Why Doctrine Comes from Scripture—Foundations for an Anabaptist View of Doctrinal Authority

As Christians, we believe some teachings to be true and others to be false. But how can we tell which is which? Where does true Christian doctrine come from, and can those doctrines change or develop? This article will answer those questions and offer a from-the-ground-up defense for the view that Christian doctrine comes from Scripture.

Overview

First, I will lay the foundation and methodology for this article. That’s important, because a lot of questions and objections will be forestalled if the view is understood correctly.

Why Is This Subject Important?

If you already believe Scripture to be authoritative, why is this article even important? There are two reasons why its worthwhile to give arguments for the trustworthiness of Scripture. First, some people, like me, find it important to have assurance that our faith is well-evidenced by history, as well as by the Holy Spirit. In this article, I’ll be arguing from the ground up. That means that I’ll, not only be answering other Christian views, but also showing why we should believe Christian doctrine in the first place. This post will be helpful to those who want to understand the firm and extensive foundation beneath our trust of Scripture.

Second, Roman Catholic apologists today argue that their church gave us the Scriptures, so we should be in submission to their church. They often say that Protestants and Anabaptists have an authority problem—supposedly, the only way to be sure of what the Christian faith is, is to accept their church’s authority. To show why this is incorrect, I need to offer reasons for trusting Scripture that don’t depend on their church.¹It is interesting, though a subject for another time, to note that the Roman Catholic apologists, by insisting on their answer to this authority problem, have a circularity problem, as this video and this video show.

However, if you are satisfied that Scripture is authoritative, feel free to skip this article and instead see my post on the source of Christian doctrine according to Scripture, which mainly just lays out the Scriptural reasons we have for believing that doctrine comes from Jesus’ and the apostles’ teachings.

What Are the Relevant Questions?

The purpose of this article is to show what is the source of Christian doctrine. However, that question can be interpreted two ways. Will I be showing who or what can ultimately decide what doctrines Christians should hold? Or will I be showing who or what can be fully trusted to know and teach Christian doctrine? In other words, am I talking about what makes doctrine to be doctrine, or am I talking about how we know that doctrine is doctrine? The philosophical terms for these two questions are ontology (the study of why things are the way they are) and epistemology (the study of how we know the way things are).

There is not much disagreement about the first question. Christians basically all agree that the ontological grounding of all doctrine is divine revelation. Ontologically, only God is prior to doctrine, because he is author of the truth, the world, and the Christian faith. We live by every word that proceeds from his mouth, and whatever he declares into existence becomes true.

Thus, I will be answering the second question: What is the epistemological grounding for doctrine? In other words, what are the earmarks that we can use in order to find out whether a teaching is grounded in divine revelation?

Upstream and Downstream

To help answer the question, I want to clarify it further by introducing another distinction. We need to find out who or what is epistemically upstream from Christian doctrine, as opposed to who or what is downstream from Christian doctrine.

• If a source of teachings is upstream from Christian doctrine, that means that whatever comes from that source is guaranteed to be Christian doctrine. What water is in the Jordan River is dependent on what water comes out of the springs that feed it. Those springs are upstream from the spring. Similarly, whatever comes from the U.S. Congress is U.S. Law. Congress is upstream from law. A source that is upstream from doctrine is completely accurate, because doctrine is defined as what flows from it.
• If a source of teachings is downstream from Christian doctrine, that means that it might or might not be completely accurate. The effectiveness of that source depends entirely on whether it channels Christian doctrine without altering it. If someone gives you a bottle of water that is supposed to be “100% Jordan River water,” that can only be true if no one has removed elements from it or added elements to it. Similarly, a lawyer must conform his legal advice to U.S. Law, because he is downstream from law. A lawyer has the authority to give you legal advice, but his advice might not be completely accurate, because his statements don’t define law.

So who or what is upstream from doctrine? Among Christians, there are two major views on this question. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox say that the decisions and traditions of their church are upstream from doctrine—that we can fully know doctrine based on their church’s teachings. On the other hand, many other groups believe that not church leaders but the Scriptures are upstream from doctrine. There are different variations of this view; one of the most common among Protestants is Sola Scriptura.

In this article, I’ll argue for the second view. I hope to show that the New Testament is our source for Christian doctrine, and that the church and its leaders are downstream from doctrine. I fully agree that church leaders have the authority to teach, and that the church has authority to make decisions. However, this doesn’t mean that they are upstream from doctrine; they can make mistakes. Similarly, a lawyer has the authority to give legal advice, but that doesn’t mean they are upstream from law.

The view I’ll propose here is a variation that’s a bit different from the typical Protestant view; instead, it’s based on the historic faith. I will show that the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, which are found in the New Testament, are our infallible authority for Christian doctrine. I’ll also weigh in on whether doctrine can change or develop.

Side note: A source could be ontologically downstream from doctrine, but epistemically upstream from doctrine. If a person who has no authority to “invent” doctrine were to be given a special grace from the Spirit to represent doctrine accurately, then that source could be epistemically upstream from doctrine while being ontologically downstream. If the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox view is correct, then ecumenical councils would be an example of this. The apostles are an actual example of this.

Overview of the View

Here’s what I’ll be doing in this article:

1. Based on a survey of the earliest Christian documents, we will find that the original Christian position, was that Christian doctrine comes solely from the authoritative teachings of Jesus and the apostles.
2. We’ll look at several reasons for believing this early view to be correct.
3. Since the apostolic teachings are found in books that were undisputedly written by apostles, we’ll see that we don’t need to lean on the decisions of an institutional church to verify which doctrines are apostolic.
4. We will evaluate the case for the New Testament canon, wholly apart from the decisions of an institutional church, and see that the books that make up our New Testament are the books that can be trusted to contain the authoritative teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

Is This Circular?

Before I even defend this view, I will anticipate an objection. Our conclusion will be that the New Testament books are authoritative. But we will be using New Testament books as part of the evidence for this conclusion. Isn’t that a circular argument?

In fact, it is not. If we were to use the New Testament’s authority as evidence for its authority, then the argument would be circular, since the conclusion is the same as the premise. However, we are not doing that.

Not everyone agrees that the New Testament is authoritative. But everyone who is knowledgeable in the subject, including Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, and secular historians, agrees that the New Testament books are representative of early Christianity. We are starting off from this point, on which everyone agrees, and using it as evidence for the point that not everyone agrees on.

