Sola Scriptura

We have a trilemma:

1. Sola Scriptura:  All rules for the Church are to be found in Scripture
2. Sola Scriptura is itself a rule for the Church
3. But Sola Scriptura is not found in Scripture

We can’t accept all three of these options without incoherence.  Sola Scriptura thus threatens to be self-referentially incoherent. 

Evangelicals typically try to deny (3).  But I don’t think this move is plausible.  For such an appeal to a verse to be successful in defending Sola Scriptura, the verse must make claim to the completeness of the Scriptures as a governing norm for the Church, excluding all other authorities.  The candidate verse cannot merely claim that Scripture is inspired and authoritative, it must also state that Scripture is the sole authority for the Church.  I don’t think such a verse exists. 

Instead, I want to modify (1).  

(1*) Sola Scriptura:  All first-order rules for the Church are found in the Scriptures.

A second-order rule is a rule about the first-order rules:  about their perfection, sufficiency, completeness, perspicuity, etc.  So, Sola Scriptura isn’t a first-order rule.  It’s a second-order rule.  So it doesn’t need to be found in Scripture.  But if that’s the case, where does Sola Scriptura come from? How do we come to recognize its truth if it’s not found in Scripture?

The suggestion is that some second-order rules can be the result of the Holy Spirit’s sealing the truth of Scripture on the heart of the believer.  The Holy Spirit brings the believer to realize the sufficiency and completeness of the Scriptures. 

Once this approach has been established, we can then have recourse to the other methods of defending Sola Scriptura given by Evangelicals.  For instance, we could use the method of Charles Hodge: “If it be proved that tradition is untrustworthy, human, and fallible, then the Scriptures by common consent stand alone in their authority.  As the authority of tradition has already been discussed, further discussion of the completeness of the Scriptures becomes unnecessary.”

Cain's Wife

To the question on the origin of Cain’s wife, Evangelicals have traditionally proposed that Cain married his sister.  To forestall the objection that this marriage would violate the Mosaic anti-incest laws, they often point out that the marriage was prior to the promulgation of the law and was therefore permissible.

I’ve never been comfortable with this line of reasoning.  It strongly seems that incest is contrary to a deep and inviolable moral law and that its wrongness is not relative to whether a law has been explicitly given or not.

Here are a few other suggestions to get out of the problem of Cain’s wife:

I.  First, the Beastility Option

There’s either a breeding population (BP) outside the garden or not.

Either that breeding population is in the image of God (IoD) or not.

Three possible problems.
Incest, if no breeding population.
IoD bearers that are not descended from Adam.
Or, if the breeding population is not IoD, then bestiality between IoDs and breeding population.  

The Bible affirms, without qualification, that all human IoDs are of Adamic descent.

My suggestion is that Cain married a humanoid to which he was only distantly related and that was not ensouled and therefore not a person, thus upholding the Biblical data that all humanoid IoDs are descended from Adam.  But this leads to what may be called the Bestiality Problem, for we would have cases of rational humanoid persons intermixing with non-IoD humanoids that are more on par with animals.

But this is not the same as bestiality. Why? For one, IoDs intermixing with the breeding population can produce viable offspring that are IoDs, and the breeding population outside the garden look like IoDs.  Neither of these are conditions are true in the case of normal bestiality.

This option seems to fit relatively well with the data we have from science.

II. Second, the Transmigration Option 

This is a highly speculative hypothesis, but goes something like this:  As members of Adam’s family encountered non-IoD breeding populations, their animal-like spouses became imbued with an Adamic derived soul, transforming them into Adamically-derived IoDs.   

Speculative.

III. Third, the Cain did Wrong Option

Cain married his sister. But he did wrong in doing so. God permitted the evil act for the same reason he permits all evil, so that he could bring good out of it. But God originally only intended for Adam and Eve to procreate, and for marriage to be exclusively for the two of them. None of their offspring should have married as it would violate the moral law against incest.  Just because the Bible describes something happening doesn't mean that the Bible supports it having happened.

So this would extend beyond Cain to all of his siblings as well:  None of them *should* have married, as the breeding population of IoDs were their siblings.  Marriage was originally intended only for Adam and Eve.  Or, perhaps, God intended to create a unique woman for each man prior to the fall. Or perhaps God built on a sort of fail-safe into the marriage ordinance, in that given the fall marriage would become a permissible option for the offspring given a certain degree of relation after a few generations.  So while it was literally impermissible for the initial generations and they did wrong, once this initial hurdle was defeated, it became permissible for the further down offspring.  

You could also apply this solution to the Bestiality problem:  Cain did wrong in marrying a non-person humanoid.