Sola Scriptura: What Does the Bible Say? #solascriptura #protestant #reformedtheology #bible

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we're going to be covering a topic that is kind of, sort of related to the previous video that I did. Previous video I talked about the important doctrine of justification by faith alone, and I shared why that's important, especially within certain apologetical contexts when we are sharing the gospel with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox folks and things like that.

I talked about how essential the doctrine is and how it provides a genuine peace or shalom, a lasting peace with God. Now today, I want to discuss the topic of sola scriptura, which is related. Historically, we've understood with respect to the Protestant Reformation that there are different ways in which we can understand the causes of the Reformation.

We make a distinction between what we call the material cause and the formal cause of the Protestant Reformation, the material cause being the debate over sola fide, justification by faith alone, and the formal cause being an issue of sola scriptura, which is something we're going to be expanding upon and going into some detail with respect to what that doctrine is, what the principle is, what the principle isn't, and where in scripture can we have a foundation for this important concept.

The Clarity of Scripture and the Perspicuity of Salvation

So again, we're going to be talking about a super important topic, and hopefully it will be beneficial to you guys, and I hope the way that I teach and explain stuff is easy to understand. I am not a scholar by any means.

I know that folks appreciate the stuff that I do and perhaps see me in a scholarly light, but admittedly, I am not a scholar. I am a teacher, a Christian apologist. I try my best to be acquainted with the important issues, and then I try to kind of bring that down to the average person, and so hopefully I'm able to do that with respect to this issue of sola scriptura, which I think is, again, a very vitally important topic to address.

Now, first I want to speak with respect to this idea of scripture being a revelation of God. It is a clear revelation of God. This often comes up within the context of apologetic interactions with Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, this issue of interpretation.

How do you know you're interpreting scripture correctly? And so I'm coming from a position that affirms what we call the perspicuity of scripture, which refers to the clarity of scripture. I do think that the scriptures are sufficiently clear, that we are able to engage the text and using proper methods of interpretation and utilization of human language, context, that we could know the essentials of the faith.

That which is necessary for salvation, I think, is something that is sufficiently clear in scripture that we can take the Bible, we can read it in its context and derive those important, essential features of Christian faith and practice.

And so, again, I want to clarify this and I want to talk about what we mean when we say the perspicuity of scripture and what we don't mean. And so I think a very useful source that kind of gives us a good explanation of this idea of the perspicuity of scripture is the Westminster Confession of Faith.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, it says this, and I quote, and this is, I believe, the area where it speaks of the clarity of scripture. It says, quote, those things that are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or another that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

I'm going to read that again, okay? It says, those things that are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or another that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

Now, what's being said here is very important and what I appreciate about the Westminster Confession of Faith at this point is its clarity and its nuance. It says, those things that are necessary to be known, I think the context here is with respect to the essentials of salvation.

I think the scriptures are clear such that a learned person and an unlearned person using the ordinary means can have a sufficient understanding of these issues. That is not to say, and this is important, that is not to say that all of scripture is equally clear.

I want to repeat that again. This is not saying, nor do Protestants claim, that all parts of scripture are sufficiently clear. Like, yeah, you know, everything, you know, look at the book of Revelation.

Clearly, we know what's going on there. Of course not, okay? We would make a distinction between that which is essential, I think is sufficiently clear, and there are other things that are important. Obviously, 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 says that all scripture is inspired, so that includes the sufficiently clear aspects and the parts of scripture that don't seem sufficiently clear.

But we are not ignoring the fact that there are parts of scripture that are really difficult and there is understandable disagreement within the church in those areas. Let's consider, for example, 2 Peter 3, verse 16, where the apostle Peter writes, it says here, with respect to Paul, he writes the same way in all his letters.

Speaking in them of these matters, his letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction. I'm going to read that again.

2 Peter 3, verse 16. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking of Paul, speaking in them of these matters, his letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction.

Okay? And so you have the apostle Peter admitting that there are things that are hard to understand in the writings of Paul. And of course he calls Paul's writings the other scriptures, affirming the authority of the writings of the apostle Paul, that his letters are on the same level of scripture, but some of it is difficult to understand.

So the Protestant doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture is not to say that all scripture is equally clear in every single jot and tittle. There are areas of scripture that are sufficiently difficult to understand.

And of course that takes study, that takes consideration of context, that takes the life of the church and interacting with the word of God and, you know, trying to understand it better as we try to come into a fuller understanding of what the word of God says.

So when we speak of the principle of sola scriptura, we are also assuming the perspicuity of scripture, but more specifically with respect to essential salvific issues and things that are essential to the Christian faith.

