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Mind-blowing episode alert! Jimmy Akin tackles the classic Protestant challenge head-on: “Name one doctrine NOT in the Bible!” Instead of Catholic distinctives, he brilliantly reveals three core beliefs virtually ALL Protestants accept—no more apostles, no new Scriptures, no new public revelation—yet NONE are taught (or even implied) in Scripture alone. Jimmy dismantles common proof-texts with razor-sharp logic, showing Tradition quietly underpins even sola scriptura views. A game-changer for apologetics conversations—don’t miss it!
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
In discussions about the idea that we should do theology Sola Scriptura—or “By Scripture Alone”—Protestants sometimes pose a challenge to Catholics.
“If you Catholics are right that not all doctrines are taught in the Bible and we need to use apostolic tradition, then give me a doctrine—just one doctrine—that isn’t taught in the Bible.”
They may say this with great confidence, as if it ends the discussion.
I mean, there’s nothing a Catholic can say to that, right?
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
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No Implicit Teachings
How should a Catholic respond to the challenge to name a doctrine that is supported by apostolic Tradition rather than Scripture?
The first thing to do is to recognize that the Bible doesn’t have to teach a doctrine explicitly in order to teach it.
For example, there is no verse in Scripture that says, “God is one being in three persons,” so it does not explicitly teach the doctrine of the Trinity.
However, there are passages that indicate that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, that there is only one God, and that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons.
So the Bible teaches the doctrine of the Trinity implicitly rather than explicitly.
This is not something that Protestants and Catholics disagree on.
Theologians from both groups recognize that the Bible teaches some things by implication—though there are individual Protestant and Catholics who seem to forget this fact, especially when engaged in apologetic discussions.
For our purposes, the key thing is not to respond to the challenge by citing something that the Bible teaches implicitly.
If you do that, and your Protestant dialogue partner knows that it’s taught implicitly, he will point that out, and you will have wasted your time.
In fact, even if you point out a teaching that the Bible doesn’t teach at all, your dialogue partner is likely to reflexively claim that it’s implicit, anyway.
You can’t do anything about that, but your task then becomes to show why Scripture does not imply the teaching under discussion.
Just don’t make the mistake of citing a teaching that is implicitly taught or that there is a plausible case for being implicitly taught.
No Catholic Distinctives
Another thing I generally recommend in responding to this challenge is not citing a teaching that is a distinctive of Catholics.
For example, the Assumption of Mary is not directly referred to in Scripture, and there are no passages that imply it—at least in a clear and undeniable way—and so this teaching requires Tradition for its support.
Since this doctrine is true, it would be perfectly fair to cite it as an example of a doctrine that is true but not taught in Scripture.
The problem is that it won’t help convince your Protestant dialogue partner.
The Assumption of Mary is usually rejected by Protestants, and so they usually will just reject the traditions that support it.
You thus won’t have done your case any good. In fact, you likely will have worsened it by giving your partner the opportunity to say, “See! That just shows how unreliable your tradition is!”
The right time to discuss doctrines like the Assumption of Mary is after your partner has become open to the idea of apostolic tradition still being taught in the post-apostolic age.
At that point, it can be reasonable to say, “Since you’ve already acknowledged that we have apostolic traditions from the beginning of the Church age, maybe you should look at things like the Assumption of Mary in another light.”
But it’s not going to advance the discussion to cite doctrines that are normally rejected in Protestant circles when your partner is still committed to sola scriptura.
Some Protestants, But Not Others
A step back from that idea is citing doctrines that are accepted by some Protestants but not others.
For example, there are no verses in Scripture that clearly state the mode or modes of baptism. There aren’t even any verses that discuss this matter.
But we do have texts—including first century texts—outside the Bible that do discuss it and that indicate that more than one mode of baptism is acceptable.
Thus the first century document known as the Didache states:
Didache 7:1-3
Now concerning baptism, baptize as follows: after you have reviewed all these things, baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” in running water.
But if you have no running water, then baptize in some other water; and if you are not able to baptize in cold water, then do so in warm.
But if you have neither, then pour water on the head three times “in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.”
Here the Didache is explicit about the fact that baptism by pouring is legitimate, as is another mode which it actually doesn’t specify but is plausibly taken to be immersion in water.
So the Didache indicates that more than one way of baptizing is permitted, and this tradition has been maintained in the Church.
The problem is that if you cite the mode of baptism when someone is requesting a teaching not taught in Scripture, it’s likely to go sideways.
The reason is that some Protestants agree with this teaching—like Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists—but others don’t—like Baptists, Pentecostals, and many non-denominationals.
If you’re talking with one of the latter then they are likely to just reject the teaching and the traditions behind it—just as if you cited a teaching that is distinctively Catholic.
On the other hand, if you’re talking with a Protestant who does accept this teaching, their tradition has spent so much time arguing with immersionists that both immersionists and non-immersionists have tried to wring subtle nuances out of various words and passages connected with baptism that they are likely to think that the New Testament does imply a teaching on the mode of baptism.
