Sola Scriptura

Ray Comfort (founder and CEO of Living Waters, is a Christian minister that engages people in public in a caring and friendly manner about their spiritual state and relationship with God. As an Orthodox Jew I can and do respect this even though I believe that Christianity is in error about several key points.

I would like to shortly focus on the Evangelical Christian doctrine known as Sola Scriptura, which "is a theological doctrine held by some Protestant Christian denominations that the Christian scriptures are the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice." In other words, interpretation is one such source that does not hold authority according to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

Be that as it may, in the video below Mr. Comfort refers to Psalms 111:10 as Biblical evidence for the belief that one goes to Hell for eternity for any sin committed any number of times. Psalms 111:10 says "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; good understanding to all who perform them; his praise endures forever."


Careful attention may show that this verse says nothing about the fear of going to Hell, but rather illustrates that one must have fear, or awe, of God. The question here is how one gets from "fear of God" to "fear of going to eternal Hell" without some sort of applied interpretation of the text, and if Christians use textual interpretation, does this really count as Sola Scriptura?

When I asked this question of him, Mr. Comfort responded by kindly listing verses from the Tanakh, which can be seen in the comments section of this video. My response was to the effect that I sought Biblical proof that one goes to Hell for eternity for committing one sin, and not the Torah refers to Hell, to which I already agree.

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