Not in Early Church: Argument #9 Against Sola Scriptura

As I begin part 30 of my Sola Scriptura series, I transition into another defense of this view but this time directly refuting reasons given for why Sola Scriptura is rejected. This entire series has been defensive in nature, in that I am attempting to answer objections, both past and current, to Sola Scriptura, as if Catholicism doesn’t need to defend their own position. But this is not just for Catholics since there are major Protestant denominations that reject Sola Scriptura as well by what and how they teach.

There was a recent video posted on YouTube from Cameron Bertuzzi, better known as 'Capturing Christianity' on several social media platforms (YouTube, X, etc.), where he states nine ‘powerful’ arguments for why Sola Scriptura is false. His video can be found here: I Spent a Year Researching Sola Scriptura—Here's 9 Reasons Why It's False. I would encourage you to listen to it so that you will have a clear frame of reference for my responses to his nine arguments.

The following are the nine arguments Cameron used in his video. Just as his video presents, the arguments are listed in reverse order and in his own words, from least to most powerful.

#9 – Sola Scriptura Was Not in Early Church History
#8 – Fragmentation - Scripture should have unified the Church
#7 – Final Authority – it makes the individual the ultimate authority on interpreting Scripture.
#6 – Sola Scriptura is not in the Bible
#5 – The Canon Problem
#4 – When did Sola Scriptura become true?
#3 – Scripture alone is imperfect
#2 – The Bible itself contradicts Sola Scriptura
#1 – Sola Scriptura is arbitrary

So, there you have it, the ‘most powerful’ set of arguments against Sola Scriptura, at least from his perspective. And if you are a Protestant with very limited understanding of the subject, and have listened to his video, you may disagree with his arguments but when pressed, you will likely have little if anything with which to defend your point of view. I don’t say that as an insult, I say this from experience. Far too many believers have never had to work through difficult questions about their faith. So, if this is you, you need to educate yourself. And it does not matter whether you are Calvinist or Armenian, or whether you are Premillennial, Postmillennial or Amillennial - this is core knowledge you need to witness to Catholics, atheists and wayward Protestants. And blasting them with a ‘hell-fire gospel’ without love is not a valid witnessing technique. We are to love our enemies and compel them to come into the kingdom of God. But that will be meaningless if done in hate or disgust. Likewise, as Scripture says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hos 4:6) You need to educate yourself. If you are interested in this topic, you can start by reading the first 29 blog articles in this series. It's free educational information, so what do you have to lose?

And if you are a Catholic, this list probably looks like the ‘holy grail’ of ammunition against the Protestant Reformation and Sola Scriptura. I would hope that you would read my series as well. If I’m wrong, tell me what I’m missing? At the very least you will get a crash course in what Protestants have been writing and teaching on this subject for the last 500 yrs.

Now, for the purposes of this series of blogs, I will base my responses on some of the information provided in the following three response videos.

Each of these are interesting responses to Cameron’s video, but I do think White’s is the best of the three. Also, please note: I am not endorsing all of the views expressed in these videos; I cite them simply because they are response videos to Cameron’s.

A Reminder: What is Sola Scriptura?

As James White wrote, Sola Scriptura means,

… that the Scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith for the Church. Since they are ‘God-breathed’ (Mat 22:31; 2 Tim 3:16-17; 2 Pet 1:20-21), they are ultimate in authority, for there can be no higher authority than God Himself. All other rules of faith, creeds, councils, or anything else produced by the Church herself, are subject to the ultimate correction of God’s Word. [1] [emphasis added]

So that everyone is clear about what is being said, for the Christian, Scripture is supposed to be the sole infallible guide to the faith and practice of Christianity. It gives us everything we need concerning doctrine and how we are to behave as believers. Why? Because Scripture is the very words of God, they are God-breathed, which means they are directly from God Himself to mankind. This makes Scripture the ultimate authority in the Christian’s life. That also means the Scriptures are above creeds, councils, traditions, pastors, teachers, ministries, organizations, etc. – everything is subjected to and under the authority of Scripture. And if any of these people or institutions teach something that contradicts what is written in Scripture, that person, that teaching, that institution stands in direct opposition to God and His Word. There is nothing that has this same authority, no person, no organization, no church office, nothing. There is a hierarchy of authority and Scripture is at the very top.

