The defenders of the Protestant principle of “the Bible alone” (“sola Scriptura,” in Latin) are in trouble.

If the doctrine of “Scripture alone” is true, then we must be able to prove all doctrines on the basis of Scripture alone. If so, then we must prove “Scripture alone” from Scripture itself. If we cannot do this, then the doctrine of “Scripture alone” refutes itself.

As a result, there is great interest in finding verses in Scripture that can be used to prove the theory of “Scripture alone.” Such attempts are commonly made by one of two classes of defenders of this doctrine –the “careless” and the “careful.” The former are, of course, the great majority.

Most defenders of “Scripture alone,” like many defenders of ideas, take no care in the way they ground such a position, pressing even the most insignificant thing into service to prove that their idea is true. The careless defenders of “Scripture alone” will claim all manner of irrelevant passages as though these proved the doctrine.

They will use, for example, passages from the Gospels where Jesus, when questioned by his enemies on some point of doctrine, answers by focusing attention on some passage of the Old Testament. This class of verses can validly be used to prove that the Old Testament has doctrinal authority; but they cannot be used to prove “Scripture alone,” since Jesus does not say that only the Old Testament has doctrinal authority (in which case we would be faced with a doctrine of “the Old Testament alone”).

When Jesus cites the Old Testament to prove a particular doctrine, he shows only that he considered that doctrine could be proven by such a passage of the Old Testament. Not that he considered that all doctrine can be proven by the Old Testament or by Scripture in general. For this reason it is not surprising to see that Jesus also answers his enemies by appealing to his own authority or to other sources outside Scripture.

The idea that Jesus –the living Word of God who came to bring us a new revelation through his preaching and teaching– would have believed and practiced the proposition that all doctrine must be proven solely by the written Word of God is absurd at its very foundation. In spite of all this, the careless defenders of “Scripture alone” never cease to cite the example in which Jesus uses Scripture to prove an individual doctrine, as though they thereby proved that Scripture is able to give validity to all doctrines.

The careful defenders of “Scripture alone” –those who try to limit the verses on which they draw to ground their doctrine, keeping only those they believe most relevant– are rarer than “hen’s teeth.” But there are some who acknowledge having set aside a great number of irrelevant passages, taking them out of the debate, in order to come to the support of the doctrine. In fact, they acknowledge that it is truly one or two passages in which they place their hope, seeing them as support for the theory of “Scripture alone.”

The greatest hope is placed in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which declares: “All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work.”

Those who resort to this passage claim that the first part of it –“All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach”– is sufficient to establish “Sola Scriptura.” Sometimes the argument takes the form of an emotional appeal to the fact that the text says “all scripture is inspired by God” –better translated as “breathed out by God”– as though Catholics did not believe that Scripture is written by the verbal inspiration of God. Finally, the appeal to the first part of the quotation is barren, since it merely says that it is profitable (Greek, ophelimos) for teaching, not required for the teaching of every individual point of theology. A hammer is useful for driving nails, but that does not mean that all nails must be driven only by hammers.

A more careful appeal to this passage would look to other parts of it, for example, the last clause, whose central idea is that “the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work.”

An anti-Catholic I know rested his case on the Greek words used in this passage, “perfect” (artios) and “furnished” (exartizo), which he interpreted as “sufficient.” He was able to cite a lexicon that listed “sufficient” as a possible translation of artios and one that listed “sufficient” as a possible translation of exartizo, but there are greater problems with his argument.

  1. The two dictionaries that use the term “sufficient” list it as the third or fourth translation of the terms, not as the first translation, and one cannot appeal to possible meanings of a term as proof that this is the meaning in a given text, especially when there are three or four possibilities for its meaning.

2. All the published Protestant versions of the Bible (KJV, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, etc.) agree that “sufficient” is not the correct translation of these terms in this instance. None of them translates the passage “That the man of God may be sufficient, sufficient for every good work.” In fact, none of them uses “sufficient” as a translation even for one of the two terms.