So I think that's important to clarify. Now, what does the Bible have to say about this? This is typically a response that people who are against the doctrine or the principle, I keep calling it doctrine, I do apologize.

I think it's more appropriately called a principle, but the principle of sola scriptura we often see kind of objected to by our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends. And the question typically is put forth, where is the doctrine of sola scriptura taught?

You know, scripture itself doesn't teach the principle of sola scriptura, therefore the principle is self-defeating, right? Now again, I'm not going to get into answering the objections to the principle of sola scriptura.

I will save that for another video. I think I might have had, I think I've had Ken Samples on some years ago talking about sola scriptura. I got to double check the catalog, but if you look, type in revealed apologetics, Ken Samples, sola scriptura, something might pop up.

But if you want to look for that, I'm sure you can find it. But nevertheless, I'm not going to be addressing specific objections at this point. I want to kind of just talk a little bit about the scriptures themselves, where in the scriptures is this principle laid out for us.

Again, the Bible is not a systematic theology, so we want to be very careful and simply just using proof texts that we think support our view. I talked about this with respect to free will and libertarian free will and compatibilism and categorical and conditional abilities to do otherwise.

And I talked about the danger of simply quoting a scripture, assuming that it means what you think it means, right? Where there needs to be more digging and more study into why the particular scriptures we use support the ideas that we're putting forth.

So we want to keep that in mind. But I want to begin by considering the Gospel of Matthew chapter 15, and we're going to read verses 1 through 7 or 1 through 9. And I think this particular part of scripture presents to us a very interesting situation in which Jesus is coming head to head with the Pharisees and the scribes of his day.

And then there is a dispute over the traditions of the elders and the commandments of God. And so I want to kind of talk about this scripture passage as a foundation for discussion, and then we'll move on into some other areas that are related to this idea of sola scriptura and its biblical basis.

All right, so Matthew chapter 15 verses 1 through 9 says the following, if you're reading along. For God commanded, honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

But you say, if anyone tells his father or his mother what you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father. So for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God, you hypocrites.

Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. All right, so a couple of important things here.

Jesus says here, and I just love the way Jesus responded. He's just in your face, right? He didn't pull any punches here. He often called the scribes and the religious leaders of his day hypocrites because they did not do what they told other people to do with respect to scripture.

And so Jesus says with respect to the traditions of the elders, which can be seen if you look in terms of the modern context of disputes between Protestants and Roman Catholics. You could kind of see the tradition of the elders as a sort of sacred tradition that many in those days believed that sacred tradition was something that was passed on by Moses.

It carries authority. And what is Jesus doing here? He is responding to the fact that it appears to be in this context of the Pharisees are placing a tradition over the teachings of the word of God. You're going to see this consistently that when Jesus and the apostles are responding to error, where do they go?

They do not simply appeal to tradition. They appeal to the word of God. And Jesus says that you are making void the word of God, and he calls them hypocrites. So again, this is an interesting kind of situation where we see tradition and the word of God, the role of the word of God come head to head.

And so in this context, I want to now define what we mean by sola scriptura and then kind of expand from there. And so it's kind of related to Matthew 15. We'll talk a little bit about that along with some other scriptures as well.

But sola scriptura, let's define this. And I think defining our terms is ridiculously important. There are a lot of misconceptions and mischaracterizations of what this principle means. And the mischaracterization often is two-way, right?

There is a mischaracterization from Protestants to Catholics, and then from Catholics to Protestants. We want to make sure that we do our best. And even now, if I speak and say something that is not accurate, please check what I say.

And I'm more than happy to be corrected in that regard. So sola fide, okay? Sola fide, the Latin for scripture alone. It is one of the five solas of the Reformation. We have sola fide, sola gratis, sola scriptura, solus Christos.

Solus Christos, sorry, I'm like Spanish in there, right? And then you have sola Deo Gloria. Sola scriptura refers to scripture alone. The term there can be very misleading because it can give the impression, if you do not know the historical context in which the term is being defined, it can give the impression of the Bible alone, all by itself, completely independent of anything else.

And that's going to be an inaccurate view of what sola scriptura is, okay? Sola scriptura can also be misunderstood as suggesting that the Bible is the only authority for the Church. And that's not what sola scriptura is either.

And so to clarify, sola scriptura is the idea that the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the Church. I'm going to say that again. The principle of sola scriptura is the idea that the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the Church.

Now, notice the language I'm using here. It is the sole infallible rule of faith. That does not mean that Christians who hold to the principle of sola scriptura deny or reject other rules of faith or other authorities that are relevant to faith and practice for the church.

