Scripture: Our Only Certain Standard, Pt 1

As we begin part 14 of our Sola Scriptura study, so far we have looked at the divine origin of Scripture, that it is an infallible standard, and its authority comes straight from God, since its words are His words to mankind. We have also seen that Scripture proclaims itself to be ‘theopneustos’, or God-breathed. Scripture “possesses an unrivaled authority and certainty for the Christian.” [1] Christians understand that all of God’s special revelation, whether oral as it was before it was inscripturated into the New Testament Scriptures or in written form as it is today, was given by God and is authoritative and binding on believers.

But this is not the case for the uncertain, and often artificial and contrived nature for the claims of unwritten tradition. Without historical proof to validate these claims for ‘tradition’ as a co-equal authority along with Scripture, Scripture stands alone as the only knowable ‘special revelation’ from God that Christians possess and is therefore the only certain norm or standard Christians have to follow. If ‘tradition’ is true, then all that is needed is to produce the proof. With all of the cultic beliefs that had risen in the first 300 years of the church, and had to be answered and resisted by the early church, and with the corrupt theology of Origen (modalism, allegorical interpretation and pseudo-universalism) that took centuries to root out of the Church (some of which never did get rooted out until the Reformation), and with all of the corruption throughout the history of the Roman Catholic Church, especially in the middle ages, providing ‘proof’ should be a top priority and offered willingly, just to show openness, honesty and humility. If the Catholic Church wants to destroy the Protestant position on Sola Scriptura, that is the formula to use. But to hide behind the ‘superior nature’ of the Church and refuse to provide these unwritten ‘traditions’ only supports the belief that they have never existed at all. If these traditions go back to the Apostles, what are they? If they are historical, why do the early church fathers never mention them and never even hint at their existence?

A Crack in the Veneer

It has always been the Protestant position that Scripture is primary and superior to tradition, and Yves Congar (1904-1995), the Dominican friar, priest and theologian, seemed to yield to this principle in Tradition and Traditions: A Historical Essay and a Theological Essay, when he wrote,

But if Scripture is in need of interpretation, as has always been recognized, how much more so is this true of tradition, which is much less fixed and less definite, so that it must be sought in a great number of documents of varying value and often of doubtful meaning. [2] [emphasis added]

And this was not all he said concerning Scripture as a standard. David King found more,

Further on in the same work, he adds, ‘About Scripture it may be said that an absolute dignity and value come to it from the fact of its institution by Christ, since God willed that this text should exist, and produced it by special grace. But we can add some further advantages and dignities,’ at which point he emphasizes the certainty of Scripture as a norm. In particular, he mentions three attributes of Scripture which contribute to its status as a certain and infallible norm: its public character, its permanence and solidity and therefore its certainty, and finally, its verification or indisputable reference. [3]

Congar’s seemed to understand the problem of trying to demand that unwritten tradition be considered a standard of the same value, caliber and certainty as Scripture. And isn’t it this certainty that drives us back to the pages of Scripture as our one true standard?

No one questions that the Apostles verbally taught God’s revelation to the people and the churches they created, but if God has given us all that pertains to life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3), then it has to be stated and restated that these teachings were ‘inscripturated’ in the books we have today as the Old and New Testaments. Even Congar admitted that everything we have concerning the Old Testament law comes from Scripture, not from Jewish tradition, and wouldn’t you want something like that to support your viewpoint of ‘tradition’? But as we’ve already seen, Jesus in particular rebuked the Jews for their traditions that usurped the Scriptures, which is our Old Testament. And likewise, today, there is no known purely oral revelation from God; all known revelation that we know of, and that we possess, is because that revelation was inscripturated as the New Testament. As David Kings wrote,

There is no special revelation from God that we possess today which is purely oral in nature. The only certain special and accessible revelation is that which has been inscripturated. [4]

Written Versus Verbal Transmission

To underscore this point about the principle of certainty in Scripture, Luke began his gospel addressing that. In the first 4 verses of his Gospel, he writes,

(1) Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, (2) just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, (3) it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; (4) so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4)

Here we have Theophilus who wants certainty about the teachings of Christ that he had previously received verbally. We are not told who he heard the Gospel message from, only that he wanted certainty about what he was taught. And knowing someone that traveled with and personally knew many of the Apostles, he asked Luke. So let’s break this down a little so that we don’t miss anything about these verses, and let’s start in verse 3,

it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; (Luke 1:3)

