When it comes to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (Scripture as the only rule of faith), Catholics must remember: the first Christians did not have a Bible to call their only rule of faith!
The last book of the New Testament, Revelation, was not written until about the year A.D. 68. That leaves a thirty-five-year gap between Jesus’ ascension and the completion of the Bible as we know it. Can an incomplete Bible be the sole rule of faith?
Furthermore, if the doctrine of sola scriptura were true, then the Church would have existed for a time without its sole infallible rule of faith. During this time, there would have been controversies, doctrinal disputes, and other difficulties that could not be resolved. On the individual level, believers would have lacked the fullness of divine revelation. Both of these facts demonstrate a fatal flaw in the doctrine of sola scriptura.
[A note on Gospel dating: Some modern scholars assign a date of A.D. 90-100 for the Book of Revelation. But in the informed opinion of this author, the earlier dates given by Jimmy Akin and other Bible scholars are more trustworthy. Moreover, if the later date is accurate, it would mean that the Church existed even longer without the New Testament as the final authority, thus weakening the Protestant position even further.]
The first few decades of the Church’s existence were turbulent. Persecutions had already begun, and more were imminent (Matt. 10:16-18, Luke 21:12, John 15:20-21, 2 Tim. 3:11-12, Rev. 2:10). Believers were being martyred (Acts 7:54-60, 12:1-2). The apostolic teaching was met with resistance (Acts 5:17-18, 27-28; 17:5-6, 13), and false teachings had already appeared (Acts 20:29-30, Gal. 1:6-9, 1 John 4:1). If the Bible was the Christian’s only rule of faith at that time, and if the Bible was not fully written, by the earliest reckoning, until decades after Christ’s ascension, how did early Christians deal with immediate threats to the new faith?
The New Testament answers this question. In Acts 15, we read about the Council of Jerusalem. The issue at hand was whether a believer had to be circumcised according to the Mosaic Law in order to be saved (v. 1). Luke tells us that “Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them”—that is, those who were insisting on circumcision—but since the issue was still not settled, these two men were sent to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles and presbyters to put it to rest. “After there had been much debate,” Peter stands up and delivers his ruling on the matter (vv. 7-11), after which “all the assembly kept silence.”
This is a telling account, because conspicuously present is Peter’s teaching authority, and conspicuously absent is an appeal to Scripture. In fact, those in favor of circumcision were the ones appealing to Scripture (vv. 1, 5), but Peter overruled them on the basis of his own power to teach on matters of faith. The Magisterium functioned exactly as Jesus had designed it to.
At this point in the life of the Church, none of the New Testament had been written yet. But there were still Christians who wanted authoritative Christian truth, who wanted to be saved. God didn’t abandon them as casualties of a sola scriptura system that wouldn’t be functional until long after they were dead. It doesn’t seem reasonable, therefore, to think that even after Jesus revealed the fullness of the Father’s plan, imparted his teachings to the apostles, and established his Church to be the means by which those teachings were brought to the world, there would be one group of people who lacked a rule of faith (no New Testament) and another group, much later, who had it once the New Testament was complete.
A Protestant might object: “Christians necessarily had to wait until the completion of the New Testament. The apostles may have been the authority during that time, but once the New Testament was written and the Bible was complete, it replaced the apostles as the only rule of faith for believers.”
And here is how a Catholic can respond: “This claim is pure supposition and has no support in the New Testament. Aren’t the important teachings of Scripture—like what transpires in the Council of Jerusalem, where the apostles demonstrate their binding authority—sufficiently clear, as Protestants claim? If sola scriptura is a central doctrine, why would it be based on inference at best and supposition at worst rather than being explicitly stated in Scripture?”
Faced with the time gap between the Ascension and the completion of the New Testament, Protestants are left with three possibilities regarding temporary sources of Christian authority for that period: (1) nothing, (2) the Old Testament, or (3) the apostles.
Of course, having nothing as a rule of faith for Christians is untenable. It contradicts the passages where Jesus clearly gives his authority to the apostles, it leaves the Church vulnerable to the kinds of difficulties mentioned above, and it leaves no court of final appeal to settle the Church’s internal and disciplinary matters.
The Old Testament by itself cannot serve as the rule of faith because it needs to be interpreted, as evidenced by the scenario just mentioned in Acts 15—or Luke 24, where Jesus has to explain to the two disciples walking to Emmaus “the things concerning himself” in “all the [Old Testament] scriptures” (v. 27) as well as to the disciples in Jerusalem (vv. 44-45). It functioned alongside the Jews’ tradition and the seat of Moses, showing that in practice, it was not a sole authority. And if it were sufficient for Christians, then the New Testament would not have needed to be written.
That leaves us with apostolic authority. Nowhere does the Bible indicate that it would be temporary—still less that it would give way to the authority of Scripture alone. On the contrary, we see that the apostles chose successors, who, in turn, possessed the same authority to “bind and loose” (render authoritative decisions) that they had. This is why Matthias was elected as a replacement for Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:15-26) and why Paul passed on his apostolic authority to Timothy and Titus (2 Tim. 1:6, Titus 1:5). If anything, pointing to the apostles to solve the authority gap supports the Catholic position: since Jesus intended his Church to exist until his return, he intended apostolic authority (the Church’s Magisterium) to exist, as clearly evidenced by the selection of successors to their office.
This article comes from our new book, Sola Scriptura Doesn’t Work: 25 Practical Reasons to Reject the Doctrine of ‘Bible Alone. You’ll find many more reasons there!