In this eye-opening episode of The Jimmy Akin Podcast, Jimmy dives deep into Jude 3, which Protestants often cite to defend sola scriptura. He masterfully dismantles the claim that “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” means all revelation is in Scripture alone. With sharp biblical analysis, Greek insights, historical context, and quotes from Protestant scholars, Jimmy shows why this verse actually supports the Catholic position, including apostolic Tradition, over sola scriptura. A must-listen for anyone exploring Scripture, Tradition, and the true deposit of faith!
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
If you ask Protestants for a verse that proves that we should do theology sola scriptura—or “by Scripture alone”—one that they often cite is Jude 3.
This verse refers to the fact that the faith was once for all delivered to the saints.
So, obviously, the Christian faith involves a fixed body of doctrine that has all been written down, so we don’t need anything else.
That means that there is no apostolic tradition. There is no infallible teaching authority or magisterium. But there is a closed canon of biblical books.
Right?
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
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Introduction
In Episode 74 of The Jimmy Akin Podcast, I showed you three teachings that our Protestant friends accept, even though they are nowhere taught in the Bible and thus must be based on apostolic Tradition.
But Protestants commonly have verses that they think prove sola scriptura, and one of them is where Jude states that the Faith has been once for all delivered to the saints.
As we’ll see, this does not prove what they need it to, but let’s begin by looking at the statement in context.
In verses 3 and 4 of the book, Jude states:
Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ
Based on the Greek text, scholars have generally understood Jude to mean that although he had been eager to write his audience concerning “our common salvation,” he found it necessary to set that plan aside because they had been infiltrated by certain ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness.
Therefore, he is writing them a different letter, in which he warns his audience against the ungodly people.
For our purposes, the key part is Jude’s exhortation “to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”
This is the part that interests advocates of sola scriptura: If the Faith has been delivered once for all to the saints, does this mean that the whole of Christian teaching has been revealed and put in Scripture, and so there is to be no new public revelation?
There are a number of problems with this idea.
Not the Last Book?
First off, if Jude were saying that all public revelation had ended, then—since Scripture is itself public revelation—the book of Jude itself would have to be the last book of Scripture to be penned.
If Scripture contains public revelation and it’s all been communicated, then there would be nothing left to communicate after Jude, so Jude would have to be the last book of the Bible written.
But we don’t know that at all.
Scholars differ on when the book of Jude was written. Many scholars hold that it was written in the A.D. 90s, but we don’t know when.
My own estimate is that it was written around A.D. 64-65, though it could have been later.
The fact is, we don’t know its date with confidence. Neither can we establish the exact dates of many books of the New Testament, so we don’t know which was last.
For example, if—as often supposed—Revelation was the last book to be written, then Jude would require us to eject Revelation from the canon, as well as any other books written later than Jude.
Not the Last Part of the Book
There’s another problem with the idea that Jude is saying that public revelation is closed, which is that it would be speaking of this as having happened in the past—as a completed act.
Notice that he says it has been “delivered” once for all”—past tense.
As we’ll see below, this happened quite some time in the past, but even if we ignored that, the moment that Jude said that the faith had been delivered once for all, that would have been the last bit of public revelation—if he was speaking about the closing of public revelation.
If the Faith has been delivered once for all—in a complete manner—to the saints, then the latest possible moment for that delivery would be the moment Jude said that.
This would mean that all of the subsequent verses in Jude would not be part of public revelation, so you’d have to cut the book of Jude in two, with the latter part not being Scripture.
In other words, not only would Jude need to be the last book of the Bible written, Jude 3 would need to be the last verse of Scripture written.
If Jude were talking about the closing of public revelation, you would need to delete the remainder of the book—verses 4 to 25—from the canon.
“Delivered to the Saints”
This is clearly not what Jude meant, so let’s back up and ask what he was intending to say.
It’s worth noting that when Jude speaks of the Faith being “delivered” to the saints, he uses the Greek term Paradidômi.
This is the verbal form of Paradôsis, which means = Tradition, which is the term that Paul uses to refer to his own teachings when he commends and commands his audience to keep the traditions that he has given them, like when he says in 1 Corinthians 11 and 2 Thessalonians 2 and 3:
1 Corinthians 11:2
I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.
