Sola Scriptura is the basic error of many Christian Sects which claim the Bible not as the source and guide of their faith, but the Bible Solely as the source and guide to their faith, without the guidance of all the things the Church has orally taught, written, and practiced for two-thousand years. Some have called this "spiritual and scriptural anarchy."
Without the guidance of what the Ancient Church clearly taught and continues to teach, one is left trying to base one's faith solely upon self-devised interpretations of the Bible or upon the teaching of one or another particular modern teacher. This has created 32,000 "denominations" in the world that may be divided into several "families of error" each holding a foundational belief in opposition to others making them unique. Collectively the "families of error" who the Ancient Church of the Apostles, calls, heterodox - meaning "other than Orthodox" hold teachings contrary to the teachings and practices of the Apostles themselves. Inside each of these "denominations" is built up late "traditions" a new list of trusted teachers instead of the Great and Historic Lights and Theologians of the Church. Most of these teachers teach some things that conform to the ancient Christian Faith and some things which differ from the Apostolic Tradition.
One real blessing of those holding the error of Sola Scriptura is that they have been the drivers of much of the extraordinary Biblical Research in the last two hundred years, some of which has been a blessing to everyone, creating tool for biblical study that a century ago no one would have dreamed would or could exist. However, that positive thing cannot cover the massive confusion that is witnessed concerning the use of those tools as, each claiming "correct comprehension of the scriptures" comes to drastically different conclusions concerning primary teachings.
For instance gnosticism of "salvation via mental ascent" some call "faith" cannot be reconciled with the work of salvation, clearly taught in the New Testament, by the Apostles James and Paul. The divergent views on free will vs predestination cannot be reconciled except in light of the Apostolic Tradition. So that then each one of these errors creates "sects" holding one or the other belief system.
Some hold the Bible as if it is a Koran, or some other supposed magic book, as if it were "dropped from heaven" perfect and whole. I dubbed this belief, decades ago Biblo-idolatry; where one has turned the Ikon of God's Living Word, into a dead letter idol of God's word, mistaking the pages of dead letter for the True Living Word, who is Christ Jesus. Faith come by Hearing the Good News of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit and experiencing His presence in the world today. It does not come from modern day Biblical scholarship and taking the Bible as an idol, and rejecting everything else that is part of the "Light of God's Word and the Gospel."
Sola Scriptura as a temptation to atheism and/or agnosticism. When one props the Bible up as the "thing that is perfect" and faith is predicated upon that narrow paradigm, proof that the Bible is not and never was perfect is devastating to Faith is God. We see this glaringly demonstrated in the life and teaching of Bart Ehrman. I've seen it in the lives of many much less public people who lose Faith in God because the ignorance of their "birth religion" is exposed and their perfect Bible-Idol turns to dust in front of their eyes. The cynical apostates then attack the Bible as a false idol and in their experience and understanding it is just that a false idol. Understanding what the scriptures are, in the context of grasping "The Way" that Jesus Christ created for our healing salvation is very important. False views of the sacred writings create false view of "the faith" and Satan has won, then, confounding Faith under a false flag.
This is offered for anyone who might run across this, who has struggled with "belief in God" because of the confusion of conflicting teachings about what the Bible says, or who have been shocked to learn that the King James Bible wasn't the first bible, or that there are errors in translations of it. All of this, the many different copies of books with meaningless differences actually testifies to the fact that the Tradition was primarily oral for the first centuries of New Testament Church's existence. No early Christian group held all of the books that today we call the New Testament. For instance, it is commonly understood that the writer of the Gospel of John didn't have copies of Matthew, Mark or Luke, since none of the text of John are shared with any of the other three.
The first two videos represent a simple explanation and defense of the New Testament's history, as it stands today in the thousands of extant early hand written copies of the various books. It explains the thousands of errors clearly present in the oldest hand written copies. For those who hold the "jot and tittle" mentality, those errors have to be very, very troubling, but they should not be and are not troubling to those who hold the 'fullness of the Gospel and are limited to the narrow confines of the mythology the perfect text. The third video is what I call a "Romp Though The History and Content of the Bible." It is an wonderful "survey" of what the Bible is, how it came to be, and most importantly what its entire message is.
One will go to any lengths to sell books.
Dr Oakley makes a wonderful defense here. I don't know him, or his ministry so I looked his webpage and their, "statement of faith" and found the following:
We believe the Bible to be the written revelation of God, complete and sufficient in all respects. We believe the Scriptures to be "God-breathed" and therefore fully authoritative in and of themselves; they rely for their authority upon no church, council, or creed, but are authoritative simply because they are the Word of God. The Scriptures, as they embody the very speaking of God, partake of His authority, His power.
This paragraph sums up what I wrote earlier about the confusion of heterodox theology, especially those whose faith is "sola scriptura." The fact that this group needs a "statement of faith" in indicative of what I'm exposing here. It denounces the Ecumenical Creed that has served Christianity well for two-thousand years and what does it offer in its place - some modern, Statement of Faith. Without the "statement of faith" you would have no idea what coloration he might add or see in scripture. With the "statement of faith" one can see the paradigm in which he interprets scripture and it is similar but still "unique" a "Tradition" unto itself.
What is so odd, is that the Bible which Dr Oakley is defending so well, came to be - the individual books selected from a pool of hundreds of books used by the early church, listed in what the Church called "the canon of sacred writings" which in modern times, because of modern technology is printed in one book called the Bible. So he takes the single Icon of the Church, the list we provided of books that would be considered "Sacred Writings" and reject the Church that produced the list and all other aspect of her. That's kind of strange if you think about it. Without the Church of the Creed, Dr Oakley would not have the book he is defending so well. His defense of the Bible is then relegated to "dueling" proof texts, as he has demonstrated in this video. The Apostate Ehrman used "proof texts" and Dr Oakley uses "proof texts" so that then the non-bible scholar is left having to choose between the scholars. Dr. Oakley's argument is couched in the fact that Ehrman is making statement outside of his scholarly "expertise." I would challenge Dr. Oakley to tell me what is contained in the The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that is not according to Scripture.
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