The Negative Problem
There are no spiders in this room. How’s that for a statement? Am I right, or am I wrong? What, you can’t tell??
Of course you can’t, and for a couple of reasons. First of all, you aren’t even in the room. You probably don’t even know what room I am talking about.
Secondly, some spiders are pretty small. I think some are even microscopic. So even if you were here, and you did a diligent search (which would be seriously tricky in this room! It’s a library!!) you might not find any spiders that might exist.
No, it is a super tricky thing to make a negative claim. There are no spiders in this room. There are no Lesothen speed skaters. Or…
Yet, scripture itself does not claim to be the exclusive or ultimate authority. There is no specific scripture in the Bible that claims that scripture alone is the ultimate authority for the Christian.
Stephen Weller, ‘Sola Scriptura is Self-Refuting’
You see the negative claim? ‘There is no specific Scripture…”. He is claiming that he has searched the entire corpus of Scripture and he has found no Scriptures promoting Sola Scriptura.
Self-Refuting
The premise of the article I am responding to is that the doctrine called ‘Sola Scriptura’ is ‘self-refuting’. My responses so far are:
Affirming Denial
The principle of Sola Scriptura lies at the heart of protestant theology. However it is a complex principle, however simple-sounding the meme that we use to express it. I tried out another meme, probably equally flawed (actually probably more so, but we persevere) of ‘alone on the top step’. The idea that the Scriptures are authoritative, but that aut…
And this is the post that I am responding to:
Backwards Reasoning
So the whole idea of merely making a negative claim, claiming yourself as having examined the entire corpus of Scripture and ruling out any passage on Sola Scriptura doesn’t work… any more than my spider claim. Why would you believe me about spiders, and why should we believe Stephen about the Scriptures? No, the way to make a negative claim, indeed the only way to make a negative claim in a public context, is to bring forward the claims of your opponents, paste them for all to see, and disagree with them.
So when there are a couple of hundred proof texts in some article promoting Sola Scriptura, the person making the negative claim needs to start copy/pasting those text and explaining why they don’t have any thing to do with Sola Scriptura. Why they don’t fit, are poorly argued, etc.
So, short post, but his point is totally useless. Just saying ‘there are no passages’ is a non-starter. You have to deal with the hundreds of passages that your opponents bring forward.
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Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid
and
As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.
Arthur also has a substack, and a website. On the substack you can listen to some of his published books. Free.
Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
And God bless you, Von.