--Sola Scriptura once again is one of the core doctrines of the Reformation which says that the Bible and only the Bible is to be the Christian’s authoritative guide for salvation and life.
--So why doesn’t everyone agree with it?
--Well, there a few main reasons.
--The first reason is somewhat obvious. Although many millions of people endorse the doctrine and take it very seriously, these same sincere Bible devotees nevertheless find themselves not all in agreement with each other about a terribly wide variety of issues.
--The Bible, it seems, is not clear enough (all on its own) to produce the kind of harmonious agreement which looks necessary for a single universal church to have. The multitude of doctrinal statements by Christians who all believe themselves to be taking the Bible as the inerrant Word of God and the even greater multitude of positions on much lesser issues besides the basics of salvation are indeed a problem to be taken seriously.
--Protestants simply don’t all agree with each other, even though they all claim to be taking the Bible as their only source of authority.
--The Catholic Church, by contrast, says that its own doctrinal unity comes from the fact that the Bible needs to be interpreted properly and that this is to be done by the leadership of the one true church.
--Quite contrary to what one would expect from a clear and authoritative single source of doctrinal guidance, devotion to the Bible and only the Bible seems to have produced exactly the kind of splintered disunity that the doctrine was meant to avoid. When there is no central authority protecting or guarding the doctrine against heresy and incompetence, with the power to excommunicate heretics and schismatics, well you get heresy and schism aplenty.
--So, how should Protestants respond to this objection? I’ll explain that on Monday.
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