The Problem with Sola Scriptura
How a Fallible Canon Hinders Assurance of Salvation
Introduction
In modern Christian apologetics, Sola scriptura is cited by protestants as the only framework available to preserve the authority of God’s word. I am not critiquing the common caricature of “me and my Bible under a tree”. In fact, the best Protestant defense explicitly denies that sola scriptura means “my Bible and me.” This distinction matters, but I do not think it saves the system.
My argument is that even this stronger form of sola scriptura functionally collapses into solo scriptura, because every supposedly subordinate authority is only accepted insofar as the individual, or his chosen denomination, first judges it to agree with Scripture. But once that happens, the final operative authority is no longer Scripture considered in itself, but is the individual’s fallible interpretation of Scripture. And ultimately leading to issues with their own assurance of salvation.
The issue is not that Protestants have no authorities. The issue is that their external authorities cannot objectively and finally bind them. Note this argument is not the same “Jay Dyer” meta “where did you get your canon from” kind of argument. In this article, I grant that protestants have a canon.
A Steelman of Sola Scriptura
“Scripture alone is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. This does not mean Scripture is the only authority in any sense whatsoever. It means Scripture is the only infallible authority. It simply means that everything we ever might conclude or claim about the faith is checked with Scripture…It simply means that everything we ever might conclude or claim about the faith is checked with Scripture…It’s also worth noting that this doesn’t mean that doctrine can only be derived from Scripture or that you can’t read any other book (solo scriptura)” - Anderson Apologetics, My COMPLETE Defense of Sola Scriptura, Youtube.com
They are not saying, “I reject the Church”, “I reject tradition”, “I reject tradition”, or “Private judgment is infallible”, but they are saying, “The Church is under Scripture”, “Tradition must be tested”, “Private judgment is infallible”, “Only Scripture is infallible”.
The Hidden Premise
The Protestant position is simple: “Everything must be tested by Scripture”. However, it can never simply be “tested by Scripture” since Scripture is not some sort of abstraction floating in the nether somewhere. Rather, it is Scripture as interpreted and applied by someone. Therefore, what ends up being tested is not “Scripture” but rather, “my interpretation of Scripture”.
This is not merely a play on words, for the source of authority is clearly shifted. The Bible is a book of words and those words are only understood in the mind of an interpreter. When a debate on doctrine starts, there needs to be a decision about which interpretation is right. Is it the private interpretation of the individual believer? Then Sola Scriptura is really Solo Scriptura. Is it the interpretation of my denomination? Then the denomination itself has become the interpreter of Scripture. Even if it is the historic Protestant confessions of faith, then why should these and not others hold normative authority?
Note: Orthodoxy does not reject testing claims by Scripture. False traditions and teachers do exist. No tradition can nullify the Word of God. But the issue is not whether doctrine must be scriptural; rather, it is whether every individual believer becomes the final judge of what counts as scripture.
Authority in Name Versus Authority in Function
The language of “subordinate authority” is unstable. For example, if I can only agree with a council when it first agrees with me, then it is not an authority over me, but it is just evidence for my individual judgment. There is a difference between a source that I respect and a source that can actually bind me. When a Protestant or evangelical says, “Nicaea is authoritative because it agrees with Scripture”, the question then is, Who determines that Nicaea agrees with Scripture? If the answer is “I do,” then Nicaea is not the binding authority the individual’s interpretation is. This all means that councils have advisory authority, but not binding ecclesial authority. They can inform and maybe even persuade people, but they cannot finally bind the conscience unless the individual has already independently decided that their teaching is biblical.
That is why the strongest Protestant positions still collapse into Solo Scriptura. Not because they reject all tradition, but because it makes all tradition subject to private ratification.
The Canon Problem
The problem becomes more focused when we turn to the canon. Before Scripture can function as the only infallible rule of faith, someone must first identify what makes up said Scripture. Scripture is not some abstract thing, it is a concrete list of specific books, yet the Protestant framework faces a significant epistemological issue: how to know, with assurance, which books are indeed scripture and not just authoritative. While Protestants argue that the Church “recognized” rather than “created” the canon, relying on factors such as apostolic origin, doctrinal consistency, and self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit, this distinction is insufficient.
