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Sola Scriptura, inspiration, reliability & the process of how we got the Bible

  • Writer: Christina Grace Danny
    Christina Grace Danny
  • Mar 28, 2023
  • 1 min read

If you are a protestant, do you know the five solas? It says, Christians are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed by Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.

Out of these, Sola scriptura is often referred to as the formal principle of the Reformation - for all other doctrines are understood from the Scriptures, and the main disagreement with the Catholic church was pertaining to practices that Martin Luther found to be outside the Scriptures and even contradictory to them. Sola scriptura means only Scripture. Because Scripture is God-breathed, it is considered sufficient, authoritative, and true - for the faith and practice of the Christian. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Of course, God continues to speak through church elders, and saints, many of which are recorded in several books and traditions throughout history. Yet, the authority of those teachings is limited in comparison to the scriptures.


Let's look at the following questions. Expand to know more about the question of your interest. Just some disclaimers before you read the rest of the article: (i) There is so much to read pertaining to this, that as I read, most of what I believe is affirmed, and where I lack, I do grow. So, there is always some scope for change. (ii) I don't necessarily subscribe to all the views of the links that I've referred to and cited in this article.

Yet, I think these are very important topics that we should think about and discuss! Feel free to disagree or comment.

Does Bible teach the principle of sola scriptura?

One of the main objections of the Catholic church was that 'Sola Scriptura' in itself was a principle that was not found in the Bible. It isn't a bad argument. But, it's the same kind of argument that the Jehovah's Witness and other groups bring against the concept of the Trinity. Let's read some verses and logic that are used to respond to this question.

Jesus Himself explained through what was considered Scriptures at that time: And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)

Jesus warns those who set aside God's command to observe (rabbinical) traditions: You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! (Mark 7:8,9)

We are commanded not to go beyond what is written (by those entrusted with the mysteries of God): This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. (1 Cor 4:1,6)

Appreciation for those who verified new teachings with Scripture: Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. (Acts 17:11)

While Jesus fulfilled every law and followed every written word, He was also against human traditions that were added to God's word. Most probably, Jewish Bible in the time of Jesus included the Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). He quoted from this Hebrew Canon often but also spoke out strongly against many human traditions that were added to it. Since Jesus is the final word of God in the last days, with the gospels and the letters from apostles (who were eyewitnesses of Jesus) the New Testament canon is also considered closed and sufficient.

Check out 'What is Sola Scriptura?' by Got questions.


Why is sola scriptura important?

(i) To identify false doctrines and heresies:

One of the main challenges from the beginning of time to the present age is the deception of false prophets and teachers. False doctrines are typically those that oppose the word of God, some fundamental truth or that which is necessary for salvation. For example, any redefinition of the person of Christ, any addition required of the work of Christ, any license to sin or removal of hell/ judgment.


For example, during the time of the prophet Jeremiah, we read how false prophets used God's name and spread lies. Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 29: 8, 9) How would a common Israelite know who is right? Jeremiah or Hananiah? One way is to wait for two years and realize that one is still in captivity and then understand that Hananiah is false, or Hananiah can be judged by his fruits. Yet, as the church grows and is scattered throughout the world, as thousands of false doctrines creep up, and as corrupt people do get their way into church leadership as well, there is a need to clearly define what is Scripture and what is not - taking the precedence of the Old Testament canon which Jesus seems to approve.

Several New Testament letters also teach the early church members how to identify false doctrines/ teachers (1&2 Timothy, Titus), and also exposes the falsehood of many such doctrines (Galatians is against the doctrines given by Judaizers in the church, Colossians and the epistle of John may be against Gnosticism). If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. (1 Tim 6:3-5) But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. (2 Peter 2:1) Thus, even in the era of the church, there was a need to identify true teachings and letters and differentiate them from false doctrines that were in circulation.

(ii) To allow for unity of the church amidst differences in certain interpretations: Falsehood in terms of doctrine is different from disunity regarding interpretations of doctrines of secondary nature. For we read from the Bible that we haven't attained unity of faith, neither do we know completely. Yet, we know sufficient, and of things of secondary nature we are called to be united amidst disagreements, even while working out to seek the truth in love. We read in Ephesians 4:13, 14 - until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes, and in 1 Corinthians 13: 9, 12 - For we know in part and we prophesy in part. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 1:10 - I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. Most differences of opinion among denominations come when groups prioritize or give emphasis to particular verses in comparison to others. Yet when these differences can be within reasonable interpretations of Scripture - without adding anything to it from outside or deleting any portion, then, we may consider them as differences within the church, and not as cults.


