Chapter 16, "The Myth of Sola Scriptura." Steve Goggins—not his real name—is an earnest Christian and is well-versed in Scripture. Several years ago, I was sharing with him some of these things that I've shared with you. After listening politely for about 30 minutes, he finally could keep quiet no longer. Shaking his head in disapproval, he blurted out, "I'm sorry, that's all very interesting, but all I need is my Bible.
I'm not going to accept anything if it's not in the Bible." Noticing that his Bible was laying on the table next to him, I replied, "Steve, turn for a moment to the first book of the New Testament." He quickly complied. "Tell me," I continued, "who wrote that book?" "Matthew did," he replied without hesitation. "Now tell me why you believe that Matthew wrote that book." I queried. "Well, because it says so right at the top of the page," he answered with a grin.
"Steve," I explained, "none of the names that we use for the Bible books are part of the original manuscripts. For example, Paul didn't scribble '1 Corinthians' at the top of his letter to the Corinthians.
No, all of the names of Bible books are names that humans have added as a means to quickly identify those books." He didn't challenge me on this, so I continued, "So now tell me why you believe that Matthew wrote the first book of our New Testament." Steve quickly began leafing through the Gospel of Matthew, quite certain he would find a place where the writer had identified himself, but he found nothing. Finally, I halted him.
"You can search carefully through the entire book, but you won't find any place where it says who the writer is. So let me tell you why you believe that Matthew wrote this book. You believe it because the early Christians say that Matthew wrote it. We then went through the same procedure with Mark, then Luke, then John, then Acts. Each time the answer was the same: in none of those books does the writer identify himself.
In each case, we have accepted without question the historic testimony of the early Christians." So I asked him, "Do you still maintain that the writers of the four Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?" "Sure," he responded. "Then you do accept things that aren't written in the Bible, after all," I said with a smile, "and so does everyone else. If we really are going to accept only Scripture, then we need to take the Gospel names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John out of our Bibles.
We need to replace them with 1 Gospel, 2 Gospel, 3 Gospel, and 4 Gospel. Likewise, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John should be listed in our Bibles simply as three anonymous letters.
What's more, if we are going to reject the testimony of the early Christians, we need to question our whole New Testament canon." Some Christians have the mistaken impression that at the close of the apostolic age, the apostles handed the Church a bound collection of writings called the New Testament, containing all the books we have in our New Testament. But that's not what happened.
Rather, the early Christian congregations separately collected together the various letters and narrative accounts written by the apostles and disciples. The apostles never told the Church which writings to accept and which to reject. The early Christians rather had to decide for themselves which writings were genuinely from the apostles and which were not, which was no easy task. Our New Testament today is based upon the list compiled by the early Christians.
We heavily rely upon their testimony." Next subheading: "A Myth from the Start." Sola Scriptura—which means Scripture alone, or only Scripture—was the battle cry of the Reformation. Yet that slogan was a myth from the very beginning. Although one of Martin Luther's noteworthy accomplishments was his translation of the Bible into German, he made certain that his readers would not have Sola Scriptura. He didn't want them to approach Scripture with a blank slate.
So Luther inserted prefaces to each Bible book in his translation, and those prefaces steered the reader's attention away from parts of the Bibles that didn't fit Luther's theology. For example, in his preface to the New Testament, Luther wrote, "It would be right and proper that this book should appear without preface and without any other name than that of its authors, and convey only its own name and its own language.
But many wild interpretations and prefaces have driven the thoughts of Christians to a point where no one any longer knows what is gospel or law, Old Testament or New. Necessity demands, therefore, that it should have an announcement or preface by which the simple man can be brought back from the old notions to the right road and be taught what he is to expect in this book, so that he may not seek laws and commandments where he ought to be seeking the gospel and God's promises.
If I had to do without one or the other, either the works or preaching of Christ, I would rather do without his works than his preaching; for the works do not help me, but his words give life, as he himself says. Now, John writes very little about the works of Christ, but very much about his preaching; but the other evangelists write much of his works and little of his preaching. Therefore, John's Gospel is the one tender, true chief gospel, far, far to be preferred to the other three and placed high above them.
So too, the epistles of Saint Paul and Saint Peter far surpass the other three Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In a word, Saint John's Gospel and his first epistle, Saint Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and Saint Peter's first epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and good for you to know, even though you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine.
Therefore, Saint James' epistle is really an epistle of straw compared to them, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it." End quote. Luther claimed that the only reason he preferred the Gospel of John over the other three Gospels was that it contained more of Jesus's preaching. But that isn't true. The Gospel of Matthew contains nearly twice as much of Jesus's preaching as does the Gospel of John. A person doesn't need to be very perceptive to see what Luther's real motive was.
The Bible books Luther disparaged happened to be the very books that didn't support his theology. Not only was Luther's translation not Sola Scriptura, but few of the other early Protestant Bibles were either. William Tyndale produced the first Protestant translation of the Bible into English, yet his translation is strewn with marginal notes that add interpretations and polemical remarks to the texts of Scripture.
For example, alongside the text of 1 Corinthians 14:2, which addresses speaking in tongues, Tyndale wrote, "To speak with tongues, or with the Spirit, is to speak that others understand not, as priests say their service. To speak with a mind is to speak that others understand, as when the preacher preaches." Alongside the text of Revelation 7, Tyndale explained, "Prophets, preachers, and the prelates of the Church are called angels.
The good angels here in this book are the true bishops and preachers, and the evil angels are the heretics and false preachers." If Tyndale truly believed in Sola Scriptura, why couldn't he just let the Bible speak for itself? The Geneva Bible, first published in 1560, was the work of English Protestant exiles who had taken refuge in Geneva, Switzerland. It was strewn throughout with marginal notes that added human interpretations to God's word.
One example is the interpretation it places alongside 1 Corinthians 14:1.
Paul had written to the Corinthians about prophesying, saying, "Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy." The Geneva Bible illuminates the word "prophesy" by commenting, "That is, to expound the word of God to the edification of the Church." Alongside Revelation 9:1, which speaks of "a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth," the Geneva Bible interjects, "That is, the bishops and ministers who forsake the worship of God and who fall out of heaven and become
angels of darkness." My point is not to discuss the merits of these various interpretations.
Rather, I'm calling attention to the fact that the most popular early Protestant Bibles all added interpretive remarks alongside the text of Scripture. Sola Scriptura was a myth from the start. A little footnote here: one of the reasons the King James Version, first published in 1611, was such a spiritual landmark was that it was one of the first Protestant Bibles that was not embellished with running commentaries.