2 Thessalonians 2:15
Stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.
2 Thessalonians 3:6
Keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.
In each of those cases, Paul uses the noun paradôsis for tradition.
The verb Paradidômi = Deliver, together with its companion verb Paralambanô = Receive, were used to communicate the giving and receiving of tradition, as in St. Paul’s famous statement in 1 Corinthians 15:
1 Corinthians 15:3-4
I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
When Jude 3 says that the Faith has been once for all delivered to the saints, Jude is thus conceiving of the Faith as having been given to the saints as a matter of Tradition.
But when was it given?
Here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, “the saints” refer to the Christian community, and of course “the Faith” refers to the Christian faith.
So, who delivered the Christian faith to the Christian community?
Well, that would either be Jesus himself or at least his apostles.
Jude might be thinking of the apostles because he later—in verse 17—tells his readers
Jude 17
You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But the apostles themselves were among God’s saints or holy ones, and they had the Faith delivered to them by Jesus himself.
So I suspect that Jude is thinking of the delivery of the Faith to the Christian community by Jesus, though I can’t altogether rule out that Jude is thinking of the apostles, here, as the link between Jesus and the saints.
Either way, when did Christ and his apostles deliver the Christian faith to the Church?
No later than A.D. 33. That’s when the Faith was delivered: Right at the beginning.
I mean, if Jude was written around A.D. 64, and you asked members of his audience in that year, “Did believers back in A.D. 33 have the Christian faith?” they would say, “Sure, they did! They were the first generation of Christians. They had it before we did!”
So what Jude is talking about is the delivery of the Christian faith to the Christian community at the very beginning.
That is when this delivery happened “once for all.”
But even though the Faith had been delivered, that did not mean all public revelation had ceased. There would be many more items of public revelation given, as illustrated by all of the books of the New Testament that would be written in the future.
And, as Jesus himself said at the Last Supper:
John 16:13
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
This refers to the future prophetic ministry of the Spirit, and it includes things like the Spirit giving the public revelation found in the book of Revelation, which happened long after the Last Supper.
So even though the Christian faith had been delivered to the saints, that didn’t mean all public revelation had been given.
Even after Christ had made the first Christians—and thus delivered the Faith to them—there was more public revelation to come.
The Faith and the Gospel
It’s worth discussing what Jude means by “the Faith” a little further. When we read a text in the New Testament, we cannot simply assume that it means what we want it to.
We must first ask what the possible range of meanings the text or a term within the text has—and then look at the evidence to see which possible meaning the evidence best supports.
While it is possible to use the phrase “the Faith” to refer to the entirety of the Christian faith—every single doctrine that Christians are expected to believe—this is far from the only meaning of the term.
It also can be used to refer to the substance or core of the Faith—what is often called “the gospel.”
And the gospel is not what many people think. It’s not a message about us and how we can be saved.
It’s not about us.
Instead, it’s a message about God and his Son and what they are doing.
I discussed the gospel in Episode 27 of The Jimmy Akin Podcast.
As we saw, the gospel was the message that Jesus Christ came preaching. It is the good news that the time has come for God to institute his kingdom in the world. As Jesus says at the beginning of his ministry in Mark 1:15,
Mark 1:15
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.
This was how Jesus preached the gospel during his earthly ministry as recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But with time—and especially after the Crucifixion—the role that Jesus himself played in establishing God’s kingdom became clear. Thus in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says,
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand. . . . For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
So the way God implements his kingdom is through the death, burial, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus.
We thus see that there are two proclamations of the gospel:
- Primary Proclamation: The time for God’s kingdom has arrived.
- Secondary Proclamation: God’s kingdom is implemented through his Son.
This is the sense in which “the Faith” can be said to have been delivered by Christ and the apostles, for there had been Christians—and thus members of “the Faith”—ever since the first converts accepted the message of Jesus.
We thus see that “the Faith” can be understood either in the original sense of the Christian gospel or in a more expansive sense of the whole body of Christian teaching that would later be revealed through public revelation.
