Scripture Alone by R.C. Sproul

by R.C. Sproul

Scripture Alone consists of four chapters that originally appeared in symposium volumes edited by others and the author's commentary on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. These writings constitute an important restatement of the evangelical doctrine of Scripture. Scripture Alone will help all Christians to stand firm in defense of the truth.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Scripture, Christian, Nonfiction, Christian Non Fiction

Paperback

First published June 5, 2005

About the author

Dr. R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was founder of Ligonier Ministries, an international Christian discipleship organization located near Orlando, Fla. He was founding pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine.

Ligonier Ministries began in 1971 as the Ligonier Valley Study Center in Ligonier, Pa. In an effort to respond more effectively to the growing demand for Dr. Sproul’s teachings and the ministry’s other educational resources, the general offices were moved to Orlando in 1984, and the ministry was renamed.

Dr. Sproul’s radio program, Renewing Your Mind, is still broadcast daily on hundreds of radio stations around the world and can also be heard online. Dr. Sproul produced hundreds of lecture series and recorded numerous video series on subjects such as the history of philosophy, theology, Bible study, apologetics, and Christian living.

He contributed dozens of articles to national evangelical publications, spoke at conferences, churches, and academic institutions around the world, and wrote more than one hundred books, including The Holiness of God, Chosen by God, and Everyone’s a Theologian. He signed the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and wrote a commentary on that document. He also served as general editor of the Reformation Study Bible, previously known as the New Geneva Study Bible.

Dr. Sproul had a distinguished academic teaching career at various colleges and seminaries, including Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando and Jackson, Miss. He was ordained as a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.

Reviews

[J. Alfred · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a grab bag of reprints on similar subjects and glosses on a series of position points made in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy in 1978. The points were pretty clear and don't really require explanation.
On an important topic, yes, but repetitive and boring.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought this thinking it covered Sola Scriptura, and realized after the fact that it actually mostly covered the doctrine of inerrancy. Regardless, I think it was an edifying read that helped me think through my understanding of inerrancy.

We ought to recognize that scripture abides by the literary conventions of the time it was written in. Things like spotlighting, approximations, metaphor, hyperbole, figurative language and the like should be seen as literary conventions to communicate truth and not errors.

To use an example, some people accuse the Bible of error because Jesus said “the mustard, the smallest of all seeds” when there are in fact much smaller seeds. Even William Lane Craig believes this was scientific error. Answers in Genesis rose to the defense by saying that mustards seeds were the smallest seed at the time and that we need to reject uniformitarianism. So by implication they must be saying that either there was rapid evolution that created smaller seeds in the last few thousand years (ironic for a YEC organization) or that God ex Nihilo created orchids in the last 2000 years (which denies the historical church understanding that God ceased ex Nihilo creation after the 6th day of creation, again rather ironic for a YEC org), unless we need to deny inductive reasoning too - shoutout David Hume 🤪.

Both parties miss the very obvious fact that Jesus often used hyperbole and metaphor. His mustard seed statement is him employing hyperbole to make a point about the kingdom of God. If we were to take His other literary devices literally, we would all be walking around with our eyes gouged out and our hands cut off, and think it’s ok to castrate oneself unto the Lord (sorry Origen). Oh don’t forget that would also mean that Jesus was a literal shepherd (even though it’s clear he was a carpenter), that he was also somehow a literal door, that we literally wouldn’t need water after becoming saved (from that “those who drink the living water will never thirst again” verse), or that the communion elements are literally Jesus’s corpse (sorry Catholics).


PS: I apologize for my sass, no disrespect intended :)

[Coyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a useful meditation on the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy for the more advanced reader. This is not a good place to begin thinking about the role of the Bible in life, but it is a decent book to help think about objections to the doctrine of the complete truth of Scripture and responses to those objections.

[Margaret Metz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books I read one bite at a time and it took me a while ~ not because any of the concepts were new to me but because I'm a practical girl and deep talk about battling theologians sometimes goes over my head. lol

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Scripture Alone’ is a collection of writings by R.C. Sproul, written to deal with one of the most controversial issues and important questions that the Church faces in our day, that being the question of the nature and the authority of Scripture. A shadow of doubt has been cast upon the reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible, and it finds its origin in the denial of inerrancy.

Denials of Biblical inerrancy are nothing new. Liberals have for centuries asserted that the Bible is merely the product of human beings who wrote their thoughts about God, and therefore as a matter of course it contains errors. But what precipitated the contents of this book is the relatively recent movement within Evangelicalism itself which would, unlike liberalism, still claim divine inspiration of the Bible, but concede the presence of errors in Scripture.

These individuals, many of them scholars and seminary professors, might claim the term “limited inerrancy” for their position. And the way one of its advocates explained it to me, on the surface it actually sounds reasonable: “God has so worked with sinful human beings, the authors of Scripture, that in spite of the mistakes that they made, his message of salvation gets through.”

