Some Unresolvable Problems Associated with Prophecy Used to Determine the Canon of Scripture in Association with the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptora.

Some Protestant adherents of sola scriptora advocate the argument that prophesies may be used to determine the canon of scripture. For it is argued that prophecy given in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament. The fulfilment of prophecy indicates both the Old and New Testament books were written by God. Yet there are several problems with the use of prophecy to establish the canon of scripture –

1) Prophesy is not specified within the scriptural text as an indicator of inspiration of the text. So the use of prophecy to determine the canon of scripture is extrinsic to the inspired text and therefore a property of the text artificially imposed to define the canon.

2) Prophesy does not conclude to the inspiration of any text. For a prophet may state a prophetic utterance and that utterance was subsequently written down. Yet the writing of the text may only be a historical witness to prophecy, without any need to posit the text was authored by God.

3) Similarly, when Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophesy, the New Testament gospels and letters may only have faithfully written down what occurred without any need to posit the text was authored by God. For any witness at any time could have written down what was observed as a historical document. Furthermore, there have been many miracles witnessed in human history and much was written down as through eyewitnesses to the miracles. Yet nobody claims the written testimony of said miracles is in any way inspired text. Therefore similarly, any claims to the inspiration of the ancient Christian texts may not rest upon faithful witnesses who wrote down what occurred.

Both the Old and New Testament documents may be considered as historically faithful documents without any need to posit or conclude that any document was authored by God. The problem of the canon of scripture is unresolvable within Protestantism, for there is no authority within the Protestant system that can be used to define the canon of scripture. The appeal to prophesy, like all the other appeals to apostolic authorship of the New Testament, and authorship of the prophets for the Old Testament also fail to establish any text was written by God.

4) The text may be inspired regardless of the existence of any prophecy. For example, the letter of Jude contains no prophecy and is considered to have been authored by God. As inspiration exists independent of prophecy, prophecy cannot be used to conclude to the inspiration of any text.

5) There are no criteria drawn from the inspired text to determine if a text is inspired. For if the inspired text speaks of criteria for the inspiration of a text, and those criteria are used to determine the inspiration of the text, the method used to determine the canon is always circular. For example, if a text says an inspired text must be true and of apostolic origin to be inspired, then if the truth and apostolic origin of a text is used to determine the canon, then the canon is always self-referencing according to the selection criteria of truth and apostolic origin used to determine the canon.

Or stated in another way,

The text says an inspired text is true.
The text is true.
Therefore the text is inspired.

Conclusion - Therefore the text is inspired because it is true, and the text is true because it is inspired.

The above conclusion is circular, and therefore any method that uses criteria derived from the text to determine the canon of the inspired text will always be self-referencing. The only viable way to establish that any text was written by God is to appeal to oral tradition along with an authority in the Old Testament church of Israel and the New Testament church to bind and loose as an act of authority from God. These church authorities alone can establish the canon of scripture and these authorities are either rejected or ignored by the false principle of sola scriptora as used by Protestantism.

Conclusion – The use of prophecy to establish the canon of scripture is a failure.

Other criteria such as historicity, authored by prophets, or kings, or priests, the recording of miracles, wisdom and proverbial content, the recording of both natural and supernatural secrets, the unity of story, or any other criteria found in the text, all fall into the same logical trap of self-referencing criteria to determine the canon of scripture. All criteria based upon the text content are then insufficient to determine the canon of scripture.

Furthermore, we may say it is fitting that an inspired text be true, historically reliable, contain much wisdom, and secrets. But such properties of the text do not demonstrate the text was authored by God. For any text may have the same criteria, but only be authored by man, without inspiration.