  1. There is hyperbole (exaggeration on a point), which is something common in the Hebrew tongue and a distinctive feature in the letters of Saint Paul. For example, in Colossians 1:20 Paul states that God willed to reconcile all things to himself in Christ. Obviously he did not mean absolutely all things, or else he would be saying that God reconciled Satan and the damned to himself through Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 5:19; Eph. 1:10). Thus Paul’s statement that Scripture makes a minister perfect may be only a typical Hebrew hyperbole.
  2. If we take the principle he uses to interpret 2 Tim. 3:16-17 and apply it to other texts, we will obtain absurd results. The principle is: “If (X) makes you perfect, then you need nothing more than (X).” From this reasoning we obtain: “If Scripture makes you perfect, then you need only Scripture.” If we apply this principle to James 1:4, which states “And let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, failing in nothing,” we would have to say that we need nothing else –including Scripture– except patience! It may be objected that in James 1:4 the Greek words are neither artios nor exartizo. This is certainly true; the words of this passage are teleios and holokleros, which are even stronger terms. The objection from translation would also be a fallacy in asserting that a difference of terms always means different concepts (which is not true), and in any case, no one would be able to construct a theory from the meaning of either of the two terms artios or exartizo based on studies of the New Testament, since the first term appears only once in Scripture and the second twice (the other case is Acts 21:5).
  3. The two terms modify the man of God, not Scripture. 2 Tim 3:17 says that Scripture helps to make the man perfect and furnished, not that Scripture itself is complete and furnished. In order to prove that Scripture is sufficient, the defenders of the Bible alone would have to fall back in their arguments from the sufficiency of a man to the sufficiency of a collection of documents. This adds a step to the argument and therefore also adds exegetical uncertainty.
  4. Such an addition of uncertainty is even more problematic for the defenders, since to say that something helps to make the man perfect and furnished may presuppose that he already has other pieces of equipment. For example, if a hiker has all the equipment necessary for his journey except a canteen, goes to a sporting goods store and buys it, then he can say “now I am complete, ready for my whole adventure.” This does not imply that the canteen alone was all the equipment he needed to be completely equipped. It was only the last piece of equipment. The statement that made him complete presupposed that he already had all the other necessary equipment. So too the statement that Scripture makes the man of God perfect may presuppose that the man of God already has some other items in his possession that pertain to doctrine, such as, for example, the oral teaching of the Apostles.
  5. And even when a person obtains all the equipment he needs from a single source, this does not teach him how to use such equipment. Therefore he must be instructed in the way he must use it. The fact that a person has all the tools necessary to survive in a forest, or on a hike, does not mean that he knows how to use them. In the same way, even when Scripture gives someone all the basic equipment he needs to do theology, this may be so obscure to such a degree that the use of Apostolic Tradition is necessary to arrive at a correct interpretation of it. One cannot maintain the position that Scripture is so clear that Apostolic Tradition or the Magisterium is not necessary to interpret it –a position known as the formal sufficiency of Scripture, identical to the Protestant doctrine of “Scripture alone.” Thus a Catholic can say that Scripture gives all the equipment necessary for theology, but that it does not teach us how to use it.
  6. If someone could prove that in this passage the words artios or exartizo mean “sufficient,” and even if he could show that they apply (directly or indirectly) to Scripture, what he would prove is the material sufficiency of Scripture, which a Catholic can happily admit. But he would never prove the formal sufficiency (the theory of Scripture alone).
  7. In fact the text says that Scripture will make the man of God perfect; it perfects not a layman, but a cleric, who receives a special training, for example, the knowledge of Apostolic Tradition, which makes him capable of correctly interpreting the Scriptures. Thus the text presupposes a knowledge that the man of God already has before approaching Scripture.
  8. But apart from these considerations, which are in specific contact with the hypothesis and the terms artios or exartizo, there are positive reasons why this passage, regardless of the kind of translation given to these terms, cannot be used to prove the theory of Scripture alone.

To begin with, in the first clauses of this passage, the phrase “All scripture” is normally taken by evangelicals to mean “All of Scripture,” in other words, it refers to the whole Canon; to this is joined the Protestant desire to make it normative for theology. Thus it is natural for a Protestant to think that the term “Scripture” in the singular refers to the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible. However, this is not the way that term is used in Scripture itself.

The ability to refer to the Bible as a unified work is the invention of an age subject to change. Before the existence of printing, Scripture was, at most, a collection of individual books, grouped into volumes. In the first century, when Paul wrote, this was a collection of some twelve scrolls. There is no way, then, that it could be regarded as a unified literary work as it is today.

As a result of a study of the way the term “Scripture” is used in the New Testament, it reveals to us that when it is used in the singular –Scripture– it always refers either to a specific book of Scripture, or to a particular passage within a book of Scripture, but it never refers to the totality of the work to which we now refer under the unified title of “Scripture.” When the Bible wants to refer to the totality (to all of Scripture), it always uses the term in the plural, “the Scriptures,” never “Scripture.”