If everyone agrees with the premise, but not everyone agrees with the conclusion, obviously the premise isn’t the same thing as the conclusion. This further demonstrates that this isn’t a circular argument.²It’s worth noting that, even if the premise were the same thing as the conclusion, that would mean that everyone who agrees with the premise also agrees with the conclusion. But everybody doesn’t agree, so my argument isn’t circular. So if this is a circular argument, that just means that everyone agrees that my conclusion is true, since they all agree with the premise—the books of the New Testament are our authority for doctrine.

In other words, we will not be using the New Testament’s authority as evidence for its authority; we will simply be using it as a gauge for what the original Christian position was. So we will start out by simply using these books as representative documents, rather than as authoritative Scripture. In the end, however, it will become clear that they are not merely representative; they are also authoritative.

What Was the Original Belief?

So what was the original Christian position on the source of doctrine? In this section, I will summarize my findings from an earlier post that surveys the New Testament, as well as other early Christian documents, to see where doctrine originates. For the full support for these statements, see that post.

Surveying the earliest Christian documents, we find the following beliefs. To see an evaluation of the evidence for these points, see my post on who can define the faith.

Key term: By “defining” the faith, I mean “making a statement that is upstream from doctrine; a statement that authoritatively and definitively establishes what true doctrine is.”

• Jesus had authority to define the faith. (Matthew 28:18, Luke 4:32, John 7:16–17, 8:28, 12:48–50, 14:9–11)
• The eleven faithful apostles had authority to define the faith. (Matt 28:19–20, John 15:20, 16:12–15)
• Paul had authority to define the faith. (Acts 26:15-18, 1 Cor 9:1, 2 Pet 3:16, Gal 1:11-24, 2:1-10)
• The faith taught in the first years of Christianity cannot be changed. Christian doctrine was complete and known by Christians by the end of the apostles’ lives, and it cannot be further developed. (Gal 1:6–9, 1 Cor 11:1–2, 2 Thes 2:15, Hebrews 13:7–9, 1 Tim 6:20, 2 Tim 1:13-14, 2 Pet 1:5–15, Jude 3, Rev 2:24-26)

Another post applies these points to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox view that their church is also upstream from doctrine and can make further authoritative statements on the faith. The post shows that their view isn’t consistent with apostolic teaching.

Is the Original Belief True?

So this is the original Christian position, according to the earliest representative texts. Is that position true? Should we trust the information we find in these texts? In fact, we have good reason to believe that these representative texts are telling the truth. In this section, I’ll show how we can tell that the New Testament’s claims about the apostles’ authority are correct. To do this, I’ll give evidence for each of the following statements:

1. What the existing texts say is in essence what the original authors wrote.
2. What the original authors wrote is what the original speakers (Jesus and the apostles) said.
3. What the original speakers said is true.

If I can show that these three statements are true, then we will know, through non-circular reasoning, that the original belief is in fact true—that only Jesus and the apostles had authority to define the faith.

We have good reason to believe that what the texts say now is what was written by the original authors.

Some have suggested that we can’t be sure what the authors of the New Testament books wrote, since there are a lot of textual variants among the manuscripts that we have. If the manuscripts don’t all agree, how can we be sure that we know what the original authors wrote?

Fortunately, scholars have developed methods for evaluating textual variants in manuscripts. Because of the importance which we Christians place on the 27 books found in our New Testament, critical scholarship has been especially exacting with its scrutiny of those books. No ancient documents have been more analyzed. This has really annoyed Christians, but the unforeseen effect is that, as a result, we have extremely good reason to trust the New Testament books. They have passed the test, and scholars have concluded that the texts that our modern Bibles are translated from don’t differ in any substantial way from what the original authors wrote. There are places in the text where scholars aren’t quite sure what the original author wrote; however, none of those places call any Christian doctrine into question. Typically they’re just small wording differences that you can find in the notes of a study Bible.

We have thousands of ancient manuscripts of the New Testament books, and though each one has its share of scribal errors, there is overwhelming agreement among them on substantive issues. Thus, all of the major Greek texts in use today in Bible translation (the Textus Receptus, the Critical Text, or the Majority Text) contain essentially what the original authors wrote.

In my linked article, I included some other early Christian texts that aren’t in the New Testament. Much less work on textual criticism has been done on those texts, but that shouldn’t alarm us, because scholars don’t receive those texts with the same level of skepticism as they receive the New Testament books. Scholars of church history typically hold that these texts give us a very good idea of what the early church believed.

We have good reason to believe that what was written by the original authors is what was said by the original speakers (Jesus and the apostles).

So we know what the original writers wrote. But did they know what they were talking about? What if they didn’t have a high enough familiarity with Jesus and the apostles? They might have misrepresented them through lack of knowledge.

We have good external and internal evidence that shows this not to be true.

• External: For most of the books in our New Testament, Christians from the beginning did not dispute their accuracy to the apostolic teachings. For the rest, they were accepted within a few generations. Later in this article I’ll give more details. In any case, this fact is not under dispute by the Christians in my general audience: Catholics, Orthodox, or Evangelicals.
• Internal: The contents of the books themselves provides evidence that these books—especially the Gospels, Acts, and Paul’s letters—were written by people who knew what they were talking about. They have all the signs of having been written by eyewitnesses.³Arguments for this have been put forward by such as Lydia McGrew, Peter J. Williams, and many other Evangelical scholars.

So we can tell that the books that make up our New Testament accurately contain the words of Jesus, his apostles, and others who faithfully represented their teachings.

We have good reason to believe that what was said by the original speakers is true.

So we know what the original authors wrote, and they accurately conveyed what Jesus and the apostles said. But this doesn’t automatically make what Jesus and the apostles said true. So is it true that Jesus and the apostles actually have authority?

The central thing we need to know is whether Jesus had authority to teach. If he did, then the apostles and Paul did as well, since the best evidence we have shows that Jesus gave them the authority to teach. And of course, if the apostles had authority to teach, then what they taught about the faith being complete in their day must have been true.

I won’t go into an in-depth analysis of whether Jesus had authority to teach or not, because that question has been addressed by many people. If Jesus rose from the dead, and if Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, and if Jesus really prophesied the fall of Jerusalem—then he can be trusted. Based on the evidence, Christians can trust that all this is true.⁴People like William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Mike Licona, and Jonathan McLatchie have made excellent arguments based especially on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. Other arguments could be made from fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, Jesus’ prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem, and the goodness of Jesus’ example and teachings. Besides, if you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, you know that he has authority to deliver truth—you don’t need any arguments for it from his resurrection.

Were they lying?

So Jesus had authority and what he said is true. What about the apostles? Jesus’ words and the message of Christianity only comes to us through the apostles. Might they have been lying?

Here are several reasons to believe the apostles were telling the truth.