The phrase ‘having investigated’ is the Greek word, ‘parakoloutheō’, and means ‘to follow up a thing in mind so as to attain to the knowledge of it, i.e., to understand (cf. follow a matter up, trace its course, etc.); to examine thoroughly, investigate.’ [5]

The word ‘carefully’ is the Greek word, ‘akribōs’, and means ‘exactly, accurately, diligently’. [6]

The phrase “to write it out for you” literally means to ‘inscripturate,’ since Luke was guided and directed by the Holy Spirit to write down in an orderly manner all that Theophilus had been taught. So, if you wanted proof of inscripturation of oral teachings, here it is.

Now, let’s do the same for verse 4.

so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:4)

The word ‘know’ is the Greek word, ‘epiginōskō’, which means ‘to become thoroughly acquainted with, to know thoroughly; to know accurately, to know well.’ [7]

The phrase ‘exact truth’ is the Greek word, ‘asphaleia’, which means ‘certainty, undoubted truth.’ [8]

And finally, the phrase ‘the things’ is the Greek word, ‘logos’ and means, ‘what is communicated by instruction, doctrine: specifically, the doctrine concerning the attainment of salvation, through Christ, in the kingdom of God.’ [9]

This gives us some additional insight into what Luke was writing, since Greek is much more descriptive than English is. But take a look as some further insightful notes for these 4 verses provided by John MacArthur’s Study Bible App, [10]

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us,” (Luke 1:1)

• Although Luke wrote direct divine revelation inspired by the Holy Spirit, he acknowledged the works of others who had set down in writing events from Christ’s life. All those sources have been long lost, except for the inspired Gospels. Since Matthew and Mark were most likely written before Luke, it has been suggested that either one or both of those may have been among Luke’s sources when he did his research. It is also known that he was personally acquainted with many firsthand witnesses to the events of Christ’s life. And it is possible that some of his sources were word-of-mouth reports. About 60 percent of the material in Mark is repeated in Luke, and Luke seems to follow Mark’s order of events closely.
• “compile an account” – Luke proposed to narrate the ministry of Christ in an authoritative, logical, and factual order.
• “the things that have been accomplished” – i.e., the OT messianic promises fulfilled in Christ.
• “among us” – i.e., in our generation. This phrase does not mean Luke was personally an eyewitness to the life of Christ.

“just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” (Luke 1:2)

• Luke’s primary sources were the apostles themselves, who delivered facts about Jesus’ life and teaching—both orally and by means of recorded memoirs in written documents made available to Luke. In any case, Luke made no pretense of being an eyewitness himself, but explained that these were facts supported by careful research.

“it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus;” (Luke 1:3)

• Luke’s Gospel was the result of painstaking investigation. Luke, more than anyone else in the early church, had the abilities and the opportunity to consult with eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry and consolidate their accounts. He spent more than two years during Paul’s imprisonment at Caesarea (Acts 24:26–27), during which time he would have been able to meet and interview many of the apostles and other eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry. We know, for example, that he met Philip (Acts 21:8), who was undoubtedly one of Luke’s sources. In his travels, he may also have encountered the apostle John. Joanna, wife of Herod’s steward, is mentioned only in Luke’s Gospel, so she must have been a personal acquaintance of his. Luke also related details about Herod’s dealings with Christ not found in the other Gospels (13:31–33; 23:7–12). No doubt it was from Joanna (or someone in a similar position) that Luke learned those facts. However, his understanding was perfect because of the divine revelation he received from the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16–17; 2 Pet. 1:19–21).
• “From the beginning” – in Luke 1:2 uses a different Greek word, ‘arché’— so it is best to understand that Luke was saying he used earthly sources for his material, but was given heavenly guidance as he did his research and writing. It is clear that he regarded his account as authoritative (see note on v. 4).
• “consecutive order” – Luke’s account is predominantly ordered chronologically, but he does not follow such an arrangement slavishly. “most excellent, Theophilus.” This was a title used to address governors (Acts 23:26; 24:3; 26:25). This sort of language was reserved for the highest dignitaries, suggesting that “Theophilus” was such a person.

“so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.” (Luke 1:4)

• “the exact truth” – Notice the implicit claim of authority. Though Luke drew from other sources (v. 3), he regarded the reliability and authority of his Gospel as superior to uninspired sources.
• “taught” – Theophilus had been schooled in the apostolic tradition, possibly even by the apostle Paul himself. Yet the written Scripture by means of this Gospel sealed the certainty of what he had heard.

