Briefly Reviewed: May 2025

Sola Scriptura Doesn’t Work: 25 Practical Reasons to Reject the Doctrine of ‘Bible Alone'

By Joel S. Peters

Publisher: Catholic Answers Press

Pages: 265

Price: $18.95

Review Author: Trent Beattie

Many people — Catholics included — think of the Bible as existing in its own realm, as if it did not arise from specific people at specific times and places. The implicit understanding of the Bible’s origin — as silly as this sounds — seems to be a one-time, direct descent from the sky, all meticulously edited and presented with silk ribbons, concordance, and maps (plus free shipping). Joel S. Peters refutes this notion in his latest book, which explores serious reasons why sola scriptura — a contrivance of Martin Luther — simply cannot function in the real world. Sola Scriptura Doesn’t Work arose from Peters’s popular TAN Books/Saint Benedict Press booklet Scripture Alone? and is not only a refutation of a thoroughly unworkable idea but an affirmation of how the Bible, in fact, was written, copied, canonized, and interpreted by the Catholic Church through the centuries.

Peters reminds us that the early Church did not have a Bible; that the canon was not made official until the late fourth century; and that, even then, copies of the Bible were extremely expensive. In other words, the two major sources for the Christian faith were (and are) Tradition and Scripture as interpreted and proclaimed by the Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Church. The Christian life was never intended to be the mere study of writings that supposedly negated the need for good works, but the living out of the Good News. This means a prayerful, repentant, sacramental, and grace-filled life, made possible by ordained ministers. Spoken words and works were far more common than written words for passing on the faith. This is why sacred art was even more significant years ago than it is today.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger long held that “the only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb” (The Ratzinger Report, 1985). Saints and art are both continuations of the Incarnation, visible and audible manifestations of invisible and inaudible realities. Both proclaim the Good News in a clear manner and usually require far less study than Scripture, which can be obscure at times. This obscurity, Peters notes, is demonstrated by countless Protestant commentaries on the Bible — despite claims about the perspicacity of Scripture. Which are more perceivable: Mother Teresa and Padre Pio or the first two chapters in the Book of Numbers? These 20th-century saints taught the Christian faith so strikingly, not because they were biblical scholars or publishers, but because they lived out what they professed. They were, and are, icons of profound theological significance.

Martin Luther, on the other hand, is an icon of something else. Probably the most painful reasons for rejecting sola scriptura come at the book’s end, which addresses Luther’s mental maladies. The former Augustinian monk is often given implicit respect, yet readers will realize that Luther himself injures the credibility of sola scriptura. Luther’s scrupulosity, which caused him to see sin where it did not exist, was the genesis of his new religion and the root of its primary doctrine. Luther felt so incapable of doing good works (without which, St. James tells us, our faith is useless) that he denied their obligatory nature. In his mind, the notion arose that he could get to Heaven without actually doing good things — and despite doing many evil things. This blatantly runs counter not only to James 2:24 but to Romans 2:6 (God will render to each according to their works), Matthew 7:21 (Not everyone who says to Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, only those who do the will of His Father), and several other passages in the Old and New Testaments.

As so many saints (Philip Neri, Francis de Sales, Alphonsus Liguori) have taught, the grand remedy for scrupulosity is to obey a spiritual director. Luther, however, decided to take his own route — isolated from the authority of the Church — to assuage his troubled conscience. In the process, he apparently moved from mere scrupulosity to full-blown borderline personality disorder (BPD). Scrupulosity quietly internalizes guilt, while BPD loudly externalizes it. A merely scrupulous person would not be so publicly and caustically critical of his opponents; he would not break his religious vows and encourage others to do the same; he would not audaciously condemn what had been (and continue to be) the official teachings of the Church; and he would not remove parts of the Bible that did not fit his new religion. All this Luther did. He became vulgar, angry, demanding, and accusatory. He took needless risks, falsely boasted, and made other audacious statements that caused all kinds of additional problems. Self-will can manifest extreme ugliness, in contrast to the beauty found in surrendering one’s will to God.

History establishes that Jesus Christ founded the Catholic Church, and 1,500 years later, Martin Luther started the Lutheran Church. What more needs to be said? Well, those in search of a little more will find it in Peters’s work and in other books such as The Facts about Luther by Msgr. Patrick F. O’Hare and The Devil’s Bagpipe: The True Life of Martin Luther by James Laing (translated by Fr. Robert Nixon, O.S.B.).

Even though the title of Peters’s new release is “negative” in the sense that it shows why something is not true, its corollary and more important contribution is helping readers see the authentic sources of Christian living: Scripture and Tradition, guided by the Magisterium of the Church. To be sure, the Bible needs an interpretative authority, and it only makes sense that it be the same authority that assembled it in the first place. The Catholic Church, which has spared no effort or expense in preserving the written word of God through the ages, is indeed the Bible’s home — and the home of all souls in need of the grace of conversion and perseverance.