Knowing this, we could point out the presence of a mistranslation at the beginning of the passage of 2 Timothy 3:16. Since the singular term “Scripture” is always used for a particular passage or for a book of the Bible, the phrase “All scripture” would mean “Every individual book of the Bible” or “Every particular passage of the Bible,” neither of which refers to a grammatical sense.

When we confront the original Greek of 2 Timothy 3:16, we find ourselves truly before a mistranslation. The phrase translated as “All scripture” is a phrase that means “Every scripture,” the key word being “every,” not “all.” This is an important distinction, and it constitutes the grammatical sense of the phrase, making known to us what the singular term “Scripture” means (because certainly, every book and every particular passage of Scripture has a grammatical sense).

When Paul wished to refer to the totality of Scripture he used a different phrase in Greek –something like “hai pasai graphai” (“the totality of the Scriptures”), not “pasa graphe,” which means simply “every scripture” (a fact that even one of the greatest defenders of 2 Tim 3:16-17, the anti-Catholic James White, has had to admit). This is important because it makes it totally impossible to use this passage to prove the theory of Scripture alone, since if one tries to do so, all one will prove is the mode. In this way, if the passage that says “Every scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, etc.” proves the sufficiency of Scripture, it would actually prove the sufficiency that every passage of Scripture, or at least every book of Scripture, has for theology. This would mean that not only is the totality of the Bible sufficient to prove every point of theology, but that every particular passage or book would be sufficient. Thus we could do theology not only by the Bible alone, but also by Matthew alone, Mark, Luke, or whatever we have. We could do theology with Matthew alone, Mark, Luke, or even resort to one of the shortest books of Scripture, with Jude alone, or 3 John if we wished.

This is completely absurd, since no particular passage or book of Scripture contains what we need to know to do theology. Hence 2 Tim 3:16-17 cannot be used to prove Scripture alone. If it could, rather than Scripture alone it would prove the mode. Paul is simply saying that every particular scripture contributes to making the man of God prepared for all his ministerial tasks, not that every particular scripture is sufficient to do all theology.

If we go even further, whenever Protestants cite 2 Tim 3:16-17, most of them exclude from their citation the two preceding verses. This is unfortunate, since if we read the passage with the two preceding verses, we read the following: 14 “But continue thou in those things which thou hast learned, and which have been committed to thee: knowing of whom thou hast learned them; 15 And because from thy infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures, which can instruct thee to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, 17 That the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work.”

Paul exhorts Timothy to remain faithful in that of which he is firmly convinced, citing two bases for that belief: 1) He knows from whom he has learned this. This is the oral teaching of the Apostle Paul himself. Likewise we have the same belief as Timothy based on Apostolic Tradition. 2) From his infancy Timothy has been familiar with the Holy Scriptures, this constituting the second basis of his belief.

Thus, it is precisely here, in 2 Tim 3:14-17, that we have a twofold resource: Apostolic Tradition and Apostolic Scripture. So when Protestants cite verses 16 and 17, they are citing only the last part of a twofold appeal that refers to Tradition and to Scripture, something which evidently does not prove Scripture alone.

Finally, it must be said that all the points we have heard constitute, by the sheer virtue of their numbers, a help against those who, based on 2 Tim 3:16-17, defend Scripture alone. The reason why Scripture alone is distinguished from the Catholic opinion of material sufficiency is the following: Scripture alone claims not only that Scripture has all the base of the data necessary to do theology, but that these are sufficiently perspicuous –that is, so clear– that one needs no other outside information, such as that which Apostolic Tradition or the Magisterium provides us, to interpret Scripture correctly. The fact of mentioning many factors that undermine the use of 2 Tim 3:16-17 –each one of which is fatal to the attempt to use the passage– shows us that it is not sufficiently clear to prove Scripture alone. If anyone is not convinced by all we have said, but considers any of the points we have mentioned to be a validly interpreted opinion, then the passage is not sufficiently clear to prove the doctrine and therefore should not be used for this.

And so, as we have shown from the beginning, the passage of 2 Tim 3:16-17 seemed to be the most opportune for proving Scripture alone; yet in fact, it is not sufficiently clear to prove such a doctrine, and so it must be said that no other passage in Scripture is apt to prove Scripture alone. This shows us that Scripture is not sufficiently perspicuous for Scripture alone to be true.

Author: James Akin

Translated by: the Servants of the Lord and of the Virgin of Matará in Brooklyn