Q&A: How Is Sola Scriptura Compatible with Biblical Canon?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]How does Sola Scriptura align with the establishment of biblical canon?

[00:00:04]If scripture alone is the sole infallible source, how do we decide which books are canon?

[00:00:10]Which is a question I don't believe this person's Roman Catholic, but this is a question we get right from the Roman Catholics like, "Well, you don't have a magisterium to determine which books are canon or not.

[00:00:20]So, this doesn't work for you guys." So, it's I think it's very closely related.

[00:00:25]So, >> Where's my Chemnitz's book? Aha!

[00:00:29]This is so uh it's such an obnoxious question from the Romanists. I don't think our our listener here is being obnoxious, but man, this is when the Catholics are obnoxious about the Sola Scriptura is a circular argument and because we have the authority to decide what books are in and out, we have authority over the scripture or however they say it.

[00:00:50]Rome Examined is the part one is this Chemnitz on this on scripture and he talks about it beautifully. It And this is the basic Lutheran idea and that is that the the uh the scriptures are the writings of the prophets and apostles.

[00:01:07]So, the Lord puts men into the office of prophet and the apostle and the office of apostle and not every prophet wrote, but when those prophets did write, their writing is called scripture.

[00:01:19]So, the question for us is, is it prophetic and is it apostolic?

[00:01:24]And that's determined both by the kind of history of the actual text itself and sometimes it's very obvious, yes, that's apostolic. And also by what's written in there as well. Because there are texts that claim to be apostolic or prophetic and then we have to like the book of Enoch or um uh the the Gospel of Peter, it claims to be um uh prophetic or apostolic. So, we have to say, "Well, is it really?" And then you're just it's a kind of history question. Did this come from the pen of Peter or not? Is someone trying to deceive us? I mean, you and I could sit down and write something that claims to come from the It would So, the claim to be apostolic doesn't make it it's this history question. So, the church has the job of receiving the texts of the prophets and apostles.

[00:02:06]And that is the scripture.

[00:02:09]And so, that And that seems I don't know, does that That seems very, very simple in my mind.

[00:02:15]Uh it And maybe it's it's helpful because we often think of that of the Bible as one book. Like, "Hey, this collection is the This is the canon."

[00:02:25]But we should remember that the Bible is that that collection of the writings of the prophets and apostles. And we don't use it that often, although our confessors did all the time. They would talk about the the writings of the prophets. That's how they would talk about the Bible. The writings of the prophets and the apostles. And it might be helpful just to bring that back.

[00:02:42]So, if Paul wrote something, it it's apostolic.

[00:02:46]I suppose he could write a like a note to his friend or something and he would not be writing that in his office of apostle, but as they do their writing in that office that God has given, the result is we have scripture. It's almost a It's It's almost like a definition.

[00:03:00]And it And it comes back to this argument and and that is that we have the Bible.

[00:03:06]And maybe to hone it, we have these writings of the prophets and we have these writings of the apostles.

[00:03:15]And we must have them because God wanted us to. We have them because they were written and preserved for us by God. So, the fact of the text is an argument in itself. And it's This is Chemnitz points this out that Rome keeps running into this. It's almost as if the apostles made a mistake by writing something down.

[00:03:39]Uh and be- because if you don't have Sola Scriptura, if you don't have the written teaching of the prophets and the apostles as that criteria under which everything else must be judged, then the writing of the text itself becomes uh a confusing mistake.

[00:03:59]Which is what Rome says, at least that it's confusing. They have to constantly assert the obscurity of the scriptures to maintain the authority of the teaching office of the church. So, I think that's the best way to think about it.

[00:04:11]I was just having my students my eighth grade students watch uh a few of Wes Huff's videos, the Canadian apologist who was on Joe Rogan. He's got a lot of great stuff. But the last one was about the Council of Nicaea and apparently I didn't realize it was this popular, but ever since The Da Vinci Code and I guess if you go on TikTok or all these other places online, there's tons of videos with people saying Constantine's the one who determined what the canon was at the Council of Nicaea. Lots of people who don't know anything about history like just spouting off that that's where we get our canon is from Constantine, obviously. And they just all say this like it's fact.