We do not. We affirm confessions, we affirm confessions and creeds, and they are vitally important, and in some sense they are authoritative. For example, if you're a Reformed Baptist and you hold to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, or you hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith, those are authoritative confessions, and a Protestant who holds to those confessions will hold them in very high regard.

But when we say that the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith, what we're saying is that, for example, the London Baptist Confession, the 1689 Westminster Confession of Faith, or any confession you want to insert there, while those confessions and the creeds are authoritative, they are only authoritative inasmuch as they are grounded in and reflective of the scriptures themselves, right?

So they are not infallible, and so when we say the scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith, we acknowledge other rules of faith, but the scriptures are the only infallible, irreformable rules of faith.

Confessions can be reformed and expanded upon. The scriptures are the Word of God, and they are as such perfect as they have been given to us by God, to his prophets and his apostles. We do not change the scriptures for any reason, but rather, creeds and confessions are going to be based on the greater authority, the infallible authority, of the Word of God.

So I hope that distinction is super, super clear. That's what we mean by sola scriptura. We do not reject other authorities, but we do affirm that the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith.

Okay, and this is very important too, because we live in a world where there are many voices that are vying for our minds and our hearts and our souls. You have the cults, for example, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Islam.

You know, Mormonism has Joseph Smith and the prophet, the living apostle, that's the head of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And you have the living apostle, the prophet, the words of Joseph Smith and those who are leaders in the Mormon church.

You have those teachings that are voicing their views as to their authority. You have the Jehovah's Witness, who will function through the lens of the Watchtower, Bible and Tract Society. You have Islam, which is functioning through the lens of the Quran and Muhammad.

And, you know, various authoritative voices within Islam. You have the voices of culture, which are telling us that we should view things in a certain light. We should view man in a particular way. We should, you know, issues of, let's say, abortion, we should view life in a particular light.

And so with all these competing voices of authority, what is going to be the sole infallible authority that we are to listen to? For the Christian, it is going to be the only sole infallible rule of faith and practice that is going to be the Word of God, and everything else that flows from that will be valuable in as much as it is reflective and grounded in Scripture itself.

So what Sola Scriptura is not saying is that what we're not saying is that there aren't other rules of faith that are possible, okay? We do not believe that we are, as they popularly say, that we believe that we take our Bible and we sit under a tree and it's just me and the Bible and that's it, okay?

That's not what we're affirming. There are other rules of faith that we affirm. Also, we are not saying that we can't learn from church history, for example, okay? When we take a look, for example, at Jesus Christ, what is Jesus established for us?

Jesus established the church, and in the church He has gifted us with pastors, with teachers, with people who are able to study the Scriptures in great depth and provide understanding of difficulties in the Bible and kind of expand our understanding of God's divine revelation.

Those are gifts of God. And so we do not believe that the Bible, although it is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church, it is not given to us of God in complete isolation from a body, the body of Christ, the church.

The church plays a significant role in how we understand the Scriptures. Indeed, I would even argue that there is a great danger when Protestants are disconnected to the church in our current times, and there's a great danger in being disconnected to the broader church of history.

We need to be familiar with what the church has taught. There is great insight in the writings of the early church fathers and those who have come after them. These are things that we need to be familiar with, and they are, in fact, gifts from God to the church, okay?

Now that being said, that is not to say that these gifts are infallible in their expressions and teachings and things like that, okay? They are useful. I've been heavily influenced by many thinkers throughout church history, people who are dead, people who are alive.

I've been heavily influenced by a lot of people, okay? And I've learned a lot about what the Bible says with respect to various issues, but I do not understand these people as being infallible, okay? Because it's all the Scriptura, right?

Scriptural. Same thing when people say, you know, Martin Luther, when he was trying to expand on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, comes across the book of James, and he is popularly known for calling the book of James an epistle of straw.

And so people say, well, you know, the father of the Protestant Reformation, he rejects the book of James, right? What's up with that, right? Well, again, for the Christian who holds to the principle of Sola Scriptura, that's not going to matter very much because our standard is not Martin Luther.

And in fact, I think Martin Luther would most likely agree with the idea that we test Martin Luther's words against the word of God. I am very, very much confident that that would have been his position, okay, whether you agree with him or not, ultimately, with respect to what he was doing, okay?

So we're not saying that there aren't any other rules of faith possible. We're not saying that we can't learn from church history. In fact, church history has been vitally important in understanding Scripture, especially with respect to the clarification of Scriptural concepts.

For example, the development of heresy throughout the history of the church has been a very important and key central feature of the development and clarification of Christian doctrine. For example, when we have our confessions, we have the various creeds and things like that, you know, the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed or the Chalcedon, however you'd like to pronounce that.