• First, note that they don’t typically make a big fuss about their authority. The passages I cited are clear enough, but they aren’t mentioned very often. These are incidental passages that the apostles don’t draw attention to. If the apostles were making up their authority, you would think that they would be more specific. If you’re trying to get people to think you have authority that you don’t, there are much more direct ways of doing it.
• The authority of the apostles is fairly restricted, according to them. They were only free to teach what was taught at the very beginning of their ministry. If they had been grasping for power, why place these limits on themselves?
• The early church, and even heretics, trusted their authority.
• It’s hard to get two people, much less twelve, on the same page about doctrine or any other issue, unless they are serving a single authority.
• Paul does mention his authority, but it’s corroborated by other apostles, even one that he disagreed with! (Gal 2:9, 11, 2 Pet 3:15-16)
• There’s no self-aggrandizement. The apostles record even very stupid things that they’ve done. For example, your first impression of them when reading the gospels is that they’re singularly dense. And Paul even admits that he persecuted the church; and, though he boasts about his authority at times, he says that he’s only speaking like a fool. If the apostles were making things up, they wouldn’t make up things that were so embarrassing about themselves.
• The apostles didn’t grasp for places of power. They put others in positions of power, going through and appointing elders in churches. They appointed Jesus’ brother James, not one of the twelve, as bishop of Jerusalem, their early hub, rather than one of themselves. Likely, he hadn’t always believed in Jesus (Mark 3:21, John 7:3-5), so he wouldn’t have been one of the “in” group. They made decisions with the whole church and even deferred to James (Acts 15). He sent people like Timothy and Titus to make leaders rather than making sure he knew who was chosen (1 Tim 3:1-15, Titus 1:5-9). So if they wanted authority, they didn’t get very much.
• They risked their lives; some, if not all, were even martyred. Just because they risked their lives doesn’t make it true, but it sure does make it unlikely that they were lying! If you know that something is not true, you are unlikely to be willing to die for it. However, they were willing to die for it, so it is unlikely that they knew it not to be true.
• The books are accurate in details and show no tendency to fabrication. You don’t see mythologizing or sensationalism. Even the miracle stories just read like regular accounts of everyday occurences.

So they could have grasped for authority in many ways that they didn’t. All they did was say that what they had preached in the beginning was the truth. Then they spread this truth through the world and entrusted it to other people to spread as well.

Furthermore, the apostolic teachings are highly unified. There’s no disagreement between apostles or between them and later believers. For nearly three hundred years, the same faith was proclaimed, even though many different weird beliefs came to be held by people here and there. The harmonious and consistent witness of the church provides good evidence that they were speaking the truth, not fabrications.

Doctrine Comes From Jesus and the Apostles

So we can safely conclude that the original Christian belief, as I laid it out before, is true. I’ll repeat those tenets, supported in my article on the New Testament and early Christian view, below:

• Jesus had authority to define the faith.
• The eleven faithful apostles had authority to define the faith.
• Paul had authority to define the faith.
• The faith taught in the first years of Christianity cannot be changed. Christian doctrine was complete and known by Christians by the end of the apostles’ lives, and it cannot be further developed.

Which Sources Can We Trust?

So now we know that Jesus and the apostles, including Paul, had full authority to define the faith, and no one else has. However, if we want to follow the true faith, we need to know where we can find their teachings. So the question is, “What textual sources can be trusted to contain the unchanging faith revealed through Jesus and the apostles?”

In another post, I evaluate the New Testament canon. Here are my conclusions:

• All Christian doctrines are found in books universally agreed to having been written by apostles. So we don’t even need a canon in order to know what is true doctrine.
• No books that contradicted the 27 canonical books in any point of doctrine were proposed as authoritative by the pre-Nicene church.
• So, if we consider the books to be authoritative that everyone agreed on, we have the exact same faith that we’d have if we consider the books to be authoritative that anyone proposed as authoritative.
• The least-supported canonical book has significantly more historical support than the most-supported non-canonical book.
• We have no need of the decisions of an institutional church in order to know that the books nearly universally accepted (without any ecumenical council or heavy-handed top-down decision) by the fourth-century Christians, can safely be considered our canon.
• The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox additional beliefs do not meet the criteria for being definitive apostolic traditions.

As I’ve shown, there is no authority problem for Anabaptists or Protestants. We have no difficulty in knowing what the apostolic teachings are. There is also no problem of the canon. We can know which books are authoritative without referring to the decisions of an institutional church.

What Do We Need?

However, I want to put this argument to rest once and for all. Considering the amount of weight that Roman Catholic apologists give to this argument, it’s worth considering one more thing that will completely refute it.

What do we need, at minimum, in order to answer the authority problem? In other words, what do we need, at minimum, in order to know whether a particular doctrine was taught by the apostles? And have we passed that minimum bar?

To answer that question, let’s suppose your doctor prescribed you some treatments, and then left for a vacation in a no-cell-service area. There is no way to contact him. What evidence would you need in order to find out what treatments he had prescribed?

Any of the following will do:

• A document written by the doctor that prescribes that medication to you.
• A document written by someone who would be expected to know your prescription and to represent it accurately. This might be your pharmacy or the nurse who heard him prescribe it.
• A document thought to be your prescription by someone who would be expected to know (and state with accuracy) which treatments were prescribed. For example, maybe the nurse found a prescription list on the floor. Knowing that all the medications on it were medications that the doctor prescribed to you, she gives it to you.

You certainly wouldn’t listen to a guy on the street wearing scrubs and a stethoscope, even if he told you that he actually knew the real contents of the prescription list.

Thus, if we want to know what the apostolic doctrines are, all we need to know is the following:

• A document written by someone with authority to teach (an apostle) that mentions that doctrine, or
• A document written by someone who would be expected to know the apostolic doctrines and represent them accurately, or
• A document considered authoritative by someone who would be expected to know the apostolic doctrines and represent them accurately.

So we need just one of these per doctrine in order to know whether that doctrine is true. What do we have instead? The apostolic doctrines are found throughout

• Multiple documents written by apostles, and
• Multiple documents written by people who associated with the apostles, and
• Multiple documents considered authoritative by the early church.

All the books in the New Testament canon and all the books proposed for the canon fit these criteria. Of all the possible canons that we might have had, every one of them would have fit this category.

Therefore, there is no problem of the canon for Anabaptists. There is no reason we cannot rely on the canon provided by the church; after all, (a) we think it’s the best canon and (b) it is useful as a set of books the Western church has, as a whole, agreed on as part of the canon.

Is the apostolic teaching in the NT sufficient for complete doctrine?

So we can tell that the books in the New Testament can be trusted to teach us the apostolic faith. But might the apostles have said or written something that’s not recorded in the New Testament? Might there be other authoritative sources for Christian doctrine?