For all the things that Sola Scriptura is and is not, please see: Sola Scriptura: Meaning and History. I am not going to engage anyone that wants to misrepresent what Protestants actually mean when they refer to this subject. So, as we step through Cameron’s nine arguments, please keep in mind what Sola Scriptura is and is not.

Sola Scriptura Was Not in Early Church History

This is at Cameron said for argument #9,

If scripture alone is genuinely the Christian rule of faith we'd expect the earliest Christians, the Apostles and their successors to explicitly teach it. They'd have said something like "From now on only the Bible is infallible, no binding tradition, no authoritative councils." But when we look at history that's simply not what we find. Instead the early church consistently appealed to oral tradition, apostolic succession and authoritative church councils alongside scripture. Now Protestant scholars like Dr Michael Horton recognized this difficulty [and] attempt to show that early Christians did affirm something like Sola Scriptura. So for example, Dr Horton points to a passage from Clement of Rome, a first century church father, where Clement writes this, "Let us put aside empty and vain cares and let us come to the glorious and venerable canon of our tradition. He doesn't say canon and tradition. He says the canon of our tradition." Dr Horton takes this reference to a canon as evidence that Clement believed scripture alone was authoritative. But as Trent Horn points out in response, Horton confuses Clement's general use of the Greek word, canon, meaning rule with a reference to the canon of scripture itself. Clement never equates tradition with scripture. Nor does he even recognize a complete New Testament canon at this point in his ministry. So when Clement says that we must put aside empty cares and come to the canon of our tradition he must be referring to something broader than the New Testament since the New Testament, the official New Testament, wasn't even recognized yet. For a much deeper dive into why early Christian sources like Clement, Ignatius and Irenaeus fall short of affirming Sola Scriptura I've linked Trent Horn's full response to Dr Horton's claims in the description if you want to go check it out. Trent thoroughly demonstrates why these early references, even when they highlight the importance of scripture simply don't teach the idea that scripture alone is our sole infallible authority. Here's why this argument matters. The absence of explicit and widespread early support for Sola Scriptura is actually pretty telling. In other words Sola Scriptura is missing precisely where we'd most expect to find it at the very foundations of Christianity itself.
(Cameron's video: 1:49 to 4:25) [this text was exported from the YouTube video] [emphasis added]

To summarize the above, Cameron’s argument in this video is:

The Apostles would have said, "From now on only the Bible is infallible, no binding tradition, no authoritative councils."
“Early church consistently appealed to oral tradition, apostolic succession and authoritative church councils alongside scripture.”
“Dr Horton takes this reference to a Canon as evidence that Clement believed scripture alone was authoritative. But as Trent Horn …”
“So when Clement of Rome says that we must put aside empty cares and come to the canon of our tradition he must be referring to something broader than the New Testament …”

I will respond to the first three, as number four is part of number three. Before we begin, it should be pointed out that this is not a new or fresh argument against Sola Scriptura, so I’m not sure why he thinks that.

My Response

Apostolic Succession

The most basic error in Cameron’s video is that he seems to ignore the fact that only the Apostles were appointed by Jesus Himself to speak for God, empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach and teach the Gospel infallibly, and to create churches wherever they traveled. Obviously, he knows this, but he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that no subsequent appointments by the apostles had this same authority. Others may have done some of the same work, but there were no apostles appointed by the Apostles. Like all human beings, the Apostles themselves were not perfect or infallible men. They were empowered by Christ and the Holy Spirit to preach and teach the Gospel, but they were still fallible human beings. We see this in Galatians when Paul references his confrontation of Peter. (Gal 2:7-16, which occurred prior to Acts 15:22-35) But their fallibility did not invalidate their appointment as Apostles because it was their Gospel message that was infallibly preached and taught, whether spoken or written.

We then need to look at the following generations to see if there was any apostolic succession, which we already know did not occur. There were men who carried on during and after the Apostles were martyred, but there were no second-generation apostles. As a matter of fact, there was absolutely no concept of this in the first 400 years of the church. There were subsequent leaders raised up, such as Paul training Timothy, but this was not apostolic succession because there were no second-generation apostles, and a bishop (or overseer) is not the same thing as an Apostle. And just so we’re clear, neither is a ‘pope.’ The fact that Paul warned Timothy in First and Second Timothy about holding fast to the faith he was taught and that false teachers would attempt to draw him and his church away from Christ shows that Timothy was not an apostle.