If the recognition of the canon is a fallible human act, the result is the famous problem of a “fallible list of infallible books”. Even if the Bible is infallible in itself, a believer’s access to it remains fallible if the boundaries of the canon are known only with fallible certainty. Ultimately, this renders every doctrine derived from the text conditional, dependent not only on the book’s inclusion in the canon but also on the individual’s fallible interpretation. A foundation far weaker than the rhetoric of sola scriptura often suggests, below I will list and go through each issue of assurance that follows from here.
The Assurance Problem
1. Canonical Assurance
The first issue is canonical assurance. I already touched on it above, but I will do another summary of the issue. This issue asks how the believer knows that the books in their Bible are truly Scripture.
If the answer is “the Church recognized them”, yet that Church is also defined as fallible, then the believer is only left with fallible certainty that their canon is correct.
If the answer is “the Spirit confirms or bears witness”, the question arises as to how this inward witness is distinguished from private conviction, especially when Christians disagree over the Old Testament canon and various disputed books throughout history.
Finally, if the answer is “the books are self-authenticating”, one must ask why don’t all Christians recognize the same canon by these same standards.
Ultimately, while the Protestant can have strong historical confidence, rational evidence, or personal conviction, they cannot, on the principles of their own framework, have infallible certainty that this exact canon is the canon of Scripture. This issue is fundamental because, again, Scripture cannot function as the only infallible rule of faith until the believer knows exactly which books are Scripture.
2. Interpretive Assurance
But let’s grant the canon, the next issue is interpretation, which challenges the Protestant claim that Scripture is sufficiently clear in “essential” matters. In reality, the very doctrines considered essential, like Baptism, the Eucharist, Justification, Church government, etc., are heavily disputed among different groups that all claim to read the text faithfully, and even disputed among protestants.
While a Protestant may appeal to tools like grammar and original languages. These methods do not apply themselves as the framework admits. Different traditions use these same tools only to reach contradictory conclusions. This will always be because every individual must “use their brain” to interpret the text, and since human beings are “humbly fallible”, any doctrine derived from Scripture is necessarily mediated through that same humble fallibility.
Ultimately, even if a doctrine is true in itself, the believer’s possession of it remains only fallibly known, leaving the problem of assurance unresolved, and then leading to the next issue.
3. Doctrinal Assurance
Every Protestant doctrinal conclusion is founded on a fallible chain of reasoning: a fallible canon leads to fallible interpretation, which then leads to a fallible doctrinal synthesis, all of which then supports a claim of infallible doctrine. When a Protestant says that their doctrine is infallible because “Scripture teaches it”, the underlying logic is troublesome. The doctrine is only “infallible” if the canon is correct, if the interpretation is correct, and if the synthesis is correct.
This framework does not produce the absolute, infallible assurance the system often promises, but it yields only conditional assurance. This is not an argument that does not suggest that Protestants know nothing, but it does expose that their epistemology cannot provide the stable, infallible foundation it claims to possess apart from the Church.
4. Conscience-Binding Assurance
Next, there is the question of conscience, starting from the Protestant claim that “Only Scripture can bind the conscience”. However, in practice, the conscience is bound by a specific interpretation of Scripture, and since the framework typically rejects any ecclesial authority capable of finally objectively settling these disputes, the individual conscience is left to navigate through opposing interpretive claims alone.
The fundamental issue is: if the individual interprets incorrectly, they may bind their conscience to a “damnable heresy” while truly and sincerely believing they are submitting to God’s Word as intended by God. Therefore, while sola scriptura aims to protect the believer from the supposed “authoritarian” rule of fallible men, it functionally subjects that same conscience to the individual’s own fallible judgment or a denomination’s fallible confession.
5. Assurance of Salvation
Most ironically, the issue reaches salvation itself, particularly the Protestant claim that their system uniquely preserves “blessed assurance”. However, this assurance rests upon doctrines that are themselves products of the Protestant fallible interpretive framework.
For example, the conviction that a believer “cannot be un-glorified” requires a specific reading of Romans and the “Golden Chain” of salvation, a interpretation that the framework admits must be done by the individual. As a consequence, a Protestant’s assurance often rests not simply on Scripture, but on their confidence that their subjective, and fallible interpretation of Scripture is correct. Once a believer begins to wonder if they have misread Paul or if the historical Church held a different view, the system offers no external, infallible resolution to the anxiety that follows the doubt.
