The Practical Problems of Sola Scriptura

DEFENSE

This is a view that couldn’t have been entertained until the early 1500s. Until then, multiple practical problems prevented it.

Among the problems are these:

1. If every Christian is to read the Bible for himself and do the kind of study needed to decide delicate theological questions, then he must first have a Bible. But before the invention of the printing press (in the mid-1400s), Bibles had to be hand copied, and so they were fantastically expensive, costing far more than an ordinary person could afford. The widespread application of sola scriptura thus presupposes the invention of the printing press.
2. It also presupposes universal distribution of Bibles. Copies not only have to be made, they have to be put in the hands of the people who are to use them. This requires a society with a developed economy and infrastructure capable of producing the wealth needed to print and distribute millions of Bibles.
3. The recipients of these Bibles must be well educated. Illiterates can’t do the kind of detailed study needed to settle numerous theological questions. Sola scriptura thus requires universal literacy among Christians, as well as a high level of education in the critical thinking skills needed to sort through technical arguments about biblical passages and theological propositions.
4. In addition to the Bibles, Christians would need to possess extensive scholarly support materials—commentaries, concordances, Bible dictionaries, Greek and Hebrew lexicons, and so on. No competent theologian would dream of doing his work without these resources, and they would be all the more necessary for a less-educated layman to accurately determine theological matters for himself. Needless to say, these conditions didn’t apply in the early Church or for most of Christian history (or for many Christians today).

It’s easy to see why the Reformers—a group of well-educated individuals in the 1500s—got excited about the mass printing of Bibles and thought of having everyone decide his own theology. But this was not God’s plan for the first Christians, or for most Christians, which means it’s an anachronistic view that is not God’s plan.