Tackling Tradition 82: Acts 19:1 - 7

Those who make much of New Testament baptism have been known to assert that one must be baptized in the name of Christ in order to have received the Holy Spirit.       Some go so far to say that one must be baptized in order to do so.   One of their major prooftexts is Acts 19: 1 - 7. 19 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spiritwhen you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?” “John’s baptism,” they replied. 4 Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophe...
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Romans 1 & Sola Scriptura

Objection - The Bible doesn’t teach Sola Scriptura. The Church is necessary to make Scripture intelligible for the student/reader.  


By way of reply…


It isn’t infrequent for Roman Catholics & Orthodox apologists to raise this objection.  When you think about what they are saying, the sound very like Village Atheists who argue that human minds are required for numbers to exist & math to be intelligible.   It’s the same reasoning process:  suppress God’s image, ability, & authority, then look to one or more created (human) images for use as a sufficient epistemic warrant for faith & practice. 


The Protestant reply historically runs through 2 Timothy 3:16 - 17 & its declarations on the sufficiency & utility of Scripture.    That move is a valid one, but I think that it can be made stronger when part of a two-pronged approach that includes what Paul says about Scripture’s sufficiency & utility in 2 Timothy & what he teaches in Romans 1 about sound reasoning processes.  


Romans 1:18 - 32 is clear that God’s moral intention for the created order is for it to testify to His existence, attributes, & authority.    The text teaches us that humanity, consequent to the Fall, did openly & notoriously suppress God’s image & authority & supplant it with the own & that of other created images, and then humanity reasoned their theology, philosophy, & ethics accordingly. 


The Bible itself is the result of a theopneustos enterprise in which God & man collaborate & the result is an inerrant & infallible set of written documents published as universal Scripture.  The Bible therefore expresses the mind of God in matters of faith & practice, and since our minds are not necessary for these principles to exist, they inhere in God’s mind. 


The insertion of the Church as a necessary component for Scripture to be intelligible/understood is a classic example of suppressing God’s necessary, sufficient, sinless, holy, & just image & authority & supplanting it with an image or set of images that is/are unnecessary, insufficient, errant, at times sinful, & known to be at times unjust / hypocritical.   The Church is just a collection of reasoned, principled minds none of which are necessary, ergo any ecclesiastical epistemology  that is not Sola Scriptura is definitionally heterodox & futile according to the most foundational principle of sound reasoning laid out in Romans 1. 


May God bless us all, each & every one, and “Go & sin no more.” 

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