Some will say that Scripture calls this one or that one an “apostle” but since there were no 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation apostles recorded in Church history, this line of reasoning falls flat. Others will say that these leaders were a different type of apostle, not like the originals but still apostles. And I say, “Thank you for making my point that there was no apostolic succession.” There are none recorded and all of the earliest church fathers refused to put themselves in the same category as the original Apostles. This by extension is also saying that none after the original Apostles possessed the kind of authority the originals did, and none of the succeeding generations ever pretended to have such authority, until the bishop of Rome attempted and finally succeeded to exercise that type of authority. That would put this concept in the ‘development’ camp, a doctrinal position that specific biblical concepts developed over long periods of time.

But the fallibility of the Apostles did not invalidate their appointment or their teachings. Peter understood Paul’s writings as ‘Scripture.” So, the Apostles did teach that the New Testament Scriptures were the Word of God, breathed out by God as we see in 2 Tim 3:16. Were their oral teachings of the Gospel message of salvation inspired and God breathed? Of course! But that did not make those teachings ‘oral tradition,’ as if they were something different than the Gospel message of salvation by faith that was later written down. That same message was preached in a time before that message was written down to become the New Testament Scriptures we have today. In other words, as has been stated in earlier blogs, their oral teachings were ‘inscripturated,’ which simply means those teachings were written down. But it needs to be stressed that the oral and written teachings were one and the same!

That’s the long and verbose way of saying that because there were no second century Apostles, there was no such thing as ‘apostolic succession.’ Appointing leaders in a newly created or existing church is not apostolic succession.

Historical Anachronism

According to James White, the Catholic Church deals with church history anachronistically and after reading quite a bit of church history centering around Sola Scriptura, I could not agree more. So, let’s start by defining the word, anachronism, which according to Merriam-Webster means ‘the state or condition of being chronologically out of place.’ So, what this means is that the Catholic Church, centuries after the fact, has defined a later or modern concept and then imposed that understanding onto the early Church as if they knew what the modern concept was and meant. So, keep this in mind as we touch upon the church history of church councils, binding tradition and the Canon of Scripture.

Church Councils

A great example of anachronism is Cameron’s reference to church councils and insinuating that somehow they hold some element of infallibility which puts their decisions at the same level and authority as Scripture. This is a ridiculous assertion or if you prefer, insinuation. It seems to come much later in history and then applied to the Jerusalem council recorded in Acts 15 and then applied to subsequent councils centuries later. The problem is that the Jerusalem council was: 1) part of Scripture and 2) attended by the Apostles, who had the ability to teach and write infallibly. This is simply not the case for later councils which occurred long after the Apostles died. To drive this point home, after the Council at Jerusalem, when was the next church council? Give up? The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, nearly three centuries later. It is called the first ecumenical council. Even though this council decided that Arianism was heretical, there is really no indication that it had the ability to speak infallibly in any way. This ability is simply assumed since the decision saved the Church from rank heresy. To underscore this point, what was decided at Nicaea was the nature of who Jesus was, his deity and humanity, and the Roman bishop at the time did not even bother to attend. Arius and his teachings might have been denounced at the council, but the Church would vacillate between orthodoxy and heresy for decades after Nicaea. So, fallible men convened to determine what Jesus’ nature was and after condemning Arianism, didn’t even have the unity to repudiate Arianism in the decades that followed. By the way, Scripture always represented the human and divine natures of Jesus properly, it was ‘man’ that messed up the obvious. So, Nicaea is not exactly a shining example of the ‘authority of church councils.’

Now, let’s fast forward to Augustine and see what he thought of councils. Gavin Ortlund pointed to Augustine (On Baptism 2.3.4) who stated that councils, even plenary (ecumenical) councils, can err and be corrected by later ones (see: here and here). In this same document, Augustine was stating that Scripture was superior to all, since councils were not infallible. He even made the point of stating that even letters from bishops did not carry that type of authority as they were fallible as well. For Augustine, only Scripture carried that authority. (See: Augustine on Scripture and Authority) That sounds a lot like Sola Scriptura to me.

Binding Tradition

Cameron also included ‘binding tradition,’ something we’ve already looked at, which was how Scripture presents ‘tradition’ as well as what the most important Church fathers were referring to when they used the word, ‘tradition.’ Remember what their understanding was? That’s right, they used the term to refer to the truths encapsulated in the Creeds, which means ‘tradition’ referred to Scripture, since the Creeds were created to encapsulate the Gospel as presented in Scripture. If you want to know what the early church fathers thought about Scripture and tradition, please see the following:

As you can see, this subject has been thoroughly reviewed and discussed. The kind of ‘binding’ authority Cameron says existed did not exist for at least 400 years after the Apostles, and really, it was much longer than that.