Thus, the principle of sola scriptura helps the church in holding on to that which is true, recognizing and shun away from false doctrines, and prayerfully handling disagreements in issues of secondary nature.


What do we mean by Inspiration - with regard to the Bible?

INSPIRATION: Scripture is God-inspired. For understanding this a little better, let's look at other sacred texts and list their understandings of how those texts came to be. 1. Hindu scriptures - superhuman writings: Hindus believe that the Vedas as apauruseya which means "not of a man, superhuman" and "impersonal, authorless, and received directly from God by sages or seers in a deep meditative state, and passed on to the next generations orally. The Purānas comprise oral/ transcribed myths, folklore, and teachings. Ved Vyasa wrote Mahabharata and Ramayana. He is considered to be a partial incarnation of Vishnu and an immortal Chiranjeevi. 2. Buddhist scriptures - teachings of someone who attained nirvana: Buddhists believe the texts are buddhavacana - the word of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, ascetic/religious teacher), which are discourses attributed to the Buddha or one of his close disciples. 3. Occultism - message from a spirit medium: Ouija board, is a device ostensibly used for obtaining messages from the spirit world, usually employed by a medium. 4. Quran - recited by an angel: According to Islamic belief, the Qurʾān was revealed by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. Quran is said to be the literal transcript of God's speech, eternally existing, and without error. The origins of the sacred texts of other religions seem to be either (i) Superhuman - needing an enlightened man in his wisdom getting know truths, (ii) Non-human - needing a spirit or angel to dictate, bypassing any reasoning by that individual.

Quite differently from the above-mentioned methods of inspiration, we do know that God of the Bible used ordinary people - prophets, kings, shepherds, scribes, priests, fishermen, learned men, doctor, and so on to write the Bible. They were the writers and God was the author. There are many views or theories of Biblical inspiration. An overview of them is given below.

  • Neo-orthodox view: Bible isn't God's word. It is fallible words written by fallible humans, which may be at times used by God.

  • The mechanical theory of inspiration/ Dictation theory: God dictated, and human writers like secretaries wrote them down.

  • Theory of limited inspiration: God guided human writers but gave them the freedom to express themselves in their works, even to the point of allowing factual and historical errors. However, the Holy Spirit prevented doctrinal errors.

  • View of plenary verbal inspiration: Every single word (not just ideas/ thoughts) in the Bible is inspired (not dictated). The writings retain the personality of the individual writers, but the words are exactly what God wanted written.

  • The dynamic theory of inspiration: God directs the writer to thoughts and concepts, yet allows the distinctive personality of the writer to come into play.

While most Christians do not agree with the first two theories, different scholars/ Christians may agree with any of the next three theories, and I think that's ok! For, I believe that there is a mystery in almost every aspect of Christianity - How is Jesus both human and divine?, how does God's sovereignty and human free will reconcile? how are we justified through Christ's blood? are all questions that do have truthful and reliable answers at one level, but we do get baffled when we go deeper. How did the biblical writers compose the text? How exactly are they inspired? These are also questions that are beautifully mysterious.

What do we mean by Inerrancy and Infallibility - with regard to the Bible?

What does inerrancy NOT entail?

Our understanding of inerrancy has to be nuanced. It is not that we claim that Bible is inerrant in all that it says. Let us look at some examples:

  • The words of Job's comforters when they try to blame Job - are in the Bible, but that doesn't mean they are true. It's true that they said it, but what they said is not true!

  • There are prayers in the Bible. Prayers are not true or false. They are petitions.

  • There are passages in the Bible that aren't to be taken literally - when Jesus says mustard is the smallest seed, that is not a Botanical truth, but a lesson on faith given to a culture at a particular time.

  • There are grammatical crudities in the Bible.

  • There are rounding of numbers, so it isn't that the Bible is erroneous there. Just that the genre of historical writing doesn't require the scientific precision that we may expect.

  • There are literary styles and usage of them doesn't make Bible erroneous- hyperbole - when it says all the people of a town came to hear Him, doesn't necessarily mean that every person, baby in the town was there to listen.

What then does inerrancy entail?

