Sola: Part IV

What is ‘scripture’ in fact? By that question, I mean, what determines whether a text is canonical or not? There are many texts claiming to be authentic ‘gospels’ and yet only four are recognised as actually being inspired; as being ‘scripture’. Scripture itself does not tell us which books are scriptural, so where does this information come from?

A standard protestant answer is:‘Look and see what is being quoted in the scriptures themselves – scripture is self-attesting!’ What do the apostles quote? What does Christ quote? Well, as you can see from above, they quote more than just those texts which are generally regarded as ‘scriptural’. If you’d like a list of texts and scriptural references pointing to quotations taken from various apocryphal sources such as the book of Enoch, and The Assumption of Moses for instance, just ask and I’ll provide them, Pastor parcel. These books ARE quoted in scripture as authoritative, and yet there are books included in the Biblical canon which are never referred to in any other Biblical books – which would also, presumably then, fail the test of self-attestation in scripture? Sola scriptura is a doctrine in a real muddle, is it not? And you STILL have yet to provide a single, scriptural passage which explicitly states that scripture is the sole rule of faith. To be continued...