Introduction
By the "problem of biblical reductionism" I mean the narrowing of dogmatic and pragmatic authority to the text of the Scriptures. It is an attempt to guard against the "traditions of men," but is ultimately self-defeating and self-refuting. Its primary instantiation is in the dogma of sola scriptura.
I will say it clearly and bluntly: the Protestant dogma of sola scriptura is an invention of men; it is not from God. Indeed, the human tradition of sola scriptura is a hindrance to faith and salvation. This is true for many of the variations of sola scriptura one finds, whether the more open form which accepts historical traditions of the Church so long as they don't go against Scripture (or, rather, against a particular interpretation of Scripture), or the more narrow form which demands that every belief and practice be justified by explicit propositions or inferential arguments from Scripture.
The primary problem with sola scriptura is that the dogma itself is not to be found anywhere within Scripture. If sola scriptura is taken in its more narrow form, then it is an extra-Scriptural dogma, and thus is self-refuting. If sola scriptura is taken in its broader form, it is question-begging circularity since it first must assume what it later concludes.
But there are three other problems that are fatal to the dogma of sola scriptura: the definition of what exactly is scriptura, i.e., the extent of the biblical canon; the question of hermeneutical methodology, i.e., the problem of proper interpretation of the Scripture on which sole basis we are to form dogma and practice; and the lack of a criterion (or of criteria) through which to decide disputed interpretations. Since sola scriptura cannot answer the questions of canon, interpretive methodology and interpretive criterion/-ia, the dogma of sola scriptura cannot do that which it is intended to do: to provide an authoritative voice to the Church of the will of God. It is, then, simply a polemical tool to criticize and neutralize the Tradition of the Church with which sola scriptura adherents disagree.
1. The Problem of the Canon
The question sola scriptura cannot answer is: What, precisely, is the Bible? That is to say, what books make up the Bible?
There are very few explicit references in Scripture in which particular books claim (for themselves or other books) divine inspiration. St. Paul in 2 Timothy 3:14-17 claims that all Scripture is inspired (“God-out-breathed”), but does not otherwise list those books (and does not claim that 2 Timothy itself is part of that Scriptural canon.) St. Peter seems pretty clearly to include St. Paul's letters in with the rest of Scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16). But once again, we do not have a list of letters that are considered part of the canon of Scripture. Should we also include the epistle to the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16)?
This scenario is exacerbated, for us in the positivist modern world, in that the canon of Scripture was largely assumed more than it was codified. We know that some books, such as the Shepherd of Hermas, quite popular in the early Church but which we do not now consider canonical, were viewed alongside what we now know as canonical New Testament books as having similar authority. Other books that we now view as canonical, such as the Revelation, were in dispute for centuries.
This is further illustrated by the place (or lack thereof) in our own Bibles today of the so-called “Apocrypha” or “Deuterocanonicals”--the books of Tobit, Judith, the books of Maccabees (two, three or four?), the additions to Esther and Daniel, Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah, the books of Esdras, Psalm 151, the prayer of Manasseh, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom. For most of the Church, and for most of the first millennium and a half of the life of the Church, these books were viewed as part of the Scriptures. Indeed, some of our earliest codices of complete Scriptures bind them with the rest of the (u