Your Life Is a Story: G.K. Chesterton and the Paradox of Freedom

By Brady Stiller

Publisher: Word on Fire

Pages: 224

Price: $24.95

Review Author: Mary Brittnacher

A philosophy runs through G.K. Chesterton’s work: that life is a story. The first half of Brady Stiller’s Your Life Is a Story establishes this and makes the case that viewing life as a story means believing that life has a meaningful trajectory, that an author embellishes it with choice details, and that free human beings are protagonists in pursuit of a noble resolution. In short, Stiller writes, “To view life as a story is the position of the Christian tradition, and like any serious philosophical worldview, it seeks to explain everything and to traverse the universe, leaving no stone unturned.” To the reader’s delight, Stiller’s prose has as much flavor of Chesterton’s thinking and writing as of his own.

Stiller arrives at the “paradox of freedom” (from the book’s subtitle) via dissection of modern philosophies — determinism, existentialism, skepticism, and nihilism — that do not include true freedom. He bases his effort on Chesterton’s description of freedom as a fenced-in schoolyard where schoolmates are free to make any choice desired within the rules of the schoolyard. In this way, free will is included, but restrictions on freedom are taken into account. The paradox is that both the ability to make choices and the restriction of those choices are part of the definition of true freedom.

For those already steeped in Chesterton, Part I of the book covers familiar ground. Stiller brings out the best in Chesterton’s output, weaving it seamlessly with the Catholic worldview. The book’s second part lays out the aforementioned modern worldviews. Stiller, deploying select quotes from Chesterton, queries these philosophies regarding their universality and whether they comport with life experience. Looking from opposing objective and subjective angles, and macro and micro views, he determines how they stack up to reality. The genius of Chesterton, of course, is in his folding of opposite views into paradoxes. Just as Jesus was not 50 percent God and 50 percent man but 100 percent both, so paradox allows the full reality of both subjective and objective truth statements. For example, our world includes both God’s created objective reality and the subjective lived reality of each human being.

One prevalent and destructive modern philosophy Stiller examines is skepticism. He presents it as the result of the Enlightenment era’s destruction of the concept of truth. Skeptics do not trust either faith or reason to lead to truth; they demand material evidence to support any truth claim. Because skepticism “demands clear evidence and a clean logical process,” Stiller explains, its adherents rarely get answers to anything, particularly the basic questions of human existence, such as the meaning of life. This quest is not strictly amenable to the application of evidential and logical methods. Chesterton interprets the resulting stagnation as a kind of paralysis that prevents the skeptic from acting. Taken too far, this doubt of everything results in nihilism. The skeptic rarely reaches the point where nothing is understood and everything seems meaningless, because he does not, Stiller writes, “doubt the very activities of his mind producing these claims.”

Christian philosophy paradoxically reconciles the two opposites of certainty and uncertainty in the big questions about life and death. Stiller clarifies, “Existence’s meaning is fixed in the sense that an objective standard of meaning has been chosen by God…. Its meaning is unfixed in the sense that mankind, as finite creatures, seeks after meaning in a way that is not predetermined; free will is effective in shaping future events.” Chesterton famously finds skeptics to be pessimists, because in doubting everything they doubt that sin and evil exist. The pessimist may not go so far as to doubt all, as the skeptic does, but a pessimistic view will necessarily elevate evil to a higher importance than it warrants. Optimists, on the other hand, regard evil as much less of a problem than it is. To an optimist, life is good as it is and needs no modifications. However, lived reality teaches that the condition of anything will always degrade if left alone.

Stiller discusses nihilism last, as any of the other philosophies might end up there. Chesterton cuts to the heart of nihilism in this passage from Orthodoxy: “It does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority.” Chesterton makes it clear that none of the modern philosophies is complete or true in its own system. But nihilism he considers the “ultimate offense against heaven and against earth.”

Chesterton’s education involved not only university but the Slade School of Fine Art. He sees with the eyes of an artist. All around he finds “objective details” like “art, design, proportion,” as well as each life’s “undetermined ending,” to be composed by individuals with free will. For Chesterton, Catholic Christianity is the sole philosophy that brings the paradoxical extremes together; it “can uphold the ideal destination of humanity while honoring each unique path of getting there.” Chesterton’s lifelong mantra was that there is meaning in everything — a blade of grass, a piece of chalk, the stars, a brightly lit room seen from a passing train — and this meaning becomes the story of life and the story of a life. This is the paradox: the all-encompassing story revealed by God is applied to all people and tells of universal meaning; the narrative of one life manifests the opposite end of meaning, that which applies to each unique person.

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