How was Sola Scripture possible before the completion of the New Testament?

In the discussion about Sola Scripture which I mentioned in my previous post, it was suggested that it wasn’t possible to talk about Sola Scripture back in the first century when Paul was writing to Timothy for two reasons, first Scripture wasn’t complete and secondly people were illiterate.  Let’s deal with them in reverse order.  The authority and sufficiency of Scripture (or in fact the sufficient authority of Scripture) isn’t dependent on the literacy of everyone.  There are people today with lower levels of literacy.  It is still possible to hear and to understand Scripture. Further, this is not about individual, privatised Bible reading but about the church’s authority.

In terms of the completeness of Scripture. Note two things.  First, that all Scripture is consistent with itself. This means two things:

1. That at any point in time, faithful people had sufficient revelation to act on and ungodliness would be identified as going against God’s clear and explicit revelation.
2. That anything could be tested back against what had been already revealed in Scripture.

Secondly, the early church had the apostles present and they were the foundation of the Church.  That’s how Scripture got built up as people went back to the apostles with questions.  What we have in Scripture is the apostolic teaching written down.  This is important because what it means is that contra the Gnostics, the apostles did not leave behind some additions secret knowledge available to a select few.  It also means that later people were not picking up in fresh, previously undisclosed revelation.

Remember that the point of Sola Scripture is that Scripture is the sole authority that we have.