These creeds were developed because they were responding to heresy, and so the existence of heresy allowed and provided the occasion for the church to clarify what they believed was biblical teaching, okay?

So I hold to the creeds and I hold to the confessions inasmuch as they clarify and are grounded in and reflective of what the word of God says, but that's not to say that they're on the same level as Scripture.

They are only at the same level of Scripture inasmuch as they accurately reflect what the Bible teaches, okay? And so this is very important. Now we learn from the early church, and I think it's important to be familiar with their writings and their ideas and their interactions with various groups that were something that helped with the development and the clarification of doctrine.

But with time comes clarification. I think, for example, there are certain things in the writings of the church fathers which are greatly profound and we can find them to be of great benefit, but there were some issues that were not as clear, and it was only through later developments and the need to respond to various things that were developing historically that certain doctrines were expanded upon and clarified.

When I say expanded upon, I don't mean they were added to the Bible. What I'm saying is that biblical principles, things that are taught in Scripture, are expanded upon for the purpose of clarification, and how the church expanded and clarified would itself be in submission or should be in submission to the Word of God, okay?

Because there are people who desire to clarify and expand, and in so doing, they go outside the boundaries set by the Scriptures themselves, and so I think this is a very important thing to keep in mind.

The God-Breathed Nature of Scripture

Now what Sola Scriptura does say, it really reflects the importance of the nature of Scripture itself. The nature of Scripture itself. Let's turn, for example, to a very well-known passage, okay, let me pull it up here, I should know this by heart, I'm sorry that I, let me see here, let's get the, let's use the NASB, I like the NASB, 2 Timothy 3, 16, so let's go there, alright, okay, so there you go, alright, so, 2 Timothy 3, 16 says, famously and popularly, we all should be familiar with this, actually, you know what, let me pull it up over here, I do apologize, let me see here, this would be easier for me, 2 Timothy 3, 16, alright, 2 Timothy 3, 16 says, this is from the ESV, alright, I'll use the ESVs here, all Scripture, all Scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

I'll read that again, all Scripture, all Scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, and for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work, okay?

So the principle of Sola Scriptura is predicated upon the idea that God has spoken, the nature of Scripture itself is that it is God-breathed, the origin of Scripture is rooted in God Himself, okay? We see that God used people to write the Scriptures, but they find their source in God Himself.

Let's consider, for example, 2 Peter, 2 Peter 1, verse 16, 2 Peter 1, verse 16, very important passage here, and the Apostle Peter says,. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to Him by the majestic glory, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.

This is in reference to the Transfiguration, where you had appearing Elijah and Moses. Verse 19,. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from Scripture's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And so, the principle of Sola Scriptura recognizes the nature of Scripture is that it is God-breathed, and it finds its source not in man, although man was moved by the Spirit, it is found in God Himself.

And Peter speaks here of the more sure word of prophecy. The word of God is more sure than anything else, because of the nature of Scripture itself. The Bible is also understood as to be the infallible rule of faith, okay?

God speaks with self-attesting authority, and we believe it as His people, and we shouldn't be ashamed of having this starting point. This is very relevant, for example, in presuppositional apologetics, is affirming the self-attesting nature of Scripture, given the nature of its authority.

So, Sola Scriptura, while affirming that it is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice, it recognizes the nature of Scripture, and what implications flow from the fact that Scripture has the particular nature that it does, being the self-attesting, authoritative word of God.

And this is one of the reasons why the doctrine, or the principle, of Sola Scriptura is relevant to all aspects of life. As I mentioned before, that there are many voices in the world today, and we need to consider what God has said, right?

We believe that God has spoken clearly, and that we need to ask ourselves that question when we are confronted with various cultural challenges and competing religious authoritative claims and things like that.

We need to ask the question, as good old presuppositionals would say, by what standard? And that standard must be the word of God. And this is what the apostles appealed to, this is what Jesus appealed to, this is what we should appeal to.

The word of God. Now, as a quick aside, we talk about the word of God, and we talk about the canon of Scripture. This is not the topic of this particular program, but I think it's important to understand that we do not believe, as Protestants, that the Church created the canon by an authoritative declaration of which books would be in the Bible.

As Protestants, we believe that the word of God created the Church. The Church is the passive recipient of God's revelation. And the voice of the Master is recognized by His people. Now, we do see, as I think a very important and fundamental issue here, is that really the conflict of Sola Scriptura reaches all the way back to the beginning of the Bible.