Sola scriptura may provide deep personal conviction, but it lacks the ecclesial certainty required to ground that assurance as strongly as its own rhetoric attempts to have.
The Protestants’ counter: “Fallible but Sufficient” Knowledge
A strong Protestant will respond to the assurance issues by retreating to “fallible but sufficient” knowledge. They might argue that Christians do not need infallible certainty regarding the canon or even their interpretation, but only a “moral certainty” or warranted confidence is needed. While this is a serious, philosophically valid reply, it fundamentally changes the Sola Scriptura claim. By conceding that their access to the only infallible rule is fallible, they admit that Sola Scriptura no longer provides an infallible epistemic foundation. Instead, it offers a fallible path to an infallible object, which is a much weaker claim that fails to support binding the conscience against all opposing ecclesial claims.
The Problem of Epistemic Asymmetry
This retreat into “sufficient knowledge” exposes asymmetry in Protestant reasoning. The Protestant will often use maximal skepticism and Evidentialism when attacking Church history, questioning the corruption of tradition or the errors of bishops, etc., yet retreats to modest fallibilism when defending the canon. If fallible historical reasoning is sufficient to identify what constitutes the Bible, it cannot then suddenly become insufficient when that same history is used to identify the apostolic tradition of the Church. To trust the Church’s historical reception of the New Testament while rejecting the same Church’s reception of the Liturgy or Church governance is special pleading and cherry picking, akin to borrowing fruit while rejecting the tree that produced it.
Material Sufficiency vs. the Sufficient Tribunal
The main philosophical misunderstanding in this system is the confusion between Material Sufficiency and Formal Sufficiency.
Material Sufficiency: The idea that the full faith of the apostles is contained in Scripture.
Formal Sufficiency: The idea that Scripture is sufficiently clear to function as the self-interpreting final authority apart from the Church.
The Protestant proves the former (Scripture is “profitable”) and then assumes the latter, but a text, no matter how inspired, does not apply itself. It does not list out its own canon nor its own interpretive rule/hermeneutic. This leads to the “Norm vs Tribunal” (Definition of Tribunal: an adjudicatory body) problem: just as the Constitution requires a Supreme Court to function as a tribunal, a materially sufficient text requires a formally sufficient interpretive body. Without an authorized tribunal, the “Only Infallible Rule” is left without a way to (infallibly or not) settle disputes by definition, leaving the individual as the final judge, functionally.
Ultimately, their use of the word “sufficient” hides a deeper issue. A conviction may be sufficient for private belief, but is it sufficient to publicly and definitively bind the faithful to dogma? Particularly if they don’t understand or agree? If a believer’s access to “the only infallible rule” is fallible, then no external authority can truly bind their conscience against their own judgment. As I said earlier, “…they cannot finally bind the conscience unless the individual has already independently decided that their teaching is biblical”.
Conclusion
Sola scriptura claims to protect the believer from authoritarian fallible human authority, but in practice it still ends up depending on fallible human judgment. A fallible judgment of the canon, a fallible interpretation, a fallible judgment on doctrine, etc. It does not eliminate human mediation, it simply relocates it to the individual.
If the list of scripture is fallible, then we can’t say we know for sure that any book is indeed scripture with any assurance other than high probability and hope, and that follows to the doctrines from said books. If my confidence in salvation depends on doctrines from a fallible canon list, that is recognized and interpreted fallibly, then the foundation of my assurance is ultimately rests on my own fallible judgment about Scripture.
This is why sola scriptura collapses into solo scriptura. Councils, creeds, Fathers, and the rest of tradition may be respected, but they only have authority when an individual first judges them to be biblical. At that point, the final authority is not Scripture alone, but private judgment about Scripture alone. Solo Scriptura.
The Orthodox alternative is not to lower Scripture beneath the Church. It is to receive Scripture as the highest, inspired, and normative part of Holy Tradition. The same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures also preserves the Church in the apostolic faith.
The question isn’t: Scripture or Tradition.
But instead, the question is, Scripture in isolation from the Church, or Scripture within the Spirit-Guided life of the Church?
Next, I will post part two, presenting the Orthodox position as an alternative.