And one last thing to keep in mind about the Creeds. The Creeds are not Scripture and therefore are not infallible. They encapsulate what Scripture says but they do not replace Scripture, nor do they become Scripture simply because they were defined by a church council. They were man’s interpretation of what was written in Scripture and their purpose was confessional in nature, an easy way of validating that people understood the doctrines of Christianity, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even the Creeds were later changed to make sure new believers were not enticed into later heretical teachings.

But I also want to make the point that the concept of binding tradition from Catholicism is anachronistic because it's the assumption of Catholicism that ancient Church fathers believed in a modern-day concept of ‘tradition’ packed with modern-day meanings that the early Church fathers never taught and never knew existed and certainly never believed. There is no indication that the Apostles believed in Mary’s assumption or sinless state. Nor did they teach a concept of purgatory, indulgences or papal infallibility. There was no concept of a set of oral teachings that were co-equal in authority with Scripture, nor that these so-called apostolic teachings were passed down from the Apostles to the modern-day Church. All of this was anachronism based on Church fathers writing the word ‘tradition’ in one of their documents. Catholicism pours their meaning of ‘tradition’ into the word usage, regardless of how the Church fathers used the word, and we saw this in the above list of linked blogs in this section.

So, why is it important to point all of this out? Because the current Catholic view of 2 Th 2:15 is that the oral teachings referred to are somehow a second body of knowledge called ‘tradition’ that was never written down, but was handed down orally for the last 2000 years and now, somehow, has the same authority as Scripture. This set of teachings cannot be defined, but somehow they exist as a separate body of truth. But if the oral teachings are one and the same as the teachings written down, then there are not two bodies of truth, there is only one, Scripture. And if you are going to make the claim that ‘tradition’ is a separate body of truth, then you must produce those oral teachings that are called ‘tradition.’ Hiding them from the world does not make your case, it demolishes your case.

Nonexistent Traditions

So, let's look at a couple of ‘oral traditions’ from the early Church. According to Basil of Caesarea, a ‘tradition’ that came down from the Apostles was that baptism was to be done forward and not backward, and three times at that. Is that how Catholicism performs baptisms today? And according to Irenaeus, Jesus was crucified in his 50s. These two are examples of oral ‘traditions’ that were supposedly passed down to them from the Apostles. I might also ask if these are two examples of ‘traditions’ that are of the same authority as Scripture since they were ‘oral traditions’ said to have been passed down directly from the Apostles – would they not count as examples of ‘tradition’ that modern-day Catholics say existed? I think we can all agree that they were not apostolic ‘traditions’ because neither of these ‘traditions’ are actually practiced or believed by anyone today even though both Basil and Irenaeus said and believed that they were.

Taking this a step further, in James White’s Sola Scriptura debate with Mitch Pacwa in 1999, White asked Pacwa if there were any recorded words of Jesus which have been infallibly defined by the Catholic Church which are not currently found in Scripture. Pacwa’s answer was, No. White then asked him if there were any recorded words of the Apostles which have been infallibly defined by the Catholic Church which are not currently found in Scripture. Pacwa again answered, No. So, that begs the question: if there are no words of either Jesus or the Apostles known to exist outside of what Scripture records, then how could there be ‘known’ traditions which were supposedly handed down from either Jesus or the Apostles? How was it communicated down through history if not in words? Sign language? Yes, I’m being a bit facetious and maybe even a bit ludicrous, but I do hope you catch the point. At the very least maybe Pacwa should have said, Yes. And then added, “We have the words, we just can’t tell you what they were because it has to stay, ‘binding oral tradition.’ ”

If the only ‘traditions’ we have recorded from church history are not actually ‘traditions’ at all, and if there are no words of Jesus or the Apostles recorded outside of Scripture, then how would we ever know what is valid orally transmitted ‘tradition’ handed down from Jesus and the Apostles? If nothing exists, where did the supposed current body of oral ‘traditions’ come from? Who did they come from? What is the ‘custody chain’ for those ‘traditions’? (i.e., which fathers knew about these oral ‘traditions’?) If you say the Popes, did this include the popes during the pornocracy of the Catholic Church? Does this include the popes during the period when there were two and three popes leading the Catholic Church? If you say the magisterium, when was it created? Who were its officers? Do you see the can of worms that view opens?