You can take, for example, the book of Genesis, and let's turn there real quick. Genesis chapter 2, let's go to Genesis chapter 2, verse 15. Genesis 2, 15. Now, the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it, and the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

Okay? In Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, we have God giving the command. Okay? Notice that the command comes with the authority of God. He does not expand upon this, you know, you need to eat, you could eat from all the trees, just not this one, because, and then fill in the blank.

Now, He gives the consequences for disobeying the command, but the command itself comes with the self-attesting authority of God, and man's responsibility was to obey the command. Okay? Now, we do see that the voice of God is coming into conflict now in Genesis chapter 3 with the voice of the serpent.

Okay? And let's turn there here. In Genesis chapter 3, we have, if you guys want to read along, Genesis chapter 3. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, you will surely not die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband who was there and he ate. Sorry, guys. Oftentimes we joke around, you know, it's women's fault that we were in this mess, right? But don't get it twisted. Eve gave the fruit to her husband who was there.

Okay? He was there. He was probably just, you know, just chilling out, you know, picking his nose or whatever. And, oh yeah, sure. Let me have this fruit that I know the Lord, our God told us not to eat of.

Now, but there you go. Verse seven, then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves wine cloths. Now, again, very interesting thing we have here in this story in the garden.

One of the key things that the competing voice of the enemy does is causes us to doubt God's word. You really have three elements here going on that I think is important. If you're taking notes, you might want to jot this down.

One of the first things that the enemy tries to do is he tries to bring doubt upon God's word. Has God said? Did God really say that? Right? God said that we could eat from all the trees. Did he? Did he though?

Is that what he said? Right? We, uh, the enemy brings doubt, um, uh, into God's word. He then distorts, he distorts God's word, right? You know, notice what the serpent said, right? Has God said? And then look what he expands on.

He says, you can't eat from any of the trees. That's not what God said. God said you could eat from all the trees except the tree that's in the midst of the garden. So you have the enemy bringing doubted to God's word, distorting God's word, and then he offers a reinterpretation.

So we have a three pronged attack upon God's truth. You have the doubting of God's word, you have the distortion of God's word, and then you have the reinterpretation of God's word. You will not die when you eat.

Your eyes will be opened, right? This is, this is what the serpent says. And so we have in competing voices in our world today, the attempt to bring doubt upon God's word, distort God's word, and reinterpret God's word.

The proper response of Eve should have been to obey God's ultimate authoritative self attesting commands. Okay? And this, I think, is where sola scriptura, this conflict begins. These competing voices of authority.

You have the voice of God and you have the voice of the devil. In our culture today, you have the word of God. You have the word of the culture. When you have the cults, you have the word of God and the word of the cults and their profit and their system and their lens that they are attempting to have us see the scriptures through.

Okay? This is very important to keep in mind. We need to recognize the voice of the master because of the nature of that voice and script created in the word of God, the nature of its authority and things like that.

Very, very important. Now, again, we see in terms of more Old Testament application. If you turn to Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy, I just made up, I just made up a book of the Bible. Here you go. Deuteronomy chapter 13.

Deuteronomy chapter 13. And this is a portion of scripture where we give, we're given a test of a true prophet and Deuteronomy chapter 13. It reads, and this is ESV. If you're following along, if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and a sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass.

And if he says, let us go after other gods, which you have not known and let us serve them. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord. Your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul.

You shall walk after the Lord, your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he has taught rebellion against the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery to make you leave, leave, uh, leave the way in which the Lord, your God commanded you to walk.

And then it concludes there. So shall you purge the evil from your midst? Okay. Now, interesting that even if a false teacher comes with miracles, what is the ultimate test for the truthfulness of the message of that particular person?

The test is the word of God. We are always brought back to the word of God. Why? Because the word of God is the ultimate authority. Word of God is that by which all things are tested. Okay. How will people know if something is truly of God?

Well, if that message gives us a different message that God has already revealed, then we know that is a false message. Okay. Miracles do not necessarily prove the trustworthiness of the prophet or the person or the, or the system or whatever.

Everything must be tested by the word of God. This is, this principle is one of the foundations of the principle of sola scriptura. Okay. Now, interestingly enough, the role of tradition is also very important, but it's interesting to note that what is said of scripture is never said of tradition.

I'm going to say that again. What is said of scripture is never said of tradition. There is a clear distinction between the scriptures and the role of tradition. If you consider, for example, Paul's writings in Romans chapters four through five, Paul defends his points, not by appealing to his own authority.

And he did have a level of authority as an apostle. He did not appeal to his authority. Simply. He points to the old Testament. What does the scripture say? This is important. Scripture teaches, and therefore we are to believe what scripture teaches.