Which nobody expects.
Really, it’s just the latest post I made for Ignitum Today:
Protestants believe that the Bible alone is the sole infallible rule of faith. But what if they lived during the Apostolic Age, say in 45 AD. Some of the books of the New Testament may have been written by this time, but certainly not all or even most. Would they follow the teachings of Paul?
“Protestants believe that the Bible alone is the sole infallible rule of faith.”
Lutherans don’t believe that.
We believe in the Word alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.
The Bible certainly is an aspect of God’s Word. But God’s Word is in preaching, the sacraments, and in Christ Himself.
This overall argument of this “Apostolic Cessation” (the opposite of Apostolic Succession) reaches it’s peak with the astonishing and most foundational Protestant claim of all: that the inspired oral teaching of the Apostles was eventually “confined wholly to writing”.
All the honest Protestant apologists will admit that Sola Scriptura was not “functional” until the last book of the Bible was written, which also requires that any inspired teachings of the Apostolic Age also had to have found their way into one of the books of the Bible as well. But since the Bible nowhere states all inspired teaching eventually was written down and that upon the death of the last apostle the entire Christian paradigm would shift to “Scripture alone”, Protestants must presuppose this.