How can the Catholic Church ask the world to believe there are inspired, authoritative, infallible ‘traditions’ when there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that they have ever existed? And if they do exist, what exactly is the motivation to hide them from the world? Remember, the Reformers asked for the list of ‘traditions’ and the Catholic Church denied their request. To date, no one, no Protestant, no Catholic, no Catholic apologist has any idea what these ‘traditions’ actually are. If you want any Protestants to believe in inspired, authoritative, infallible ‘tradition,’ you are first going to have to prove they exist and produce them, and Protestants have been waiting for over 500 years.

Argument Against Horton

Concerning his argument against Dr Horton’s view of Sola Scriptura in Clement of Rome, I don’t find Horton’s argument overly convincing but my real question is: why was Horton’s view on Canon Cameron’s main focus for argument #9? There were so many other ways he could have defended his position, this was not the best one to choose.

Even though I don’t find Horton’s point that compelling, I would disagree with Cameron’s dismissal of his use of the word, ‘Canon.’ I’m sure that Trent Horn’s defense is better, but to basically state that Clement’s use of the term ‘canon’ was only meant in a general sense and Horton was just misunderstanding how Clement used the term, seems to be far too underdeveloped and without any facts to back up the statement. However, the word ‘canon’ began to be used to define those writings that were authentic, or ‘canonical,’ from those that were not. So, Horton’s point was a little stronger than Cameron seemed to allow for.

Canon

The next item I want to address is the Canon issue itself. Now, this is a huge subject, so a complete coverage here is just not going to be possible, but I will touch on the highlights and will be addressing it in a future series. First, no Protestant has ever said the Gospel was always in written form and never existed in an oral form. That is a strawman that Catholics love to use but actually proves nothing about ‘tradition.’ So, let’s break down the argument.

In his argument against Horton’s position, Cameron points out that during Clement’s day, the New Testament Canon, as we know it today, had not been recognized as being complete. We honestly have no idea what Clement knew about the New Testament books, we just know he did not have all of the Apostles writings. No Protestant that I’m aware of has ever argued that the Canon was known in his day. It may have been technically ‘complete’ during his day, meaning all of the books had been written, but they were not recognized by all of the Church during his day. It is very possible that all of the books were recognized in his day, just not in any single location. So, let me attempt to represent the Protestant position a little more fairly and faithfully. [2]

The Catholic position is easy: the Pope, Church and/or Magisterium officially decided what the Canon was at the Council of Rome in 382 AD. (Dan Brown is the one that planted the idea that this was done at the Council of Nicaea.) This is arguably false at face value because the Pope and Magisterium cannot be traced back that far, unless you add some anachronism to get you there. (Yes, I know that Catholicism traces the ‘pope’ back to Peter, but since the term ‘pope’ was not used for centuries after Peter, their lineage is arbitrary.) And more importantly, the Church did not “decide” what the Canon of Scripture was. If that was true, the Church would have ‘officially’ decided the Canon by the middle of the 2nd century since all of Scripture would have been officially written and technically ‘complete’ by the close of the first century. But we know that did not occur. If it had, it would have demonstrated the type of authority and infallibility the Catholic Church says it has. The Canon came together much more organically. The churches in different locations simply recognized the books which they had been using for quite some time. This was also true of the books they rejected. And we know this from the writings of some of the Church fathers. There is a little more to it but that, in a nutshell, is the Protestant position. Canonicity was not decided by an institution but by the people in many locations.

So, what was happening in the early years of the Church? I’m glad you asked that question. As the Apostles started to write down the four Gospels and their Epistles, the Church immediately recognized the majority of them and started using, copying and distributing them. People and churches were eager to get a copy of a book they didn’t have, and they were equally eager to copy what they had and translate them into other languages to take with them during their travels. We know this by the massive number of manuscripts we have of various books in Greek and other languages. Churches were always looking to collect new books from the Apostles. We assume that Clement did not have the entire New Testament by the way he wrote, just like we also assume that Justin Martyr, the first apologist of the Church, did not seem to have any of Paul’s Epistles. But there are some things we do know. For instance, we know from Scripture that Peter recognized Paul’s Epistles as Scripture. The first known compiled list of the New Testament books is from the Muratorian fragments which are dated to the middle of the second century, so somewhere after 150 AD. That list recognized 22 of the 27 books of the New Testament, excluding Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and possibly 3 John because none of them were mentioned. Basically within 100 yrs after the Apostles, 22 of the 27 books were already recognized as Scripture. This also means that copying and distributing of books had progressed to a point that many areas had a copy of those 22 books. Who knows - maybe some of these places had all 27. We also know that when a book was written, it was immediately recognized as Scripture [3], it did not need a church council to compile an inspired index of books, or to determine that it was Scripture. As a matter of fact, there were forgeries written in the names of Apostles and these were recognized as such, well, everyone but Dan Brown. Even the very popular Shepherd of Hermes was rightfully rejected as Scripture. For more information on all of this, see: The Canon: Internal and External Evidence.