Remember that the Greek word translated “tradition” indicates teachings that were handed down. The New Testament is full of apostolic traditions, in that sense.

The Elusive Traditions of Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox

However, the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox place a lot of emphasis on tradition, and claim that they have access to apostolic traditions that weren’t written down in the New Testament. Thus, they sound like they are following the apostles more closely than other groups are. Strangely, however, when I try to find out what are some examples of apostolic teachings outside of the New Testament that they have preserved, I’m unable to find a good answer.

The clearest answer I’ve found is the general sense that these traditions need to be experienced in order to be passed down—it’s somehow doing violence to the traditions to ask for specific ones, as though they could be listed. Instead, we should come and experience church with the Orthodox and apprehend these traditions. Maybe I’m missing something. If you are Catholic or Orthodox, please let me know of any apostolic teachings outside of the New Testament that actually change how the faith is practiced.

In any case, there are so many problems with this approach.

• Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox worship services, with their lavish sanctuaries and choreographed worship, will always be appealing to those who like symbolism and ceremony. But that has nothing to do with their proximity to the apostolic traditions. In fact, many elements of their worship practices go back no further than the fourth or fifth century. Their services aren’t especially close to the services described in the New Testament, the Didache, or Justin Martyr.⁵1 Cor 14, Didache 9-10, 14, Justin Apology 1.67 And their icons are an innovation. Should we be convinced that a church has special apostolic traditions by an experience when the appealing aspects of it don’t go back to the apostles?
• Even if we aren’t sure whether or not the emotional appeal comes from traditions that go back to the apostles, doesn’t it seem likely that these sorts of emotional appeals could mislead us into accepting non-apostolic practices?
• The apostles seemed most concerned about our lifestyle and less concerned about worship practices. When the apostolic traditions that we do know about aren’t being followed (such as nonresistance), why would we follow a church because of its supposed apostolic worship practices?
• The apostles were able to put their traditions into words (cf. 2 Thes 2:15). Why can’t these churches put the apostolic traditions into words, if they really have them?
• All of our Christian churches have descended from the original apostolic churches. Why would the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have better access to the apostolic traditions? It can’t be through apostolic succession of ordination, because that, too, is an innovation. (In fact, there are even Protestant denominations that continue the high-church worship experiences of the Roman Catholics and who claim apostolic succession, so neither of those leads us to an exclusively Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christianity.)

I think some of this confusion is because people aren’t often very clear on the different possible meanings of “tradition.” I’ve stressed the importance of apostolic traditions, as in “teachings given by the apostles that define the faith.” However, these churches also have traditions that they’ve held to for many years, but which weren’t taught by the apostles. Because they reverence “tradition,” these teachings are given authority as though they were as valuable as the apostolic teachings. There’s a big difference between “oral traditions,” as in any beliefs that have been passed down for a while, and “apostolic traditions,” which are the doctrines that we must follow.

But, you might object, how could the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox change so much from the original belief? It’s quite simple to see how this would happen over time. As their teachings shifted, they still kept saying the doctrines came from Scripture.⁶But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid, and this without any whirlwind of sacrilegious pride, without any puffing of the neck through arrogance, without any strife of envious hatred, simply with holy humility, catholic peace, and Christian charity? (Augustine, On Baptism 2.3.4)

In all these books those who fear God and are of a meek and pious disposition seek the will of God. And in pursuing this search the first rule to be observed is, as I said, to know these books, if not yet with the understanding, still to read them so as to commit them to memory, or at least so as not to remain wholly ignorant of them. Next, those matters that are plainly laid down in them, whether rules of life or rules of faith, are to be searched into more carefully and more diligently; and the more of these a man discovers, the more capacious does his understanding become. For among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of life — to wit, hope and love, of which I have spoken in the previous book. After this, when we have made ourselves to a certain extent familiar with the language of Scripture, we may proceed to open up and investigate the obscure passages, and in doing so draw examples from the plainer expressions to throw light upon the more obscure, and use the evidence of passages about which there is no doubt to remove all hesitation in regard to the doubtful passages. And in this matter memory counts for a great deal; but if the memory be defective, no rules can supply the want. (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.9.14) They had to keep shifting their interpretations of Scripture, but, since it seemed to them that their oral teachings hadn’t changed, this didn’t bother them. (It’s not that surprising for oral teachings to shift; this happens in many churches today, not just the ancient churches.) Eventually, the churches got so far from Scripture that they admitted that you needed “Tradition” in order to understand Scripture. No longer did the two obviously teach the same thing, as they did in Irenaeus’s day.⁷See Against Heresies 3:1-3 Then, when Christians read the early writings mentioning apostolic tradition, they read their new idea of Tradition into what was written then.

How Can We Tell?

How could we tell whether there are apostolic teachings that aren’t recorded in the New Testament?

First, where could we find such traditions? (Soon we’ll look at qualifications for considering a tradition to be apostolic.)

• Either it was handed down orally until someone wrote it down,
• Or it has never been written down, but is still handed down orally.

Are there oral teachings that are still oral?

Let’s deal with the second possibility first. Is it possible that there are apostolic traditions that have been handed down orally until now? That’s highly unlikely, since it would be so ubiquitous that nearly every church would be practicing it for many years, in which case, someone would have written it down—Christianity has a propensity for writing things down. Worshiping on Sunday would be a good example. It’s still practiced by nearly all Christians, and it’s often been written about throughout church history.

But even if some teaching that is not in the New Testament and is not ubiquitous were claimed to be such a tradition, we would have to ask the following: Have the people proposing this tradition kept to the traditions that are in the New Testament? If they can’t hold to a tradition that is written down in the apostolic writings, how can we trust them to communicate a tradition for thousands of years orally?

So the only people we can trust to communicate oral apostolic traditions are the ones who are faithfully keeping written apostolic traditions. The pre-Nicene Christians, who still held to teachings like nonresistance, would need to be the people who recorded these traditions.

Qualifications for written teachings

So any binding apostolic traditions would need to be written down. What are some qualifications that these possible traditions would need to meet before we can consider them to be binding?