Now why did I go through all that background? Because I want you to understand a fuller meaning to some of the words in these verses, and I don’t want you to miss the historical context of these 4 simple but important verses that we normally skip over when we read the Gospel of Luke. So, with this background history and notes on these verses, let’s add the word and phrase definitions above and expand these last two verses out in a pseudo Amplified fashion to get a fuller understanding of what Luke was saying,

• (3) having investigated [having set his mind to attaining the full knowledge of, to understand, and examine thoroughly] everything carefully [exactly, accurately, and diligently] from the beginning, to write it out [to inscripturate] for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; (4) so that you may know [to become thoroughly acquainted with, to know thoroughly and accurately] the exact truth [with certainty and undoubted truth] about the things you have been taught [what was communicated by instruction, doctrine: specifically, the doctrine concerning the attainment of salvation, through Christ, in the kingdom of God]. (Luke 1:3-4)

So, we can faithfully say that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Luke’s goal was to ‘inscripturate’ the eye witness testimonies in an orderly manner, so that the result would provide his friend with certainty about all the truths that he had previously been taught about Christ. And why did Luke inscripturate the verbal teachings that Theophilus had previously received? Because his friend needed certainty that what he had learned was really the truth.

If, for the purpose of certainty, a first century man like Theophilus needed the written testimony of the God-breathed word to confirm his faith concerning what he had been taught, how much more do we need the same testimony, being centuries removed in time! [11]

But the question we are left with is this – does the Catholic Church misunderstand the true nature of Scripture, or is Luke a liar? I am purposely being provocative with this question. Luke walked and talked with the Apostles, and traveled with the Apostle Paul. So, he doesn’t get the luxury of ‘misunderstanding’ Paul or the other Apostles. Luke was either right in all that he wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, or he was purposely misrepresenting some or all that he learned and wrote. So, do you believe the guy that walked and talked with Apostles, or do you accept the Catholic Church’s belief that Scripture is incomplete without some unwritten tradition?

As the Anglican bishop, J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) wrote,

There is no encouragement here for those who place confidence in unwritten traditions, and the voice of the church. St. Luke knew well the weakness of man’s memory, and the readiness with which a history alters its shape both by additions and alterations, when it depends only on word of mouth and report. What therefore does he do? He takes care to ‘write.’ There is no encouragement here for those who are opposed to the spread of religious knowledge, and talk of ignorance as the ‘mother of devotion.’ St. Luke does not wish his friend to remain in doubt on any matter of his faith. He tells him that he wants him to ‘know the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed.’ [12]

If anyone has ever played the ‘telephone’ game, where each person in a circle whispers the same statement to the next person in line, by the time it gets around the circle, the beginning statement will be nothing like the ending statement. This reinforces the point that a written document is a much safer way to transmit accurate information than is verbal transmission. What seems to be lost on so many that trust in unwritten tradition is, there are numerous examples in the New Testament of false so-called apostolic traditions (teachings) being circulated. Some examples of the warnings in Scripture are: John 21:20-23; Acts 20:28-30; 2 Pet 3:14-18; 1 John 4:1-6; Mat 7:15-20; 2 Pet 1:12-21; Tit 1:6-16 (this is not an exhaustive list). So, if it was happening while the Apostles were alive, what would make anyone think it wasn’t going to happen after they were gone? And it did. A few examples of false teachings and beliefs in the early Church are: Gnosticism, Ebionism, Docetism, Modalism, and Arianism, just to name a few. All of them came with their own oral traditions and some with their own writings, as did Gnosticism. How would the early Church have been able to defend herself against the unwritten traditions and secret knowledge of the heretical beliefs using her own unwritten traditions, if not for Scripture? The answer is, the Church could not have. Those unwritten and unknowable traditions of the Church would have been worthless against the equally unwritten and unknowable secret knowledge of heretical beliefs. It would have been a proverbial ‘my daddy can beat up your daddy’ approach to apologetics. That is why the Church needed something written, and why the Holy Spirit inspired the creation of the New Testament.

