Sola Scriptura Doesn't Work

Millions of Christians believe in the doctrine of sola scriptura—that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. The Catholic Church rejects it as contrary to biblical teaching, Christian history, and common sense.

But there’s another problem with sola scriptura that doesn’t get talked about as much: it is utterly impractical.

Sola Scriptura Doesn’t Work: 25 Practical Reasons to Reject the Doctrine of “Bible Alone” is a different kind of take on the debate over the authority of Scripture and Protestants’ rejection of Sacred Tradition. Using a conversational, down-to-earth approach, author Joel S. Peters leaves behind heady theology and prooftext-slinging to focus on the real-world implications of Protestantism’s core doctrine.

Peters covers new ground in the sola scriptura battle by appealing not primarily to the usual Bible passages or to assertions from Church authorities, but to logic, historical facts, and everyday human experience. Using examples from the time of the earliest councils that gave us the canon of Scripture, through the modern age of mass-printed Bibles, he provides “reality checks” that test the assumptions of sola scriptura against the nuts and bolts of our everyday faith life. With each one, the case for Protestantism’s most essential distinctive teaching gets weaker and weaker, until it finally falls apart.

Sola scriptura might look good on paper. But for any religious doctrine to be true and salvific for billions of people, around the world, over millennia, it has to make sense in practice. As Sola Scriptura Doesn’t Work shows, “Bible alone” doesn’t make the cut.