Sola scriptura advocates want it taken in the latter, expansive sense, but is that where the evidence points?
If we knew nothing else, if we had no other evidence, we would have to say that Jude 3 could be referring to either of these meanings and, not being able to decide between them on evidence, we could only safely assert that Jude was making the more modest claim—i.e., that he at least meant that the gospel had been delivered to the saints.
However, we could not, without evidence, claim—and we certainly could not claim to have proved—that he had the more expansive meaning in mind, which is what the advocate of sola scriptura would need to show.
But, in fact, the evidence points in the other direction: We have already seen, based on the context, that Jude is talking about the Christian Faith having been given to the saints at some point in the past. In fact, decades in the past, by Christ and/or his apostles.
That reveals that the more modest understanding of “the Faith” as simply the gospel is what Jude is discussing.
The same is indicated by the fact that—as Jesus himself indicated—there would be ongoing public revelation even after he taught the gospel to his disciples
Jude himself would have acknowledged that public revelation was still being given in his day. And he certainly would have acknowledged this if he recognized his own letter as inspired Scripture.
Even if he didn’t automatically recognize his own letter as Scripture, as some have suggested, we do recognize that. Therefore, we must acknowledge that public revelation was still being given when Jude wrote.
All of this points to Jude 3 simply meaning that the substance of the Faith—the gospel—had been definitively delivered to the saints, not every item of public revelation that God would eventually give.
As Protestant British scholar Richard Bauckham notes in his volume on Jude in the Word Biblical Commentary:
Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 50, at Jude 3
There is no reason to suppose that Jude means by pistis [“faith”] anything other than “the gospel.” It need not refer to confessional formulae, though such formulae were already known in Paul’s time, nor does it imply the idea of a defined body of orthodox doctrines. . . . Jude’s readers are to contend, not for some particular formulation of Christian belief, but for the central Christian message of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Further, Jude is thinking in particular of the moral demands of the gospel, since you’ll recall that he is warning his readers against immoral people who have infiltrated their community. As Bauckham also notes:
Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 50, at Jude 3
Jude’s concern is especially with the moral implications of the gospel (not with doctrinal orthodoxy; hence the idea that “the faith” means a set of doctrinal formulae is quite inappropriate). No doubt he has in mind particularly the instruction in Christian conduct which accompanied the gospel in the initial teaching given by the apostles, but he refers to the gospel itself, hê pistis [“the faith”], because it is the gospel itself for which his readers will be fighting when they remain faithful to its moral demand and resist the antinomianism of the false teachers.
And you’ll recall that repentance from immoral behavior was a key demand of embracing the gospel as Jesus taught it. His message was, after all,
Mark 1:15
Repent and believe in the gospel.
Implications for Sola Scriptura
So what implications does this have for sola scriptura?
Well, Jude 3 just does not prove what advocates of sola scriptura need it to prove. For all the reasons we’ve covered, it does not show that Jude thought public revelation had ceased.
And once we recognize that Jude is simply talking about the substance of the Christian faith—the gospel—it becomes clear that, when he says the faith has been delivered “once for all,” Jude is simply saying that the gospel itself has been given to us and cannot change, not that new public revelation cannot be given.
In fact, public revelation—including additional Scripture—was given, as illustrated by the fact Jude does not stop at verse 3. It’s also quite plausible that other whole books of Scripture—including, especially, Revelation—remained to be written.
This verse thus does not support sola scriptura.
In fact, even if Jude had meant that public revelation was closed, he doesn’t say anything about all of public revelation being written down.
One would thus have to take seriously the possibility that some public revelation continued to be passed on—and preserved by God’s protective guidance—in the form of oral Tradition.
Catholics forthrightly acknowledge that this is what happened—and the fact there is to be no new public revelation before the Second Coming is one of those items of authoritative, apostolic Tradition, as we covered in Episode 74.
Protestants have, historically, also accepted this teaching, but without an awareness that it is based on Tradition rather than Scripture.
If we were to go by Scripture alone, we would not be able to prove that public revelation has ceased, and thus we could not show that no new Scriptures are to be written or that the canon is closed.
For those things, you need apostolic Tradition.
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