1. There must be no substantial reason from Scripture against its authority.
2. There must not be a high likelihood that it would have arisen from cultural influences.
3. It must be attested to as early as the Scriptural apostolic traditions are attested in extra-biblical sources. There must be good evidence that it was believed or practiced from the very beginning. This would necessarily mean that it was recorded by mainstream pre-Nicene writers.
4. When discussed in sources, the contextual elements surrounding the tradition must speak of it in the ways that apostolic traditions found in Scripture are spoken of in those sources.
5. Since all apostolic traditions were made available to every church that the apostles founded, there must be good evidence that it was believed or practiced as widely throughout the Christian world as Scriptural apostolic traditions were. In fact, we would expect to see more post-apostolic textual evidence for these, since Christian leaders couldn’t expect the public or private reading of apostolic texts (the most widely read texts) to help preserve the doctrine.
6. Since all apostolic traditions were made available to every church that the apostles founded, there must be only one viable candidate for the content of the tradition. If different beliefs were held during the same early time period by apostolic churches, it is highly improbable that either one is an apostolic tradition.

These six qualifications disqualify all of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox doctrines that aren’t found in the New Testament.

So are there any teachings that match the criteria I listed above? This is an issue I’m researching currently and am not ready to weigh in on yet. However, to my knowledge, Catholics and Orthodox have not yet proposed any of their beliefs that match these criteria.

If you read the pre-Nicene writings, you’ll find that, for the first two or three hundred years of the Church, the early Christian writers were very conservative in their view of the faith. When describing what is necessary to the faith, they overwhelmingly held to what is included in the Scriptures.

What If Apostolic Traditions Were Obscured by Persecution?

When new doctrines show up in the post-Nicene era, sometimes their proponents claim that these weren’t actually changes, but were instead the way people had always practiced. They just couldn’t practice those doctrines publicly while they were being persecuted.

First, there is just no evidence that Christians pretended not to have certain traditions because of persecution. They were very bold about what they believed and how they lived (just read people like Justin Martyr, if you don’t believe me).

Second, there are contradictions between the earlier and later practices. When the pre-Nicene Christians were very clear that they didn’t do X, but the post-Nicene Christians did do X, we can’t just say it’s because they were hiding.

Finally, Jesus said that his followers would be persecuted. With all the freedom that we have, we are the ones who should be concerned that we might lose the faith through complacency and satisfaction. I’d rather go by the persecuted church that was indubitably living for Jesus, than the leisurely, well-fed church that followed Constantine.

Scripture Is Sufficient

At this point, I conclude that Jesus’ and the apostles’ teachings in the New Testament are sufficient to teach us the essentials of Christian doctrine. Until a tradition has been proposed that meets the qualifications of an apostolic traditions, we can rely on Scripture.

Is the New Testament inerrant in other ways?

What these truths, supported by Scripture and church history, clearly show is that the New Testament infallibly teaches Christian doctrine. However, I should note that this doesn’t necessarily get us the whole way to the inerrancy of non-doctrinal statements in the New Testament—for example, one can hold to this position and still not be sure that the New Testament’s historical statements, such as places and times, are also inerrant.

The question of historical inerrancy is out of the scope of this article. However, I think it’s important to note that, no matter what position one takes on that issue, the central issue is resolved.

The major difference between the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox on the one hand, and the Protestants and Anabaptists on the other, centers around where Christian doctrine comes from. Scripture answers that Christian doctrine comes from the infallible teachings of the apostles.

Even for those who aren’t sure whether every historical fact in the New Testament is true, that uncertainty doesn’t call into question whether the New Testament doctrines are true. As I’ve shown in this article, we can know that the New Testament is infallible in matters of doctrine simply by coming to the realization that the New Testament is accurate.

I don’t take a position on the historical inerrancy of the New Testament, since I think there are more vital issues to focus on. However, I think one could make a reasonable argument for historical inerrancy that runs along lines like the following:

• If Jesus chose the apostles as witnesses to his life, death, and resurrection (c.f. Acts 1:8) as well as messengers of his doctrines, it would make sense that the Spirit would ensure that their historical witness would be factually correct.
• The church has historically respected the apostolic writings to the point of treating them as inerrant.
• The New Testament writings came to be seen not only as apostolic but also as Scripture, which suggests inerrancy that would extend beyond doctrine.

I simply suggest these considerations. Whatever you may think of them, it should at least be clear that we can conclude the infallibility of apostolic doctrine simply from accepting the accuracy of the New Testament.

Questions for Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox

There are many thoughtful Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but unfortunately there are also some who find certain slogans to be convincing arguments against Protestants. This section responds to some of the ones that are most relevant to this argument:

• “You ignore the authority of the Church/magisterium to settle doctrinal matters.” Do you know of any Christian whatsoever before 300 who believed that anyone besides the apostles could authoritatively decide/define doctrine? (I don’t either. The first person I’m aware of who thought that this could happen was Constantine, while he wasn’t even a Christian.⁸“Whatever is decided in the holy councils of the bishops must be attributed to the divine will.” Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 57, quoted in Collins and Walls, Roman but Not Catholic.
• “Protestants stick only to the written word left by the apostles and ignore the oral tradition passed down by the Church through the ages.” What is one doctrine that the apostles taught that isn’t found in the New Testament and is preserved by your church as the apostles taught it, and not by other churches? (If they propose one, which they don’t always, ask them to give an account of it in the pre-Nicene church, not counting spurious books like the Protoevangelium of James.)
• “Which came first, the Church or the Bible? The Church, of course! The Church gave us the Bible.” (Implying that their church has authority over Scripture and doctrine. What authoritative action/decision of the church decided which books all Christians should consider to be authoritative? (Instead, the New Testament canon was very clear through the consensus of Christian churches long before a major council weighed in on it.)
• “The church can decide doctrine because the church decided the canon.” Did the church compose the contents of the apostolic deposit? (Of course not, because the apostles did. Note that this also fails for the same reason as the previous question.)

Of course, there are many Protestants and Anabaptists who use similarly naïve slogans against the Roman Catholic claims. The fault is not all on one side.

Can this view be called Sola Scriptura?

In this article, I’ve argued, essentially, that the New Testament is our infallible authority for belief and practice. Sola Scriptura is a view that argues for a very similar conclusion, and it’s the view typically espoused by Protestants.

There are many different formulations of Sola Scriptura, and I’m comfortable with some of them. However, I don’t use the term for a few reasons. First, it’s ambiguous. When you use the term, it’s not clear which view you mean to espouse; however, many people think they know which view you espouse when you use that term. So it can cause more confusion than it’s worth.

Second, Sola Scriptura is often defended in different ways from the way I defend the historic faith view. Most ways of arguing for it, to my mind, aren’t as clear or compelling as this argument is. Some of them are fairly subjective or even circular arguments. So I stay away from them.

If one were to give this view a name, I would suggest Sola Apostolica, since the defining feature of the view is that doctrines are authoritative if they are apostolic. But if Sola Scriptura advocates would like to use this argument and call it Sola Scriptura, I don’t mind.