I mean, think about it: Baptism is very important for the Christian life, so if you need to establish your doctrine by Scripture alone, then Scripture must imply something definite on the question.
And whether the person agrees or disagrees with the Catholic position on this issue, they’re likely to already have verses that they think imply the teaching, even if the verses objectively don’t.
Undoing that perception will only make your job harder.
I’m not saying that one should never appeal to a doctrine like this or that one should never appeal to something like the Didache.
In fact, I often appeal to it myself.
However, if you’re in a heated discussion and have suddenly been challenged to name a teaching that is not found in Scripture, you need to avoid citing anything that’s debatable.
What I Do
When I’m called upon by a Protestant to name teachings that aren’t found in the Bible, I want to cite things that meet two criteria.
First, they are something that the Protestant agrees with. That way, he won’t just dismiss the teaching.
And second, that there really is no verse or combination of verses that could plausibly be taken as implying the teaching. That way, there will be no basis for it other than apostolic tradition.
So when I’m challenged to name one teaching—just one teaching—that isn’t found in the Bible that we ought to accept, I don’t name any doctrines that the Protestant doesn’t believe.
I name something he does believe.
And I don’t just name one doctrine.
I typically name three:
- No More Apostles: First, the fact that there are to be no more apostles.
- No More Scriptures: Second, the fact that there are to be no more books of Scripture
- No More Public Revelation: And third, the fact that there is to be no new publicly binding revelation before the Second Coming
These doctrines are accepted by virtually all Protestants, so that meets my first criterion.
And there really are no verses that state or imply them, meeting my second criterion.
However, as I mentioned, people at least initially may claim that the Bible does teach these things implicitly.
So it becomes my job to show that it doesn’t.
No More Apostles
For example, the person I’m talking with may say that the Bible teaches that you needed to be an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry to be an apostle, and since there aren’t any eyewitnesses today, Scripture teaches by implication that there can be no more apostles.
But this is mistaken.
Being an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry was a requirement for membership in the Twelve. You can see that in Acts 1, when the apostles replace Judas Iscariot.
Acts 1:21-22
One of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.
Peter said that Judas’s replacement must be one of the men who accompanied the twelve during all the time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up.
So there was a requirement that you needed to be an eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus to be one of the Twelve, and from that you can reasonably conclude that the New Testament implies there will be no modern version of the Twelve.
But the Twelve were not all the apostles that there were.
St. Paul was also an apostle, as was St. Barnabas.
Acts 14:14
But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and rushed out into the crowd.
In Acts 14:14, he refers to them as “the apostles Barnabas and Paul.”
But we have no evidence that Barnabas was an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry.
And we know for a fact that Paul was not. He was an opponent of Christianity, and there is no way he was following Jesus around from his baptism to his ascension.
So being an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry was not a requirement for being an apostle.
It was a requirement for being one of the Twelve, who were a unique group whose job was to bear witness to Jesus’ earthly ministry.
But it was not a requirement for being an apostle in general.
Now, it may still have been a requirement to have seen Jesus and been commissioned by him as an apostle.
That’s not certain, but it is a possible implication of 1 Corinthians 9:1, where Paul writes:
1 Corinthians 9:1
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?
Paul is referring to when Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, where he was also commissioned to be an apostle. There, he was told:
Acts 9:5-6
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”
He then was told that:
Acts 9:15
He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.
So in 1 Corinthians 9, Paul seems to link his being an apostle to having seen the Lord.
But it’s debatable whether he’s just citing Jesus appearing to him as evidence of his apostleship or whether it would be a requirement for all apostles.
Even if it is a requirement for all apostles to have seen the Lord, Scripture definitely does not teach that there are to be no more apostles.
Jesus may not be conducting an earthly ministry today that people could witness and become members of the Twelve, but Paul was commissioned as an apostle years after that.
So there is no reason why Jesus couldn’t choose to appear to people today the same way he appeared to Paul and commission them to be apostles.
The fact God has chosen not to have Jesus appear to people in this way is thus something that is not taught in Scripture.
And yet, except among some of the most daring Pentecostals, it is universally agreed among Protestants that there are to be no new apostles equal to the biblical ones.
This is thus a doctrine that is accepted on a basis other than Scripture, and it can have binding authority only if it is a matter of apostolic Tradition.
No New Scriptures
Another doctrine that is universally accepted among Protestants is that there are to be no new books of Scripture written, but there are no passages in the New Testament that either state or imply this.
If he chose, God could continue to inspire people today to write new books of Scripture, and they wouldn’t even have to be apostles.
After all, Mark and Luke wrote two of the four Gospels, and they weren’t even apostles, so if God could inspire non-apostles to write Scripture back then, he could do so today as well.
It’s a matter of his choice that he doesn’t, and there are no verses indicating that he has made this choice.
Now, sometimes people in the Protestant community will claim the reverse. For example, some people point to Revelation 22, where John says:
Revelation 22:18-19
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
They then reason, well, the Bible is the book being referred to, and John condemns adding to this book, so there can be no new books of Scripture.