Importance of Original Languages

There were a number of issues in the early church but one of the worst was the language barrier. By the beginning of the 3rd century the language of the Church in the West had almost entirely changed from Greek to Latin, as Latin was the language of the Roman Empire. This caused huge communications problems between the Eastern Church and the Western Church, as the East was still using Greek as its language. This meant that much of the Church’s Bible, which was the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, was only readable by a few in the West. The Septuagint was originally created by the Jews because the language in the middle east was Greek and most of the Jewish population knew Greek, not Hebrew. And it was the Septuagint that Jesus read from in the Synagogues so, it was the Septuagint that the early church used as its Bible until the New Testament books were fully available. As evangelism continued, centralized locations of the Church emerged: Rome, West Africa, Alexandria and Antioch. This developed into a Western Church and an Eastern Church where language separated the two. This also meant that the Septuagint had to be translated into Latin – giving them a translation of a translation – which contributed to the ongoing problem. Likewise, the New Testament books had to be translated from Greek into Latin. In the West, some likely had Greek codices (compilations of the New Testament books) but couldn’t read them. And time only made this problem worse, for in the early church, only Origen (185-253 AD) and Jerome (345-420 AD) knew the original biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek.

Even though the Church headship moved from West to East when Rome fell and back to the West when Islam slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Christians in the 7th and 8th centuries, Latin became further entrenched as the language of the Church, thus setting the stage for additional misunderstandings to come between the East and the West, and the ultimate Schism in 1054 AD. Since Jerome knew both Hebrew and Greek, he attempted to provide a Latin translation of the Bible (384-404 AD) from the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and scrolls. The result was the Latin Vulgate. But he was basically a translation team of one, which means there were errors in the Latin Vulgate that were never caught. When the Roman Empire started to fall in 410 AD the language of the people changed from Latin to Italian, French and Spanish. But the language of the Church did not change, and it would not change until Vatican II. (Technically, Latin is still the language of the Catholic Church, they just allow the ‘mass’ to be done in the native language of the people.)

This language problem intensified within the Western Church after the fall of Rome, as the general state of people changed rapidly from literacy to illiteracy. This meant that the vast majority of people did not understand anything being said in the Church because its ceremonies were all done in Latin. And since the vast majority of people were illiterate, the only way the Church could communicate with the people was, you guessed it, verbally, via oral teachings. It should also be noted that this illiteracy extended even into the Church as some priests were as illiterate as the people were. But the Church had no reason to change from Latin to a language of the people; they couldn’t read anyway! There was no one to challenge Church teachings, except for those within the Church, and far too many of them were stuffed away in monasteries. The Church now had absolute power, controlling the institutions and the state. And as we all know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Now, let's fast forward the 16th century. There are a number of things that happened to bring about the Protestant Reformation, but three important ones were the printing press, the enlightenment and an updated Greek translation of the New Testament by Desiderius Erasmus in 1516. As you can imagine, the printing press made producing information – books – much, much easier. And the enlightenment ushered literacy back into the lives of the common person. Erasmus’ Greek New Testament restored direct access and interaction with the original language of the New Testament. The result was an explosion of study and scholarship as it removed a thousand years of filtering of the previous views that could only be read by the clergy, and in Latin. People could think for themselves again.

Both humanist and Reformer were hostile towards scholastic theology; both wished to return to the bible, particularly the New Testament, as the source of Christian doctrine; both greatly valued the [church] fathers as witnesses to the vitality and character of early Christianity. [13]

The humanist movement, not to be confused with humanism today, was focused not on religion, but on what it meant to be human. They believed in the importance of being educated in classical literature and the promotion of civic virtue.

The humanist movement that began in the fifteenth century was characterized by a renewed interest in classical literature and the attendant disciplines of study and investigation of original sources. Fifteenth century humanists were deeply religious men who applied the new learning to the study of Scripture in the original languages. [14]

So as you can see, rediscovering the original languages brought the reformers back the Church fathers for their history and the original Hebrew and Greek texts for their biblical studies, which allowed them to rediscover a fuller understanding of God and His nature. One thousand years of Latin study never did that.