Objections to Sola Scriptura

The following are objections that Catholics and Orthodox typically raise against Sola Scriptura. I’ll check each one and see whether it invalidates Sola Apostolica.

• The Bible itself doesn’t teach that it’s the sole infallible authority for faith and practice, so how can a Sola Scriptura advocate hold that view? But apostolic teachings in the Bible do say that the apostolic teachings are our sole infallible authority, as I’ve shown.
• Scripture upholds the apostles’ oral teachings as well as what was written. This view does as well. It simply points out that the extra doctrines of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy don’t qualify to be considered apostolic.
• Sola Scriptura is a circular position, since it uses the Bible to prove the Bible. I don’t think that is true, but, in any case, I showed at the outset that my view is not circular.
• Sola Scriptura is an ahistorical doctrine. That may or may not be true; however, Sola Apostolica is rooted in history—in fact, it’s more historical than the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox views, as I’ve shown.
• Sola Scriptura ignores the actual history—how the Church came before the Bible. This is an odd objection even to Sola Scriptura, because it doesn’t matter that the church predated the New Testament. No authoritative church decision originally gave us the New Testament. However, I do get that not all Sola Scriptura advocates have a strong foundation for their view. But in any case, Sola Apostolica, being a description of how doctrine historically came to Christians, ignores no history whatsoever.
• Sola Scriptura fails because the earliest Christians didn’t think of the New Testament books as Scripture.⁹See this argument by Trent Horn This fails completely to engage with Sola Apostolica, which accurately recognizes that the earliest Christians thought of the apostolic teachings as authoritative. It is true that the concepts of “New Testament” and considering those books as “Scripture” is a later categorization of this issue, though I think it is an accurate way. However, Sola Apostolica doesn’t depend on those categories.
• Sola Scriptura fails because only the original autographs of the texts written by the apostles themselves are inerrant, so we don’t have an inerrant text.¹⁰From this site. This doesn’t engage with Sola Apostolica, since we see the doctrines as infallible, not the way the doctrines were written down. Virtually all New Testament manuscripts and translations agree to the point that any Christian doctrine can be found in any complete New Testament text. I could use any Bible version, based on any Greek text, on this site, and demonstrate the same doctrines.

I think one of the best aspects of Sola Apostolica is the ease with which it deals with the classic issues that are often brought up against Sola Scriptura.

Can we know the essential doctrines vs. the doctrines we can disagree on?

Many Protestants take great care to seek out which doctrines are “essential” as opposed to the doctrines that Christians can disagree on, and yet still associate with each other. Roman Catholics like to point out that this creates problems for them.[https://youtu.be/q5eGYdc1Epc] For example, Protestants would see the Trinity as defined at Nicaea to be a non-negotiable, while they would see eternal security, which has a lot of teachings in Scripture, to be negotiable.

This distinction isn’t important to me, because I think we can all work together as Christians even while seeing each other as holding non-negotiably wrong beliefs. I would gladly work with a Protestant or a Catholic in many kinds of ministries. I welcome any of their teachings that agree with what I see as the apostolic faith. However, I would not want to get into a position where I am supporting their teachings that I don’t believe are apostolic.

In any case, this objection doesn’t apply to Sola Apostolica, which teaches that what the apostles taught as doctrine is non-negotiable, and what was not is negotiable. Councils and later church traditions are interesting and sometimes helpful, but negotiable.

However, for those who are interested in this endeavor, I think one could see the distinction between essential and nonessential as a distinction of convenience, rather than of salvation. In that case, one could use church decisions as a method of convenience without thereby suggesting that the church decisions were infallible.

Objections to Sola Apostolica

This is my section for objections that actually apply to Sola Apostolica and not only to Sola Scriptura.

• We can’t just go by what the Bible says, because the Bible still needs to be interpreted. Of course; every text needs to be interpreted. I don’t believe we need extrabiblical sources in order to ensure the correct interpretation of Scripture, but in any case, we can compare the pre-Nicene Christian writings, which support the view that I put forward on this site. Furthermore, the Catholic magisterium (official church teachings) is not a better alternative. Note that the magisterium consists of texts, and these texts can typically be interpreted even more variously than Scripture can be. See, for example, this video where an apologist tries to show that burning heretics isn’t necessarily part of the Roman Catholic Church’s infallible teachings—but instead impresses on my mind how complicated and uncertain the magisterium is.
• This view makes everybody their own Pope, since everybody has the authority to interpret Scripture. We don’t believe that everybody has the authority to interpret Scripture. In fact, we believe that no one’s interpretations of Scripture are authoritative. But we do have the responsibility to read/hear Scripture and to obey it, just like Roman Catholic lay people do.
• We need a teaching authority, or our interpretations are just too subjective. Just look at all the different interpretations people come up with. How will we know which is right, if the church doesn’t tell us? This suffers from so many philosophical issues. First, if our own understanding is so subjective, then our conclusion of what we need in order to overcome that subjectivity is subjective. So why trust our conclusion that we need the church, if that conclusion comes from subjective thinking? Second, how can we trust the authority of ongoing magisterial teaching, if we are so helplessly subjective and can’t trust what we think we can? Third, if we are able to understand the magisterium without being held back by subjectivity, why not the Bible? The Bible is often clearer. And finally, this is a very ahistorical claim. The early church went by the Bible, and they didn’t have an infallible teaching authority other than the apostolic writings in Scripture. Why can’t we do as they did? And how can the magisterium claim our authority when it is such a late development?
• Why did God interrupt the paradigm of the apostolic church, and stop revealing doctrines after that? Doesn’t it make more sense if God left an ongoing infallible voice? It’s not like God broke a continuity. He had already revealed everything in one deposit. This question is like asking, “Why does a mother stop giving birth to a baby, interrupting the process of continuing out of the birth canal?” Because the baby is born.

Polygamy?

A creative new objection to Sola Scriptura is that we can’t know that polygamy is wrong without an official church teaching, since Scripture doesn’t explicitly condemn it, and the Old Testament even allows it. The idea is that we don’t have apostolic teaching in Scripture that condemns polygamy, and yet that those who derive doctrine from Scripture typically believe polygamy to be wrong.

I like this objection because it’s surprising and new; to me, it’s even amusing. But whether or not it works against Sola Scriptura (I don’t have a position on that), it doesn’t work against Sola Apostolica.

Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church is hardly in a better position than Sola Scriptura or Sola Apostolica advocates are, because their church only formally condemned polygamy in the Council of Trent, which occurred after the Protestant Reformation had begun. In other words, their teaching is newer than Luther! So, if this objection is actually a good one, then even Roman Catholics had no idea whether polygamy was right or wrong for over a thousand years. But that’s ridiculous. From the beginning, Christians (whether Roman Catholic or not) have known what God’s will is for marriage.