One strength of this book is that it shows that this position is reasonable only at the surface and cannot stand up to scrutiny and logical analysis. Dr. Sproul relates how on numerous occasions he has had the following dialogue with biblical scholars who hold to this position. And he assures us that he is not making this up, but what follows is a verbatim reproduction of what transpires:

“Do you maintain the inerrancy of Scripture?” – “No.”
“Do you believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God?” – “Yes.”
“Do you think God inspires error?” – “No.”
“Is all of the Bible inspired by God?” – “Yes.”
“Is the Bible errant?” – “No!”
“Is it inerrant?” – “No!”

At this point, Sproul says, he gets an Excedrin headache. The fallacious nature of so-called “limited inerrancy” is exposed here because there is no tertium quid between errancy and inerrancy. Inerrancy is a category that incorporates everything outside of the category of errancy. To affirm or deny both categories is to be involved in a logical absurdity.

Sproul rightly and forcefully concludes: “Unless we want to join the ranks of the absurd, or unless we confess that God inspires error and join the ranks of the impious, or unless we confess that the Bible as a whole is not inspired, then we are forced by what Martin Luther called “resistless logic” to the conclusion that the Bible is inerrant.”

The issue of the autographs, or original manuscripts of the biblical books, is one reason some Evangelicals reject inerrancy. Because inerrancy is claimed only for the autographs and not for subsequent copies, and since we do not have any of the autographs any more, critics charge that the claim of inerrancy is empty, being neither verifiable nor falsifiable.

But, Sproul counters, it’s important to realize that the argument is not really about texts that we don’t have, but about texts that at one point in time did indeed exist. The real question is, were those original documents inspired by God or weren’t they?

In other words, to limit inerrancy or inspiration to the original manuscripts does not make the whole contention irrelevant. It does make a difference. If the original texts were errant, the church would have the option of rejecting the teachings of that errant text. If the original text is inerrant, we have no legitimate basis for disobeying a mandate of Scripture where the text is not in doubt.

Biblical inerrancy affirms that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original. The one who finds such a claim to be empty simply needs to educate himself on the science of textual criticism, the discipline which seeks to reconstruct the original based on the examination of the existing manuscripts. The fact is that about 99 percent of the original can be reconstructed to a virtual certainty, and where there is some doubt in the remaining 1 percent of the text, no doctrine of the Christian faith hangs in the balance.

So it is fair to say that though we don’t literally have the originals, we do, practically. For all intents and purposes we can reconstruct what was in the original.

Nobody is denying that there remain some Bible difficulties that have not yet been resolved. These have been known for centuries, even millennia. And in knowing how to proceed we might note that a parallel exists with the discipline of science. In science, you don’t throw out a paradigm due to the existence of a few anomalies that are not easily explainable by the paradigm. The same thing is true when dealing with the problem of Bible difficulties. You don’t just look at the particulars of unresolved problems, but you also look at the trend.

A century or so ago at the height of liberal hubris regarding the errancy of the Bible, there were maybe 100 difficulties that at the time were regarded as errors. But that list has been pared down to a handful of apparent discrepancies. At this point in the investigation, you don’t take the handful of unresolved difficulties and say, uh oh, we can throw the Bible out, when everything indicates greater confidence in the paradigm than what we had before.

Next, we should note that despite the knowledge of Bible difficulties, the church, historically, has affirmed inerrancy. True, the word “inerrancy” was not used until the seventeenth century. But the concept underlying the word has always been there. And the underlying concept is an affirmation of the complete truthfulness and trustworthiness of Scripture, that we can in fact trust our Bible.

The Protestant Reformation itself, though it did not use the word “inerrancy,” was built upon that concept. Sola Scriptura, the claim that Scripture alone is the supreme normative authority in matters of religion, was called the “formal cause” of the Reformation. Martin Luther argued that whereas both popes and church councils could and have erred, Scripture does not err. For Luther the sola of sola Scriptura was inseparably related to the Scriptures’ unique inerrancy. Sola Scriptura as the supreme norm of ecclesiastical authority rests ultimately on the premise of the inerrancy of the Word of God. So though the word is of somewhat recent vintage in church history, it is false to say that the concept of inerrancy itself also is recent, and that it is the product of a reified seventeenth-century Protestant scholasticism.

Finally, the folks who hold to “limited inerrancy” really face an insurmountable problem. They think that it is okay to concede that the Bible has errors in it but these errors are limited to insignificant matters of science and history, while the important matters of salvation and theology remain inerrant. Why would they believe that? The Bible certainly doesn’t teach that. You are left with nothing other than sheer subjectivism if you have to decide where the Bible is telling the truth and where it is mistaken. And such an approach completely strips the Bible of any authority over our lives.