The evidence we see from history is that there were no councils determining what the Canon was. There was no concept of a Magisterium at this point in history, and anyone that says there was, is reading that modern concept back into the history of the day, anachronistically. In addition, there were no ‘popes’ to make this decision either. Yes, there was debate within the Church for some of the books of the New Testament but these were worked out in various ways. For instance, Augustine laid out a framework that may have been used before his time for evaluating what was and was not Scripture. For him, it was more about what was not Scripture. The bottom line is, since there was no Pope or Magisterium, the belief that ‘the Church decided what the Canon was’ is not factually true. Rome teaches that the ‘Pope’ at the Council of Rome defined the Canon of the New Testament in 382 AD, but the Canon was in use before that time as Athanasius is credited as the first to compile a complete list of the New Testament. Even that is now disputed as some, like Michael Kruger, point to Origen as the first to do so around 250 AD. By the way, there is likely no one that has studied this topic more than he has. This means that in either case, the ‘Pope’ and the Council of Rome only recognized what the Church was already using. It should also be noted that the ‘Pope’ of Rome was not universally recognized as a ‘pope’ until ‘Pope’ Leo in 440 AD.

The bottom line is this, if I grant him the case against Horton, Cameron hasn’t come close to properly addressing any of the reasons stated in his argument. I presented objections that show he didn’t put much thought or effort into this ‘powerful’ argument since none of these objections are new.

But You Didn’t Say, ‘Simon says!’

The last item is that Cameron states the early Church fathers did not in any way endorse Sola Scriptura because they never said, ‘I endorse / believe in / support / whatever, the concept of Sola Scriptura.’ I would again refer you to the above links on Church fathers and their view of Scripture and tradition. One does not have to say the word ‘Trinity’ to endorse the concept clearly taught in Scripture. You thought I was going to say, ‘Sola Scriptura’ didn’t you? But isn’t it the same thing? Because we give the concept a label like ‘Sola Scriptura’ in modern times does not mean that Scripture or a Church father has to use that same label. This is true about the Trinity as well, so why can’t it be true about Sola Scriptura? If you will remember from my blog The Middle Ages on Scripture and Tradition, Thomas Aquinas was the first to use the term Sola Scriptura. Yes, I know that Tertullian coined the word Trinity, but it took the church fathers 200 years to do so. And, he was a heretic, right? Hey, I’m just using the same argument that Catholic apologists do on Sola Scriptura. But in both cases, Scripture teaches the Trinity and Sola Scriptura, so each is valid.

This is yet another example of Catholicism’s dismissal of the concept without fairly representing it. One does not have to say the exact words to actually teach the concept, and that is what we see clearly in Scripture. Then there is the fact that, to my knowledge, no Catholic apologist has ever answered the King and Webster 3 volume set, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith. This book set systematically destroys the arguments against Sola Scriptura used by Catholic apologists, as evidenced by my own series that extensively uses this book set. And it goes through great lengths to lay out how the Church fathers demonstrated in their writings that they believed in Sola Scriptura. See my series: Sola Scriptura.

So, if you want to see the Church father’s reverence of Scripture for yourself - what they really thought about Scripture - pick up Volume 3 of the King and Webster set. You will see nothing but citations from Church fathers, page after page after page of them in this book. And the vast majority of these quotes can be found online at Catholic sites, as well as the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. If you’ve read my Sola Scriptura series, you should have noticed that I generally provide a link for the Church fathers I quote whenever possible. I do that so you can read their quotes in context for yourself.