But how do we know what the Christian doctrine is? It’s clear what God’s intention was for humans in the beginning, since he gave Adam one wife. We know that the Old Testament contained provisions about marriage that were only temporary (Matt 19:3-9) because the Old Testament Law is no longer in effect.

Furthermore, a strong theme in the New Testament is that singlehood is a worthy vocation for the Kingdom of God. Paul teaches that we should be careful to prioritize the Kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit rather than the desires of our flesh, specifically in context of marriage—in fact, he felt that it was better not to marry (1 Cor 7:32-35). If that was a legitimate point of view, then it’s hard to see how it’s appropriate for a committed Christian to marry multiple people.

Church leaders are to have only one wife (1 Tim 3:2, 12). Of course, this is not specifically about lay people, but just look at the rest of the things on the list Paul gives in 1 Timothy 3. They are things that all Christians should be practicing. Of course, leaders must come under special scrutiny, because of their role, but what is required of them is not fundamentally different from what is required of us.

Finally, we have no examples of polygamists in the apostolic church, and all New Testament injunctions about marriage are most easily read in the context of monogamy. Polygamy never sat very comfortably with Old Testament principles, and it just doesn’t fit New Testament ones.

Is this interpretation of the New Testament correct? We know that this is truly the apostolic way, because it was taught by the pre-Nicene church.¹¹

If, then, the teaching of the prophets and of Himself moves you, it is better for you to follow God than your imprudent and blind masters, who even till this time permit each man to have four or five wives; and if any one see a beautiful woman and desire to have her, they quote the doings of Jacob [called] Israel, and of the other patriarchs, and maintain that it is not wrong to do such things; for they are miserably ignorant in this matter. (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 84)

Others, again, following upon Basilides and Carpocrates, have introduced promiscuous intercourse and a plurality of wives, and are indifferent about eating meats sacrificed to idols, maintaining that God does not greatly regard such matters. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.28.2)

But far be it from Christians to conceive any such deeds; for with them temperance dwells, self-restraint is practiced, monogamy is observed . . . (Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.15)

but the same man and Lord, while he renews the old ones, no longer allows polygamy (for indeed this was desired by God when it was necessary for men to increase and multiply), but he introduces monogamy promptly, the procreation of children, and the care of the house, to which a woman is given as a helper; for here too he does not sin from the Testament (for he is not forbidden by the law), but he does not fulfill that supreme perfection of life which is dealt with from the Gospel. But he acquires heavenly glory for himself, who remains with himself, earns that which is dissolved by death, keeping the unpolluted conjunction, and with a grateful and happy heart he prepares the economy, by which it is effected, that he cannot be torn from the service of the Lord. (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.12 [translation from Google Translate])

Latin text: “sed idem vir et Dominus, dum vetera renovat, non amplius concedit polygamiam (nam hanc quidem expetebat Deus, quando oportebat homines augeri et multiplicari), sed monogamiam introducit prompter liberorum procreationem et domus curam, ad quam data est mulier adjutrix: et si cui Apostolus propter intemperantiam et ustionem, veniam secundi concedit matrimonii; nam hic quoque non peccat quidem ex Testamento (non est enim a lege prohibitus), non implet autem summam illam vitæ perfectionem, quæ agitur ex Evangelio. Gloriam autem sibi acquirit cœlestem, qui apud se manserit, earn, quæ est morte dissoluta, impollutam servans conjunctionem, et grato ac lubente animo paret ceconomiæ, per quam effectum est, ut divelli non possit a Domini ministerio.”

And thus, from the time of Abraham, the custom of marrying with sisters has ceased; and from the times of the prophets the contracting of marriage with several wives has been done away with; for we read, “Go not after thy lusts, but refrain thyself from thine appetites;” for “wine and women will make men of understanding to fall away;” and in another place, “Let thy fountain be blessed; and rejoice with the wife of thy youth,” manifestly forbidding a plurality of wives. And Jeremiah clearly gives the name of “fed horses” to those who lust after other women; and we read, “The multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay any fast foundation.” Lest, however, we should seem prolix in collecting the testimonies of the prophets, let us again point out how chastity succeeded to marriage with one wife, taking away by degrees the lusts of the flesh, until it removed entirely the inclination for sexual intercourse engendered by habit. (Methodius, The Banquet of the Ten Virgins 1.3)

We do not indeed forbid the union of man and woman, blest by God as the seminary of the human race, and devised for the replenishment of the earth and the furnishing of the world, and therefore permitted, yet singly. For Adam was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife, one woman, one rib. We grant, that among our ancestors, and the patriarchs themselves, it was lawful not only to marry, but even to multiply wives. There were concubines, too, (in those days.) But although the Church did come in figuratively in the synagogue, yet (to interpret simply) it was necessary to institute (certain things) which should afterward deserve to be either lopped off or modified. For the Law was (in due time) to supervene. (Nor was that enough:) for it was meet that causes for making up the deficiencies of the Law should have forerun (Him who was to supply those deficiencies). And so to the Law presently had to succeed the Word of God introducing the spiritual circumcision. Therefore, by means of the wide licence of those days, materials for subsequent emendations were furnished beforehand, of which materials the Lord by His Gospel, and then the apostle in the last days of the (Jewish) age, either cut off the redundancies or regulated the disorders. (Tertullian, To His Wife 2) Note that this is not to say that the doctrine isn’t fully found in Scripture; only that we know we are properly interpreting the apostolic deposit when we see that the apostolic church uniformly interpreted it this way. If all these signs agree, we have no reason to lose sleep on this issue.

Formal Arguments

This is my section for including formal syllogisms that could be used to defend some of the claims in this article. Feel free to skip it.

From Doctrinal Conservatism

1. If developments and clarifications to an infallible teaching are fallible, then we should prefer the earlier infallible teaching over the later fallible teaching.
2. Developments and clarifications to apostolic teachings (themselves infallible) are fallible.
3. Therefore, we should prefer the infallible apostolic teachings over the later developments and clarifications.

Conclusion: There Is No Authority Problem

Catholics and Orthodox have said for many years that there is an authority problem in groups who, like the Protestants and Anabaptists, rely on the text of Scripture for their doctrine. Where do these texts get their authority? Only from the decisions of their institutional church, they say.

However, this article has demonstrated that there is no authority problem in Protestantism or Anabaptism. The New Testament can be shown to be authoritative without either a circular argument or any kind of appeal to the decisions of an institutional church.

