I was recently sent a video by Ben Beal on the issue on Sola Scriptura. I’ll give a few of my thoughts about some of his arguments:

2 Thess. 2:3-6

³ No one is to deceive you in any way! For it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, ⁴ who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. ⁵ Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things? ⁶ And you know what restrains him now, so that he will be revealed in his time.

Ben states that certain parts of knowledge in this passage were oral traditions taught to the Thessalonians. Namely, who the “man of lawlessness” is and what is restraining him. Suppose that was the case, has the Roman Catholic church declared who this is? If this was so important to Paul, then why hasn’t the Church revealed it?

Furthermore, the fact that Paul orally taught things to individuals that we don’t have isn’t a problem. Sola Scriptura isn’t the position that all revelation is contained in holy writ. It is a position that the only publically accessible revelation we are aware of is in Holy writ. So, even if this interpretation was correct it isn’t much of an issue. I still think that the Bible actually discusses this issue (contrary to his interpretation). We know that the “man of lawlessness” is the anti-Christ. We notice the allusions here are to the prophet Daniel:

“His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation” (11: 31; also see 9: 27; 12: 11)

“he will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods” (11: 36)

“the man of lawlessness… who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship, so that he sits in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God”

The question of the restrainer is more difficult to answer. There are a few interpretations that are used to explain this passage. The one that I accept is that of G. K. Beale:

The restraining force is the proclamation of the gospel, above all, by Paul’s preaching. The strength of this identification is its compatibility with Mark 13: 10, which says that “the gospel must first be preached to all nations” before Christ’s coming and, apparently, before the appearance of ” ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong [i. e., in the temple]” (Mk 13: 14).

This view, on the other hand, falters in the same way Giblin’s above view does: it is hard to conceive that Paul’s individual missionary work would have such a worldwide effect in bringing about the consummation of all history. The theory, nevertheless, becomes much more viable if Paul is replaced by a divine force such as an angel who represents God’s sovereignty in making the gospel proclamation effective in establishing the church throughout the interadvent age, so that the gates of hell do not prevail against it (Mt 16: 18). At the very end of the age, God will remove the angel (or its restraining influence), and “all hell will break loose” (as described in 2 Thess 2: 3-4, 8-12). This is further in line with Revelation 20: 1-9, where during the church age an angel restrains (literally “binds”) Satan’s power to decimate the church. Then, at the end of the age, the restraining power is removed, so that Satan unleashes against the church his antichrist, who will deceive and cause apostasy on a worldwide scale. Beale, G. K.. 1-2 Thessalonians (The IVP New Testament Commentary Series) (pp. 215-216). Intervarsity Press – A..

While there is more to be said about this issue. It is hard to imagine that the mere fact there were oral traditions in the Church entails that the Catholic Church is the one true Church. It also seems that there is no presumption that these “traditions” were kept merely by Bishops. It seems like they were all made well aware of these things. This was for them to avoid false teachers.

Jude 3

³ Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all time handed down to the saints.

Ben argues that this is inconsistent with Sola Scriptura because this entails the entirety of the Christian faith before the canon was completed. This entailed that the Church had operated on tradition and therefore didn’t hold to scripture.

I think that he is correct in regards to the notion that traditions preceded the completion of the canon. It is a different thing to suppose that they had priority over written divine revelation. They had the Old Testament and some of the New Testament works. I take “the faith” to not be referring to rigorous disputations of the doctrines of the Christian faith. I think Jude is referring to the Gospel.

Another argument was that Sola Scriptura is self-refuting. I think this is obviously a weak argument. I have discussed it before, but I want to take another approach to show how mistaken it is.

I’ll try to expose the problem with this kind of retort with a thought experiment:

Suppose that God appeared to Ben and told him that that he should go to the land of his fathers and do some act of religious fidelity. After the conversation, Ben doesn’t go to the land of his fathers. Let’s suppose that someone objects to him about it. He tells them “God didn’t state what he said was sufficient divine revelation, so I didn’t think it was authoritative because he never said it was!” This hardly seems like a good reason to suppose God’s word wasn’t sufficient.