Conclusion

So that concludes my response to Cameron’s 9th argument against Sola Scriptura. I attempted to address all of his reasons for rejecting Sola Scriptura and then added some additional supporting information to help make the point of why I don’t think he proved his point in the slightest. Honestly, I could have expanded it a bit more but I think with all of the linked supporting material that has already been covered in this series, the point has been sufficiently made. His argument does not stand up to history, not even close.

To start with, it’s a fallacy that the Church fathers needed to explicitly state that only Scripture was infallible. They actually did that in how their writings demonstrated their reverence for Scripture, if anyone wants to take the time to read the supporting blog articles I posted. And as far as ‘binding tradition’ goes, those same blog articles covered what each father was referring to when they mentioned the word ‘tradition,’ which was Scripture encapsulated in the Creeds.

Next, I covered how oral tradition was simply the uninscripturated Gospel. And if you will remember Mitch Pacwa admitted in his 1999 debate that the Catholic Church does not possess any words from either Jesus or the Apostles outside of what is recorded in Scripture. That eliminates any teachings outside of Scripture that were supposedly handed down from either Jesus or the Apostles that could be classified as ‘oral tradition,’ as would be understood by modern-day Catholics. And since we are talking about ‘oral tradition,’ there is always a reference to 2 Th 2:15 and I would direct the reader to Tradition: Oral and Written, 2 Th 2:15 where I refuted this reference as ‘oral tradition.’

I then covered apostolic succession and authoritative councils. As I pointed out, there were exactly zero councils between the Jerusalem council found in Acts 15 and the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This makes it a bit hard to appeal to an authoritative council that never existed. And some biblical scholars believe that the Canon was possibly known by as early as 250 AD. If that is true, then the first ecumenical council would not convene for another 75 years and no discussion of the Canon would even take place. If the recognition of the Canon is as late as 382 AD, then that statement is still true since Athanasius was the first to identify all 27 books of the New Testament in 367 AD, meaning the Canon was already understood and the Council at Rome decided nothing at all.

I then addressed his case against Dr Horton’s view of the Canon and Clement of Rome and made the minor point that his case is a bit stronger than Cameron gives him credit. But since none of the arguments in this blog depend upon Horton’s view, Horton could be wrong and all of those arguments still stand.

Concerning ‘tradition’ itself, the earliest of the Church fathers never referred to ‘tradition’ especially not as a separate body of truth and neither do later fathers. This is anachronistic on the part of Catholicism.

I would also point out that most of my rebuttal against Cameron’s argument has come from the King and Webster books and I find it odd that none of Cameron’s arguments address the history and points made there for the subject of this argument. For this argument, Cameron was:

Wrong about the evidence from Church history,
Wrong about what the Church fathers thought ‘tradition’ was,
Wrong about the authority of non-existent Church councils during the 1st 400 years of the Church,
Wrong about apostolic succession when there were no 2nd century Apostles.

The bottom line is Cameron’s yearlong investigation into Sola Scriptura did not really produce a ‘powerful’ argument, since most of what his argument relied upon has been refuted multiple times by multiple sources.

And with good cause He [calls] the Scriptures “a door,” for they bring us to God, and open to us the knowledge of God, they make the sheep, they guard them, and suffer not the wolves to come in after them. For Scripture, like some sure door, [bars] the passage against the heretics, placing us in a state of safety as to all that we desire, and not allowing us to wander; and if we undo it not, we shall not easily be conquered by our foes. By it we can know all, both those who are, and those who are not, shepherds. But what is “into the fold”? It refers to the sheep, and the care of them. For he that [uses] not the Scriptures, but “[climbs] up some other way,” that is, who [cuts] out for himself another and an unusual way, “the same is a thief.” Seest thou from this too that Christ [agrees] with the Father, in that He [brings] forward the Scriptures? On which account also He said to the Jews, “Search the Scriptures” (John 5:39);

NPNF1, Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homily 59.2

Footnotes

James White, Alpha and Omega Ministries, who has written and debated extensively on the subject of Sola Scriptura.
Please Note: I do not know about every Protestant position on this specific portion, nor will I attempt to represent the ‘outlier’ positions. I will speak for the mainstream position which I currently hold.
If you had gotten a copy of 3 John, for instance from someone that had gotten it from John himself, it would have been recognized as Scripture. But also keep in mind, some of these were personal letters and would not have had a wide distribution, which is likely why 3 John took time to be recognized.

For the best treatment of Sola Scriptura in book form, please consider investing in the 3 volume set of: David T. King and William Webster, 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.

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/

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