The Noble Bereans

Objection: The Bereans are described as noble for comparing even the Apostle Paul’s preaching against Scripture. Does not that show they acknowledged only Scripture as ultimately authoritative?

Many non-Catholics appeal to the fact that the Bereans in Acts 17:11 were described as "more noble" than those in Thessalonica for checking the preaching of the Apostle Paul against the Scriptures (in contrast to the latter group which rejected it outright). They suggest that this proves the truth of the principle of sola scriptura ("scripture alone" as the only authority for Christians), if even the Apostle Paul had to submit to such a test. So, how would a Catholic respond? Does this passage support their claims? Well, I think it important to note that they are ignoring a couple crucial distinctions, yet when those distinctions are brought to mind, it shows that this passage is not teaching anything of the sort.

First, recall that this verse is describing what the Bereans did when they were still Jews, and not when they were Christians. Needless to say, that changes the situation completely when the question arises as to how this affects how a Christian views authority.

Naturally, as Jews, they would check to make sure that Paul's teaching concerning Jesus of Nazareth was consistent with the authority that they already accepted, i.e., the Old Testament (which were the only Scriptures this verse refers to, after all.) They were trying to determine if Christ was in fact the Messiah that was prophesied to come. Note that they would not have accepted Christ’s own authority at this point, either, for the same reason: they were not yet Christians. Yet obviously that does not mean that Christians should submit our Lord Himself to such a test!

Similarly, for the same reason, a Jew today might check Paul's written teaching (i.e., his letters found in the New Testament, which such a person would at first consider uninspired) against the Old Testament scriptures. Insofar as a Jew who did this today would be "more noble" than one who simply rejected the gospel outright, so those Jews in Berea who checked Paul's oral teaching against the Old Testament Scriptures were more noble than many of those in Thessalonica who rejected the gospel outright. But, needless to say, just as a Jew today who did become a Christian would afterwards accept Jesus's words as such as the word of God, and would also accept Paul's written teaching contained in his letters as such as the word of God (whereas he did neither before), so, I would maintain, the Jews in Berea, after they became Christians, did recognize the preaching of the Apostle concerning the gospel as the word of God. Certainly, nowhere is it taught or implied that they felt the need to continue to check his oral teaching against the Old Testament scriptures after becoming Christians (as would be necessary for this passage to be used to support sola scriptura). Besides, the same word preached in Berea was that preached in Thessalonica. Yet Paul himself wrote that what he preached to the Thessalonians was "the word of God" (1 Thess 2:13), and he praised the few who did believe at Thessalonica for accepting it as such. Incidentally, he would later tell the Thessalonians authoritatively to "hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle" (2 Thess 2:15), which is strange for him to write if, in fact, they were to judge everything by Scripture alone (This would especially be odd if, as was the case with the Bereans in Acts 17:11, such Scriptures were restricted to the Old Testament, and therefore not including his own written letters).

Notice as well that nowhere in Acts 17:11 does it state that all Christian doctrine was checked by the Bereans through Scripture (which, again, in this context referred only to the Old Testament scriptures). Rather, it appears that Paul was only arguing that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament to suffer and rise again. This is the only thing Paul was described as arguing out of the Scriptures in Acts 17:3 at Thessalonica. Yet verse 11 states that it was this "word" that most of the Thessalonians rejected that the Bereans checked against Scripture. Therefore, it was only Christ's qualifications for being the Messiah that is stated to have been checked by the Bereans, and nothing else. It makes perfect sense that the Bereans were checking the Old Testament, which they already acknowledged to be authoritative, to make sure that Christ indeed "fit the bill" as the Messiah. After all, if they could establish that to be the case, then the rest of Christian doctrine (which would be oral teaching from Christ given to the apostles, i.e., tradition) could be accepted readily as true. Yet it is not legitimate to interpret this passage as teaching, in fact, that the Bereans were checking all Christian doctrine through the Old Testament (even while they were still Jews, much less after they became Christians). And given that all of this is described only a couple chapters after the Council of Jerusalem most certainly described the Church's authority to interpret in a binding manner the Old Testament scriptures, in Acts 15, (in contrast to such a sola scriptura view), that drives the point home all the more.

After all, even assuming the Bereans, after becoming Christians, had continued to check the Apostle Paul's oral teaching against the Scriptures before accepting it (something not justified by the text, but which, for the sake of argument, we might assume hypothetically), then note something interesting. They would no longer have been praised at that point. After all, under that scenario, the Bereans would be acting, not as the Thessalonians whom Paul praised in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, but rather acting on the same principle as those whom the Apostles as a whole condemned at the Council of Jerusalem, those Christian Judaizers who could legitimately be described as practicing sola scriptura, checking Paul's oral teaching against the Old Testament scriptures, and rejecting it based on their private interpretation of the same (cf. Acts 15:2, 24). But, of course, as shown above, the idea that the Berean Jews did that after becoming Christians is not justified by the text. (Incidentally, the Apostles also identified their oral teaching at the council of Jerusalem with the word of God as well, with the authority that it implies; cf. Acts 15:28).

In short, to use Acts 17:11 as supporting sola scriptura fails to account for the above facts.