It was this return to the original languages of the biblical text that precipitated the exposure of many inconsistencies and corruption in the Vulgate. … When compared with the original Greek, the inaccuracies of the Vulgate translation and doctrinal corruption arising from it, became subjects of intense study. Examining the Greek text cast new light on such subjects as Mariology and the theology of the sacraments. [15]

The Reformer’s return to the original languages of the Bible is what has led to the questioning of so many Roman Catholic doctrines on the grounds that they cannot be supported in Scripture. The original languages uncovered errors in the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate that has had the Catholic Church scrambling to answer for the doctrines that have developed from these errors. Instead of recognizing and correcting these obvious errors, they dug their proverbial heels firmly in the sand in which they stood, and at the Council of Trent in 1546 rejected the Protestant evidence and set the Latin Vulgate as the only ‘approved’ authentic version of the Scriptures. But consecrating known errors as 'inerrant Scripture' is the kind of dogmatic ‘religion’ that so many people detest and reject. You don't make your stand on error and then invent ways to defend it as truth, that is what cults like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons do.  

Conclusion

Unfortunately, I am only half-way through this topic so, I am going to end it here and continue in a future ‘part 2.’ What we continue to see for each topic concerning an aspect of Sola Scriptura, is that it is Scripture that provides certainty that the Christian needs concerning doctrine. In this part, we saw that there are a number of Catholic theologians who have acknowledged in some of their writings that there are in fact some of the deficiencies in the Church’s concept of ‘tradition.’ I provided a few quotes, but I could have provided more. That doesn’t mean that these theologians feel that tradition should have something less than a co-equal place with Scripture. Instead they proposed alternative understandings to explain away these deficiencies, even though their explanations were unsatisfactory and insufficient.

We then examined Luke 1:1-4 in detail to see how he, as writer of inspired Scripture, wanted his Gospel to provide certainty about the Gospel message. That meant that what he wrote provided everything needed for a person to to believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to understand and obtain the free gift of salvation God offers each of us, and to be completely ‘certain’ that Jesus was and is who He said He is, and that we can have complete certainty about our salvation.

And finally, we saw that the language change from Greek to Latin in the West started the East and West down a path of miscommunication and misunderstanding each other as neither side understood what the other was saying. This is not an attempt to point the figure at the West, each side did little to communicate with the other. The West began to rely upon a translation of a translation, and the Latin Vulgate unfortunately added to the problem of human errors being introduced into Scripture, because of the Western Church’s inability to work with the original languages of Scripture. And this problem compounded upon itself after the fall of Rome in 410 AD, as Latin became a ‘dead’ language to all but the Church. We then saw how the enlightenment brought a return to literacy and the study of the original languages of Scripture, and how those events set off an explosion of scholarship in Protestant circles. This scholarship uncovered huge errors in Catholic doctrine, like ‘penance’ instead of ‘repentance,’ which led the Roman Catholic Church into future errors like enshrining ‘penance’ as a ‘sacrament’ when it is a completely unbiblical concept.

Each part of this Sola Scriptua series has had one single goal – to show that it is only Scripture that Christians should be following, while at the same time rejecting anything that usurps its place of primacy in the Christian’s life. As Luke pointed out in the first chapter of his Gospel, the purpose of his Gospel was to bring certainty about the message of salvation in Christ Jesus and its result in the believer’s life. As we saw, this was something that oral teaching did not accomplish.

Now Luke tells us also the cause wherefore he proceeds to write: ‘that [you may] hold,’ [said] he, ‘the certainty of the words wherein [you have] been instructed;’ that is that being continually reminded [you may] hold to the certainty, and abide in certainty. [16]

John Chrysostom (349-407 AD)

Church history has repeatedly and clearly proven one thing: once the highest view of Scripture is abandoned by any theologian, group, denomination, or church, the downhill slide in both theology and practice is inevitable.

James White

Footnotes

[1] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 145.
[2] Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions: A Historical Essay and a Theological Essay (New York: MacMillan, 1966, p. 202, as quoted in David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 145.
[3] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 145-146.
[4] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 146.
[5] Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, p/o Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] John MacArthur, Study Bible Notes, https://www.studybible.org/, separated for readability.
[11] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 148.
[12] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 147.
[13] Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) p. 41, as quoted by David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 149.
[14] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 149.
[15] David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol I, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), pp. 149-150.
[16] I Updated the KJV language: ‘thou mayest’ to ‘you may’, ‘thou hast’ to ‘you have’.

All Scriptures quotes are from the New American Standard Bible, 1995 Revision, unless otherwise noted. Verse links from Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/

For the best treatment of Sola Scriptura in book form, please consider investing in the 3 volume set of: David T. King, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001). It's the guide I'm using to integrate some of my own study on this important subject. This book set is inexpensive and worth every penny.