The Bereans and Sola Scriptura

Were the Berean Jews commended for testing 

Paul’s teachings against Scripture?

Gary Hoge

Catholics often ask where in the Bible the concept of sola Scriptura, the belief that God’s revelation is found entirely and only in the Bible, is either taught or demonstrated. One such passage Protestants point to is in Acts 17. 

In that chapter, Paul preached in Thessalonica and met with limited success. Those who rejected his teaching riled up the people to such an extent that Paul and Silas were in danger:

The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. (Acts 17:10-11)

Some Protestants point to this passage as a biblical example of people being commended for getting their doctrines from Scripture alone.

The principle [sola Scriptura] is strongly indicated by verses such as Acts 17:11 which commends the Bereans for testing doctrine—taught by an apostle, no less—to the written Word.¹

For the Berean Jews the “written Word” was the Jewish Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. None of the New Testament had been written yet.

If you think the Bereans were commended for testing Paul’s apostolic teachings against the Old Testament Scriptures, let me ask you this: Did you do that? Did you examine the Old Testament Scriptures to verify everything Paul taught in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, etc.?

I’ll bet you didn’t. I didn’t either. Neither did the Bereans.

The Bereans were first-century Jews, not modern Evangelicals. They had no concept of Scripture as the sole source of divine revelation. They accepted Tradition as a valid source of revelation, too.

When Paul preached in the synagogues he tried to convince the Jews that “this Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ” (Acts 17:3). He did that by reasoning “with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead” (Acts 17:2-3). When he preached this message in Berea, the Bereans “received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

They were commended because, unlike the Thessalonians who rejected Paul’s message, the Bereans received it with great eagerness, and examined the Old Testament Scriptures to see if they really foretold that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.

Once they were convinced that Jesus was the long-awaited Christ, and that Paul was his apostle, they would have accepted Paul’s apostolic teachings without question. They wouldn’t have tried to vet those teachings from the Old Testament, and they couldn’t have, even if they wanted to, because those teachings were new revelation, not found in the Old Testament. The New Covenant “was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 3:4-5). That being the case, there’s no way the Bereans could have searched the Old Testament Scriptures to verify the details of the New Covenant.

Where, for example, could they have looked in the Old Testament to verify Paul’s teaching that circumcision was no longer required, even for Jews (1 Corinthians 7:18), or that it was impossible to be justified by the Law of Moses (Galatians 2:16), or that all foods were clean (Romans 14:20), or that the dead in Christ would rise first (1 Thessalonians 4:16)?

Obviously, there’s no way the Bereans could have used the Old Testament to verify those teachings, or dozens of others, and they would not have tried. The ancient Jews did not believe that God’s revelation had to come from Scripture alone, so they would have had no problem receiving the details of the New Covenant orally from Paul and accepting them as divine revelation. And Paul would have commended them for it, as he commended those Thessalonians who had believed his message:

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

It is anachronistic to portray these ancient Jews as if they were modern Evangelicals who tested even the teachings of an apostle against Scripture. They examined the Scriptures only to see if it was true that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. Once they became Christians, they would have put their scrolls away and held to the traditions which they were taught by Paul, whether by word of mouth or by letter (2 Thessalonians 2:15).