[00:04:49]And I I thought Wes Huff did a great job doing a number of things, but one was at the Council of Nicaea, they're arguing everything from scripture. Scripture's already authoritative. They already have a canon. And they're using that canon and to argue against the false teaching of Arius and against other false teachings at the Council. So, they weren't waiting for Constantine to come in and say, "Hey guys, this is your Bible. You can use these books." Uh they were already arguing from those books and using those books. Constantine had nothing to do with it. So, cuz that's probably a follow-up question. We might get to that cuz apparently it's all over the internet.

[00:05:21]Those don't show up in my algorithm, so Yeah, I'm not I'm not familiar with that argument, but apparently it's out there.

[00:05:27]But it's it's just ridiculous. Yep. Yep, yep. Here I'll just read a little bit of Chemnitz. It's really great. So, this talks about from whence scripture obtains its canonical authority. And here Rome would say, "Well, it's from us." Which is so convenient.

[00:05:42]obnoxious. [laughter] The scripture has an extraordinary authority from the very start due to its divine inspiration. The canonical authority of Holy Scripture thus points back to the Holy Spirit through whose inspiration it was composed, to the authors to whom God himself made clear testimonies of the truth available, and to the original church which is the witness to when those writings were published and recognized. So, the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets and apostles and those writings were immediately received by the church. And so, praise the Lord. Here we have the scriptures. And how just to mention this thing that annoys me, that we we get two arguments that come to us from Rome. Number one, hey, we pick which books are in the Bible.

[00:06:25]Cool. Look how great we are. And then two, Luther wanted to pick which books in the Bible. Look how terrible he is.

[00:06:32]Okay, so first of all, let's just note the irony.

[00:06:36]Second of all, both of them are wrong.

[00:06:38]>> [laughter] >> Both of them I mean The other thing you should check people should check out in that Chemnitz on Chemnitz on scripture is uh why we had to have scripture written down for us and why we can't rely merely on like so-called tradition being handed down.

[00:06:54]Right.

[00:06:54]>> And cuz he does a great job there showing that that that argument goes off the rails pretty fast. Even the Old Testament, right? Like it was when they recovered the word of God's after following years of tradition that were idolatrous and terrible that they cleaned the temple and they cut down the asherah and they do all kinds of stuff. So, like we've always needed it written down. God gave it to us written down. We don't have to guess and wonder which traditions or others we should have that aren't written down because God gave us what he wants us to have in his word.

[00:07:26]If the traditions were so great that Paul left in Thessalonica, why did he have to write the letter? That's how Chemnitz [laughter] says it. The fact of the letter testifies of that. You can download this for free, by the way.

[00:07:36]YouTube Theologians, wolfmueller.co/rome.

[00:07:39]I mean, free free free like a hun- You don't have to put your email in and get on some sales funnel or you just press download and you have the PDF on your computer.

[00:07:49]Put it in your Kindle. I think I even have the e-reader edition there. It's as free as things can be on the Free free free. You And the so And the And the footnotes are just worth their weight well in gold. It's free. It's free. Go get Use this thing.

[00:08:05]All right.

[00:08:07]Demon possessions and mental health. Are mental health struggles really demon possessions? I've heard many people mention it, even my pastor, but I'm not quite convinced.

[00:08:17]Hey YouTube Theologians, this Q&A is brought to you by Rome Examined. I mean, not really. I'm just advertising it, but it's it's free. wolfmueller.co/rome.

[00:08:26]You can download this. You can buy the book, too, but you can download this PDF for free. I mean, not Don't you have to give your email, don't have to do anything. You just download the thing and you've got it. It's part one, Martin Chemnitz on scripture, tradition, original sin, and justification. This is an essential book uh to have in your library. I hope you enjoy it. I'm so happy to be part of making it available for you for free for free for free. Rome Examined, wolfmueller.co/rome.