No, our approach to Scripture should be nothing less than that held by Jesus himself. And even liberal scholars concede that Jesus’ view of Scripture was essentially that of modern day advocates of inerrancy. Liberals just flat out say that Jesus was wrong in his view. And Evangelicals who are essentially saying the same thing need to face up to Jesus’ words when he said, “how can you believe me concerning heavenly things if you will not believe me concerning earthly things?”

Talk about straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. At least the advocate of inerrancy will swat at a few gnats by rolling up his sleeves and struggling, methodically and painstakingly, using the tools of textual criticism, archaeology, ancient languages, and the like, to make progress in this endeavor. The critics don’t do any of that heavy lifting but just declare that the Bible has errors in it. They want to eat their cake and have it too. They strain out the gnat, that is, problems in the Bible, and swallow the camel, because they still want to say they believe the message of the Bible regarding the deity of Christ and salvation, when their only basis for believing that is their subjective and existential decision to believe it. If I cannot believe the Bible where it is testable, why in the world would I believe it where it is not?

Inerrancy is not something to be held because it is the product of a misguided Enlightenment search for absolute certainty. No, inerrancy is something to be held because it is inextricably bound together with Biblical inspiration, trustworthiness, and authority. It is the position of the Protestant Reformation and the historic Church prior to that, and to deny inerrancy is to deny sola Scriptura and to remove oneself from under the authority of Scripture.

[Daniel Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christians hold that the Bible is God's Word. Inerrant, infallible, and authoritative. But "in the twentieth century, the orthodox doctrine of Scripture became a particular focus of intense criticism." Dr. R.C Sproul addresses the doctrines and criticisms in Scripture Alone.

The book is presented in two parts:
- Part one presents four chapters, each "reprints of Dr. Sproul's contributions to several important books on the subject of biblical authority." Here, he looks at the topics of Sola Scriptura (the Reformation principle of 'Scripture alone'), the Establishment of Scripture, the Case for Inerrancy, and the Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit.
- Part two is "Sproul's detailed commentary on the nineteen articles of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy that was adopted by the ICBI in 1978. This commentary provides a fuller explanation and exposition of each of the articles in order to clarify the precise position of the council."

This is a solid read, full of important definitions and clarifications related to this critical topic. Because it is pulled from different sources, there is a degree of overlap here, and it isn't (say) as systematically presented as I would prefer. It is largely accessible, though Sproul is clearly educated and will occasionally reference events, doctrines, or terms I have no familiarity with. So if you are new to this topic, this book isn't the place to start, but nevertheless is a valuable work full of important insights.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is the evangelical doctrine of Scripture? It seems as if evangelicals today have forgotten what that is. It is completely frustrating to read commentaries and other scholarly works by evangelicals today who do not hold to the doctrine of inerrancy. This was the long-held belief by Christians that the Bible was infallible and inerrant. When the church fathers and Reformers came across so-called discrepancies or contradictions in Scripture, it was their assumption that the problem lie with them or with something else; the problem was not with Scripture. Many evangelical scholars today, however, do not have that basic assumption. Sproul brings us back to the true doctrine of the authority, infallibility, inerrancy, and sufficiency of Scripture.

[Dane Jöhannsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this volume is riddled with the common modern inconsistency of "The Bible is God's Word, but we don't have the Bible since only the original autographs are truly God's Word", yet, it is a helpful work for understanding the development of Warfield's view of inspiration and preservation in its modern reformed articulations. This is also a great work for better understanding the "Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy" since Sproul was not only one that document's contributors but also wrote a commentary on some of its key passages published in this volume.

[Michael Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sound overall look at the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy. Much of the work deals with the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy which is an important document in evangelical history. The first two chapters were excellent in helping one understand historically the doctrine of inerrancy and the establishment of the canon. Some of the work is pretty heady, but a worthwhile read.

[Gary Sedivy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not the type of book you can just read in a hurry. The concepts are deep, the reasoning is sound but not simple. Some of the heresies concerning the failure of the Bible to be the inerrant infallible word of God are discussed and debunked.
There may be deeper more complete treatises on this subject, but this one is sufficient for my needs and understanding.

[Joy LaPrade · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a repackaging of some of Sproul’s writings about biblical inerrancy. It helped me see clearly that the inerrancy movement was an anxious overreaction to modern biblical scholarship.

[Stan Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

There have long been liberal theologians who question the authority of Scripture. In recent decades some Evangelical theologians have supported authority while denying inerrancy.
In this book Sproul deals with sophisticated theological ideas in a way that is accessible to the layman. He deals with authority, inspiration, and inerrancy giving very helpful commentary.

[Michael Kidd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part 1 of this book is excellent. Part 2 is lacking in depth since it's really just a running commentary of the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. This book would be great from someone who was skeptical of the Bible or a young believer studying the doctrine of the Word.

[Gage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything Sproul writes is great. My only criticism would be that the last half of the book he simply gives a running commentary on the Chicago Statement that is in Appendix 2. Probably could have done without that because the reasoning behind each article had already been made in part 1.

[Matt Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent background and insight into the Chicago statement on inerrancy.