This view is based on the historic faith method, which is a growing view among Anabaptists and Christians with similar beliefs. However, it isn’t confined to that system, and it could be used by any Anabaptists and Protestants. For those who hold to Sola Apostolica, there is no authority problem. Our faith can be defined without reference to the decisions of a Catholic or Orthodox institutional church.

• 1
  It is interesting, though a subject for another time, to note that the Roman Catholic apologists, by insisting on their answer to this authority problem, have a circularity problem, as this video and this video show.
• 2
  It’s worth noting that, even if the premise were the same thing as the conclusion, that would mean that everyone who agrees with the premise also agrees with the conclusion. But everybody doesn’t agree, so my argument isn’t circular. So if this is a circular argument, that just means that everyone agrees that my conclusion is true, since they all agree with the premise—the books of the New Testament are our authority for doctrine.
• 3
  Arguments for this have been put forward by such as Lydia McGrew, Peter J. Williams, and many other Evangelical scholars.
• 4
  People like William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Mike Licona, and Jonathan McLatchie have made excellent arguments based especially on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. Other arguments could be made from fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, Jesus’ prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem, and the goodness of Jesus’ example and teachings.
• 5
  1 Cor 14, Didache 9-10, 14, Justin Apology 1.67
• 6
  But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid, and this without any whirlwind of sacrilegious pride, without any puffing of the neck through arrogance, without any strife of envious hatred, simply with holy humility, catholic peace, and Christian charity? (Augustine, On Baptism 2.3.4)
  
  In all these books those who fear God and are of a meek and pious disposition seek the will of God. And in pursuing this search the first rule to be observed is, as I said, to know these books, if not yet with the understanding, still to read them so as to commit them to memory, or at least so as not to remain wholly ignorant of them. Next, those matters that are plainly laid down in them, whether rules of life or rules of faith, are to be searched into more carefully and more diligently; and the more of these a man discovers, the more capacious does his understanding become. For among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of life — to wit, hope and love, of which I have spoken in the previous book. After this, when we have made ourselves to a certain extent familiar with the language of Scripture, we may proceed to open up and investigate the obscure passages, and in doing so draw examples from the plainer expressions to throw light upon the more obscure, and use the evidence of passages about which there is no doubt to remove all hesitation in regard to the doubtful passages. And in this matter memory counts for a great deal; but if the memory be defective, no rules can supply the want. (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.9.14)
• 7
  See Against Heresies 3:1-3
• 8
  “Whatever is decided in the holy councils of the bishops must be attributed to the divine will.” Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 57, quoted in Collins and Walls, Roman but Not Catholic.
• 9
  See this argument by Trent Horn
• 10
  From this site.
• 11
  
  
  If, then, the teaching of the prophets and of Himself moves you, it is better for you to follow God than your imprudent and blind masters, who even till this time permit each man to have four or five wives; and if any one see a beautiful woman and desire to have her, they quote the doings of Jacob [called] Israel, and of the other patriarchs, and maintain that it is not wrong to do such things; for they are miserably ignorant in this matter. (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 84)
  
  Others, again, following upon Basilides and Carpocrates, have introduced promiscuous intercourse and a plurality of wives, and are indifferent about eating meats sacrificed to idols, maintaining that God does not greatly regard such matters. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.28.2)
  
  But far be it from Christians to conceive any such deeds; for with them temperance dwells, self-restraint is practiced, monogamy is observed . . . (Theophilus, To Autolycus 3.15)
  
  but the same man and Lord, while he renews the old ones, no longer allows polygamy (for indeed this was desired by God when it was necessary for men to increase and multiply), but he introduces monogamy promptly, the procreation of children, and the care of the house, to which a woman is given as a helper; for here too he does not sin from the Testament (for he is not forbidden by the law), but he does not fulfill that supreme perfection of life which is dealt with from the Gospel. But he acquires heavenly glory for himself, who remains with himself, earns that which is dissolved by death, keeping the unpolluted conjunction, and with a grateful and happy heart he prepares the economy, by which it is effected, that he cannot be torn from the service of the Lord. (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.12 [translation from Google Translate])
  
  Latin text: “sed idem vir et Dominus, dum vetera renovat, non amplius concedit polygamiam (nam hanc quidem expetebat Deus, quando oportebat homines augeri et multiplicari), sed monogamiam introducit prompter liberorum procreationem et domus curam, ad quam data est mulier adjutrix: et si cui Apostolus propter intemperantiam et ustionem, veniam secundi concedit matrimonii; nam hic quoque non peccat quidem ex Testamento (non est enim a lege prohibitus), non implet autem summam illam vitæ perfectionem, quæ agitur ex Evangelio. Gloriam autem sibi acquirit cœlestem, qui apud se manserit, earn, quæ est morte dissoluta, impollutam servans conjunctionem, et grato ac lubente animo paret ceconomiæ, per quam effectum est, ut divelli non possit a Domini ministerio.”
  
  And thus, from the time of Abraham, the custom of marrying with sisters has ceased; and from the times of the prophets the contracting of marriage with several wives has been done away with; for we read, “Go not after thy lusts, but refrain thyself from thine appetites;” for “wine and women will make men of understanding to fall away;” and in another place, “Let thy fountain be blessed; and rejoice with the wife of thy youth,” manifestly forbidding a plurality of wives. And Jeremiah clearly gives the name of “fed horses” to those who lust after other women; and we read, “The multiplying brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard slips, nor lay any fast foundation.” Lest, however, we should seem prolix in collecting the testimonies of the prophets, let us again point out how chastity succeeded to marriage with one wife, taking away by degrees the lusts of the flesh, until it removed entirely the inclination for sexual intercourse engendered by habit. (Methodius, The Banquet of the Ten Virgins 1.3)
  
  We do not indeed forbid the union of man and woman, blest by God as the seminary of the human race, and devised for the replenishment of the earth and the furnishing of the world, and therefore permitted, yet singly. For Adam was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife, one woman, one rib. We grant, that among our ancestors, and the patriarchs themselves, it was lawful not only to marry, but even to multiply wives. There were concubines, too, (in those days.) But although the Church did come in figuratively in the synagogue, yet (to interpret simply) it was necessary to institute (certain things) which should afterward deserve to be either lopped off or modified. For the Law was (in due time) to supervene. (Nor was that enough:) for it was meet that causes for making up the deficiencies of the Law should have forerun (Him who was to supply those deficiencies). And so to the Law presently had to succeed the Word of God introducing the spiritual circumcision. Therefore, by means of the wide licence of those days, materials for subsequent emendations were furnished beforehand, of which materials the Lord by His Gospel, and then the apostle in the last days of the (Jewish) age, either cut off the redundancies or regulated the disorders. (Tertullian, To His Wife 2)