But this is mistaken.
What this passage is doing is warning against adding to or taking away from what God has said. It’s like when Deuteronomy says:
Deuteronomy 4:2
You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you.
Deuteronomy 12:32
Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.
But these statements about adding or subtracting didn’t mean that there weren’t going to be any more books of Scripture written!
Deuteronomy is one of the books of the Old Testament, and one of the earliest ones by my reckoning.
There were going to be lots of books written after that.
The parallel passage in Revelation thus doesn’t mean that there are to be no more books after Revelation.
Also, the passage in Revelation is not talking about the whole Bible. It’s a warning against tampering with the text of the book of Revelation itself, and there are several ways we know that.
First, it identifies “this book” as a book of prophecy. That’s why it refers to the words of the prophecy of this book and the plagues described in this book, the words of this prophecy, and the tree of life and the holy city described in this book.
All of that is clearly talking about Revelation specifically.
Second, there are two words that New Testament Greek uses to refer to a Book, and those are Biblos, Biblion.
But what these words normally meant in the first century was a Scroll.
When people in this period talked about books, they were talking about scrolls.
The kind of book that we use today, a Codex, that is, a Book with a spine was something that only became popular later.
Well, scrolls had to be short, because otherwise they would rip in half as you rolled through them.
Also, nobody would want to laboriously wind through a super-long scroll to find the place they wanted.
And the Bible was never ever published in the form of a single scroll. It was not understood as a single book the way people think of it today.
Instead, the Bible was understood as a collection of books, which is to say, a collection of scrolls.
So when John says “this book,” he means “this scroll.”
Third, you’ll recall that there are two words for book in New Testament Greek—biblos and biblion. Well, there can be a size differential between them.
You used biblos when you wanted to refer to a regular book, and all ancient books were short by our standards, but biblion could mean a little book, one that was shorter even by ancient standards.
Well, in Revelation 22:18, the word John uses for “this book” is biblion, so he’s using the term that can suggest a shorter book.
So with John referring to a shorter scroll that contains prophecy and has to be an individual book because the Bible never fit into a single scroll, much less a short one, it’s very clear that he’s warning against tampering with the text of Revelation itself.
He’s simply not discussing the whole Bible.
And just like the warning against adding to or taking away from God’s commandments in Deuteronomy don’t mean that it was the last book of the Bible to be written, you similarly can’t use Revelation 22 to show that there are to be no more books of Scripture written.
God could still have them written if he chose.
Protestants and Catholics both agree that he has chosen not to, but we don’t know that because Scripture says so.
It doesn’t say that—anywhere.
There are no passages that state or imply this, so the only basis for believing it as a matter of Christian teaching is apostolic tradition.
No New Public Revelation
The third teaching that I commonly cite is the fact that there will be no new public revelation.
I include the word “public” in that because there are Protestants who believe that there can be new private revelation.
This view is particularly common in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.
But there are some non-Pentecostal, non-Charismatic Protestants who acknowledge that God may give individual people something like a private revelation—even if it’s just in the form of an intuition of what they should do—without giving them an ongoing charismatic gift of prophecy.
However, Protestants in general—including Pentecostals and Charismatics—acknowledge that since the close of the apostolic age God has chosen not to give us any new public revelation—or revelation that is binding on all Christians the way the Bible is.
The question is: How do we know that he’s chosen that?
You can’t appeal to history, because there are certainly many individuals in history who claim they have received new public revelation that all Christians need to heed.
Some of them—like the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith—have even written new scriptures.
So how do you know that God has chosen not to give us new public revelation?
Well, once again, there are no passages in Scripture that state or imply this.
You could try inferring it from the fact that there will be no new Scripture, but we’ve already seen that this can’t be known from Scripture alone.
Furthermore, not all public revelation is in the form of Scripture, but you might try to argue that you’d need someone like an apostle to give public revelation outside Scripture, and we’re agreed that there are to be no new apostles.
The problem here—again—is that this is also something you can’t know from Scripture alone.
Further, it wasn’t just apostles who gave public revelation. Prophets also did.
And the New Testament envisions there being prophets in the Christian community. Paul even says:
1 Thessalonians 5:19-21
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.
And that’s a standing command of the New Testament that is never retracted!
So how do you know some of those prophecies won’t be public revelation?
From Scripture alone, you don’t.
There is no way to prove from Scripture alone that God will not give new public revelation, meaning the only basis for this doctrine is apostolic Tradition.
Conclusion
Now, a Protestant you’re engaged in dialogue with may try to cite other verses to prove these teachings besides the ones we’ve considered.
But none of them will be successful, and it’s not difficult to show that any verses they appeal to don’t actually prove what they need them to.
The verses they cite simply do not require any of these three doctrines to be true, though all three are basically universally accepted by Protestants.
This reveals how our Protestant brethren are, at least in practice, willing to accept doctrines that are based on Tradition rather than Scripture alone.
The key is helping them to recognize the actual basis of these doctrines.
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