As R C Sproul put it, we believe Bible is inspired by God, and therefore infallible (incapable of error). It is infallible and therefore it is inerrant (doesn't have error). It is inerrant, and therefore it is completely trustworthy. William Lane Craig's definition is also very helpful. He says Bible is inerrant in all that it teaches. Inerrancy means no errors of truth - no deceit, no fraud, no lies. Whatever Bible teaches is true. Truths can and does inlcude approximations, free quotations, language of appearance, different accounts of the same event as long as they don't contradict (Charles C Ryrie). It is also important to note that the doctrine of inerrancy is pertaining to the texts of the original manuscripts, and need not encompass translations or interpretation. The vocabulary and syntax of different languages make it difficult to translate perfectly.


Copying process: The manuscripts we have may not be the original, but scribal copies. It is important to know that the scribal copying process is extremely precise, and since we have thousands of manuscripts that we can compare, copyists' errors can be identified easily. There are several articles on the same that can be referred to. The extent of consistency between the various manuscripts helps ascertain the reliability of the copying process. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1940s, these first-century copies were compared to other manuscripts and found to be 99.9% accurate.


Check out this article on Biblical inerrancy. Check out William Lane Craig and R C Sproul's video on inerrancy.

What about the reliability of the Bible?

The word 'Reliable' means trustworthy. For a Christian, the reliability of the Bible is because it is inspired, infallible and inerrant. Yet, these claims are not merely blind creedal statements but are attested by their 'fruits' which are displayed in the natual and spiritual realms.

Some of the reasons why the Bible is considered reliable are:

  1. Because they are eyewitness accounts: The historical accounts were mostly by eyewitnesses. New Testament was written and distributed to people who would have witnessed those events/ miracles. Eyewitness account also means that they were written quite close to the time of occurrence of the event, and they cannot be legends (as legends are written much after the occurrence of the original event).

  2. Faithful Transmission: The content of the original manuscripts is faithfully preserved. The number of manuscripts (copies) available, and the degree of consistency between the manuscripts attest to the accuracy of transmission.

  3. Prophetic fulfilments: Several prophecies of the old testament have been fulfilled in the new testament, attesting to the divine nature of the content. There are prophecies about other nations which have been fulfilled too.

  4. Archaeological and historical evidence: Archaeology has repeatedly confirmed the accuracy of Biblical places, events, and people. There are extra-biblical sources that affirm many of the Biblical claims. There is consistency in the names of peoples and towns, cultures, and evidence of destructions of cities that affirm biblical stories pertaining to the same.

  5. Internal consistency amidst huge textual criticisms: There are about 40 writers writing books over a millennium, from different nations. Yet, the message is remarkably consistent. (There might be an objection that this is circular referencing since consistency is one of the principles which was considered during canonization. Yet, in my opinion, to have this degree of consistency is naturally impossible.)

  6. Transformative power: Evidence need not only be empirical in nature. One of the most important evidence for the reliability of the Bible is the transformative power that Bible has even today. There is a consistency in the message of the Bible with visions seen by people who have never read the Bible or heard about those aspects prior to their visions.

You can check out some interesting infographics from visualunit website on: Transmissional reliability of the New Testament.


Who decided what is Scripture? Timeline on how we got our Bible

Canon is the collection or list of books accepted as divinely inspired. The canonization process is more organic than visibly supernatural. Some of the principles considered were: (i) Was the author an apostle or did he have a close connection with an apostle? (ii) Is the book being accepted by the body of Christ at large? (iii) Did the book contain consistency of doctrine and orthodox teaching? (iv) Did the book bear evidence of high moral and spiritual values that would reflect a work of the Holy Spirit?


God through the human process gave us His word - beginning from the writing, to the copying, and preservation, right down to canonization and interpretation.

  • ~1500 BC - Some of the first texts of the Old Testament Hebrew Scripture were written. Parts of the Old Testament were written in stones, clay and wooden tablets, papyrus manuscripts and scrolls, and parchment made from tanned animal skins. The writings could have used an iron stylus, reed pen, pen knife for sharpening the pens and writing cases. They were copied faithfully by the Scribes. The challenge of hand-copying texts in the ancient world placed a premium on hearing, memorizing, and publicly reading documents—hence the emphasis on “hearing” the word of the Lord in the Old Testament.

  • ~400 BC - Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament) was completed (The deuterocanonical books may have been written till ~200 or 150 BC). Jewish Bible is called TaNaKh- Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings), and has 24 books which include all the 39 books of the Protestant Bible in a different order. The Catholic Old Testament has 46 books including the deuterocanonical books.

