter considered his preaching
to be ‘the Word of God which stands forever.’ As such the
apostles are the prophets—the God-inspired teachers of the
New Testament people of God. When Peter says “No prophecy
of Scripture is of any private interpretation” he also means
that only the prophet—that is—the apostle is entitled and
empowered by the Holy spirit to give the right interpretation.
Paul agrees with him. In Ephesians
3.5 he says the mystery of God has now been revealed by
the Spirit to God’s holy
apostles and prophets. And it is the same Spirit-led group
of men who are the foundation of the church—so Paul says
in chapter 2 verse 20 that the Ephesians are members of the
Church—the household of God which is built on the foundation
of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus as the chief
corner stone. Jesus is the corner stone of this Church, but
it is the apostles and the prophets—inspired by God’s Holy
Spirit—who provide the foundation for the Church. (Cf. Rev.
21.14)
This verse fits together with
Paul’s other teaching that
the Church is the ‘pillar and foundation of truth’? (I Tim
3.15) So the Church—based on the teaching of the apostles—is
the source for Scripture, and who can rightly interpret the
Scripture? The same apostolic Church continues to be the
faithful interpreter of the Scripture. The Church which was
inspired to write the Scripture and inspired to choose which
books went into the Bible is also the chosen, Spirit-filled
interpreter of Scripture.
Where does one find this apostolic Church today?
If its true that the apostles
were the ones to interpret Scripture, and the apostolic
Church was therefore the one
to interpret Scripture, does that same apostolic authority
exist today? Does the apostolic Church exist today? If so
where can we find it? We have seen that Paul explicitly
handed on his teaching authority to Timothy and commanded
him to hand on that authority to others who would in turn
hand it on to their successors.
Timothy wasn’t the only one.
Paul also sent Titus to Crete to organize the Church there.
He calls Titus his son in the
faith and says, “The reason I left you behind in Crete
was for you to get everything organized there and to appoint
elders in every town the way I told you.” And what kind
of a man must this elder be? “He must have a firm grasp
of the unchanging tradition so that he can be counted on
to expound sound doctrine.” So in the New Testament we
see Paul clearly setting up the Church with his sons in the
faith as his successors in the various locations.
The writings of the early Church testify that the first generation of Christians
after the apostles believed their Church leaders had somehow
inherited the same teaching authority that the apostles had.
So Clement—the leader of the
Roman Church around 95 AD writes: “The Apostles received the gospel for us from
the Lord Jesus Christ...and they went out full of confidence
in the Holy spirit...and appointed their first fruits...to
be bishops and deacons. Our apostles knew there would be
strife on the question of the bishop’s office, Therefore,
they appointed these people already mentioned and later made
further provision that if they should fall asleep other tested
men should suceed to their ministry.” So Clement of Rome
believed the apostles—one of whom may still have been alive—had
wished for their teaching office to be continued in the Church.
Ignatius of Antioch was martyred in the year 115. In writing
to the Trallian Church he equates the Church elders with
apostles: “Submit yourselves also to the priests as to
the Apostles of Jesus Christ.”
And Irenaeus who wrote around 180 AD also believed firmly
that the Church had inherited the authority of the apostles
to teach the truth faithfully. According to him it is because
the Church leaders have inherited the apostolic authority
that they can interpret Scripture properly. So he writes, “By
knowldege of the truth we mean: the teaching of the Apostles;
the order of the Church as established from earliest times
throughout the world...preserved through the episcopal succession:
for to the bishops the apostles committed the care of the
church in each place which has come down to our own time
safeguarded by ...the most complete exposition...the reading
of the Scriptures without falsification and careful and consistent
exposition of them—avoiding both rashness and blasphemy.”
Remembering that Paul handed on
his teaching authority to Timothy and Titus, and seeing how
through history that authority has been handed down from
generation to generation, Catholics believe that the dynamic
and living teaching authority continues to live within the
Catholic bishops who have received their ministry in direct
line from the apostles, passed down over the last 2,000 years.
Because of this direct link Catholics believe the Church
has a living connection with the apostolic authority, and
that within the living apostolic tradition of the Catholic
Church we can find a rock-solid, sure, historic and unified
body of teaching which illuminates and interprets the Bible
without fail.
This is an edited version
of Dwight Longenecker’s apologetics
series for London’s Premier Radio. Dwight was brought up
in an evangelical home and graduated from Bob Jones University.
He went on to study at Oxford and be ordained as an Anglican
minister in England. Five years ago he and his family were
received into the Catholic Church and he now works as a
District Organiser for the St Barnabas Society and is also
active as a Catholic writer and broadcaster.