  • ~300 to 200 BC - Greek translation (Old Testament) - Septuagint. The word Septuagint is derived from the word for 70 and is based on a legend that the Greek translation was the work of 70 translators.

  • ~33 to ~90 AD - New Testament books were written.

  • ~ 170 AD - Eusebius's list of Old Testament books is very similar to the Hebrew Canon (Jewish Bible) and the Protestant Bible.

  • 367 - 397 AD Athanasius – Bishop of Alexandria in his 39th Festal letter listed 27 books of the New Testament and ~46 books of the Old Testament (as given in Catholic Bible) and further councils at Rome 382 AD, Hippo 393 AD, Carthage 397 AD ratified them.

  • ~383 - 404 AD - St Jerome translated the Bible into Latin and called it Latin Vulgate Bible (Vulgate meaning common). He originally translated it all from Greek, but as he went on he corrected the Old Testament against the Hebrew original. St. Jerome wanted to maintain the Hebrew Canon, but St. Augustine wanted the deuterocanonical books also added.

  • ~350 and mid-fourth century AD - Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus were written. These are the only surviving Bibles from the early Church.

  • 4th - 8th century - Gothic Bible (Bible in East Germanic language) was written.

  • 1382 to 1395 - Dr. John Wycliffe translated the Latin Vulgate Bible to English. He said, "it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ's sentence". Since the church didn't want the Bible translated, the Council of Constance declared Wycliffe (on 4 May 1415) a heretic and under the ban of the Church. It was decreed that his books be burned and his remains be exhumed.

  • 1455 AD - The Gutenberg Bible (Latin Vulgate Bible) was printed in Mainz by Johann Gutenberg and his associates, Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer.

  • 1546 AD- The Council of Trent reaffirmed the list of books officially considered canonical by the Roman Catholic Church (46 OT books) and issued an anathema on dissenters of the books affirmed in Trent.

  • 1522 - 1535 AD - William Tyndale's Bible is the first English Bible translation that worked directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, although it relied heavily upon the Latin Vulgate. It was mass-produced as a result of new advances in the art of printing. William Tyndale was a leading figure of the protestant reformation. He was executed by strangulation, and he was also burned at the stake. The Bible he translated was also burned by the church.

  • 1534 AD - The Luther Bible is a German translation by Martin Luther. New Testament was published in September 1522, and the completed Bible, containing a translation of the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha, in 1534. Luther followed the Hebrew OT while lowering the importance of the 7 Septuagint books into a separate section called the Apocrypha (not inspired, but good for instruction.)

  • As of September 2022 all of the Bible has been translated into 724 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,617 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,248 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,589 languages.

  • India has the world's second-highest number of languages (780), after Papua New Guinea (839). The first known translation of any Christian Scripture in an Indian language was done to Konkani in 1667 AD by Ignacio Arcamone, an Italian Jesuit. India’s Very First Bible Was Translated Into Tamil By A German Missionary Bartholomaus Ziengenbalg in 1714. A Gujarati translation of the Bible had been issued by the Serampore Mission Press in 1820, and William Carey had contributed to it. James Skinner and William Fyvie of the London Missionary Society continued the work. Nathan Brown, a Baptist, translated Bible into Assamese (1848). Parts of The New Testament were translated into the Tulu language of Karnataka in Kannada script in 1842 and the complete New Testament in 1847 by the Basel Missionaries in Mangalore. The Western Punjabi Persian script New Testament was published in 1912.


What are the different translations all about?

  • Broadly, translations are categorized in the range between word to word (formal equivalence) or meaning for meaning (functional equivalence). Each of the properly done translations have its own strengths and weaknesses. Thus, looking at multiple translations from the spectrum, and also looking at different languages will help the reader understand better.

  • Bible translations are done from the original language of the book (Hebrew or Greek) and are usually not solely reliant on any other intermediary languages.

  • A translation must be accurate, clear, and natural. Out of these three, accuracy is given higher priority. Accuracy in Bible translation is the faithful communication, as exactly as possible, of that meaning, determined according to sound principles of exegesis.

  • Some additional principles include: Communication of feelings and attitudes of the original text, and not just the information (as in Psalms). Preservation of the variety in genres of the original text. Representing faithfully the original historical and cultural context. To make every effort to ensure that no political, ideological, social, cultural, or theological agenda is allowed to distort the translation.

You can check out the principles of translation of the Forum of Bible Agencies International, and some interesting infographics from visualunit website on: Comparisons of English Bible translations.


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