Published: August 4, 2026 | thefinalconvergence.com
Yesterday, the naivety charge. Today, the charge that has been deployed most effectively by Roman Catholic apologists and confessionalist Protestants alike:
Biblicism produces anarchy.
Without a governing interpretive authority, the Magisterium, the confessional tradition, the Bible produces endless fragmentation. Every individual reads it differently. Every community arrives at different conclusions. The result is the chaos of thirty thousand denominations, doctrinal instability, and the impossibility of any settled theological conviction.
This is the charge. And it is stated so frequently, with such apparent force, that many believers inside the confessional tradition have accepted it as self-evident without examining whether it is actually true.
“Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them” (Psalm 119:165). Great peace. Not anarchy. Not chaos. Not the endless fragmentation the critics predict. The Psalmist’s testimony is that those who love the law, who genuinely receive and follow the Word, find great peace in it, not the confusion of competing interpretations without resolution. The anarchy charge, examined carefully, proves much less than its advocates claim.
The Thirty Thousand Denominations Myth
The most commonly cited evidence for the anarchy charge is a number: thirty thousand Protestant denominations, all produced by Sola Scriptura, all disagreeing with each other, as evidence that the Bible without a governing interpretive authority produces irresolvable fragmentation. The number is false.
The World Christian Encyclopedia, from which this figure is most commonly derived, counted all Christian groups of any kind worldwide, including independent congregations, house churches, and regional variations of the same basic theology. The figure includes Roman Catholic subgroups and Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions alongside Protestant denominations. It counts a Baptist congregation in rural Alabama and a Baptist congregation in urban Chicago as potentially different “denominations” if they are organizationally independent.
The number of genuinely distinct theological traditions, communities that hold meaningfully different doctrinal convictions about the essential matters of Christian faith, is much smaller. And when those genuinely distinct theological traditions are examined, the pattern is revealing: those that disagree most sharply with each other are not communities that hold the Scripture as the supreme authority. They are communities that have added other authorities; experiential, prophetic, Magisterial, confessional, alongside or above the Scripture.
The communities that hold the Scripture as the supreme and final authority on the essential doctrines of the Christian faith show remarkable unity on exactly the matters the Scripture addresses with clarity: The deity and humanity of Christ, the necessity of the atoning cross, salvation through faith in Christ alone, the resurrection, the return of Christ. These are the matters Paul identifies as first importance in 1 Corinthians 15. And on these matters, the community that receives the Scripture honestly, without the Magisterium’s authority and without the confessional tradition’s governing framework, arrives at the same conclusions, across every century, every language, and every cultural context.
The fragmentation that the thirty thousand denominations figure is meant to represent is not primarily a fragmentation about first-importance matters. It is fragmentation about secondary and tertiary matters; church governance, sacramental theology, worship practice, eschatological specifics, matters on which the Scripture itself (Romans 14, the Jerusalem Council, the various polity models in the New Testament) allows significant latitude.
The Charge Proves Too Much
The anarchy argument, applied consistently, destroys itself. If interpretive diversity proves that Sola Scriptura is false, that the Scripture cannot function as the governing authority because interpretation produces disagreement, then the same argument proves that the Magisterium is false and confessionalism is false.
The Roman Catholic Church, which claims to prevent interpretive anarchy through the Magisterium’s governing authority, has produced liberation theology, progressive Catholicism, and traditionalist Catholicism. The Second Vatican Council produced communities that remained in full communion with Rome while holding substantially different theological positions on issues the Magisterium was supposed to have settled. The Jesuits and the Dominicans have disagreed with each other for centuries, under the same Magisterial authority, on significant doctrinal and moral questions.
The confessionalist Presbyterian world, which claims to prevent interpretive chaos through strict confessional subscription, has produced the OPC and the PCA from the same confessional tradition, the RCUS and the NAPARC communions, multiple streams of Dutch Reformed tradition holding different positions on the days of creation, the days of the Mosaic law, the nature of the covenant, and the application of the Regulative Principle, all within the framework of formal Westminster Standards subscription.
If interpretive diversity proves that the governing authority has failed, then every governing authority has failed. The existence of interpretive diversity proves that interpretation is difficult, not that Sola Scriptura is false.
Anarchy Versus Legitimate Diversity
The anarchy charge conflates two things that the New Testament distinguishes clearly: genuine anarchy, no one can agree on anything, including the essential matters of the faith, and legitimate diversity on secondary and tertiary matters where the Scripture itself permits latitude.
Paul addresses this distinction directly in Romans 14-15. One person esteems one day above another. Another esteems every day alike. One person eats only vegetables. Another eats everything. Paul does not invoke a governing interpretive authority to settle these matters. He does not appeal to the Jerusalem Council’s ruling. He says: let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
The Scripture itself permits diversity on these matters. The Scripture itself does not require every community to arrive at the same conclusion about every secondary question. The diversity that exists across genuine Bible-believing communities on secondary matters is not evidence that Sola Scriptura has failed. It is evidence that Sola Scriptura has correctly identified which matters are primary and which are secondary.
The genuine anarchy, the inability to agree on primary matters, is not produced by the communities that hold the Scripture as the supreme authority. It is produced by communities that have added other authorities alongside it, producing competing claims that the Scripture alone cannot adjudicate because the Scripture alone is not being treated as the final court of appeal.
The Proper Court of Appeal
The decisive answer to the anarchy charge is not the denial that interpretive disagreement exists. It does. The decisive answer is the identification of the proper court of appeal when it does.
The Roman Catholic answer: the Magisterium. The appeal goes to the Pope or a general council, whose ruling is binding. The weakness: the Magisterium has produced internal fragmentation, has reversed previous binding rulings, and claims an authority the Scripture does not grant it.
The confessionalist answer: the confessional tradition. The appeal goes to the Westminster Confession or the Three Forms of Unity, whose formulation governs. The weakness: the confessional tradition has produced its own internal fragmentation (multiple communities holding the same confessional standards arriving at different conclusions), and claims for the confession an authority that the confession’s own doctrine of Scripture explicitly denies.
The Biblicist answer: the text. The appeal goes to the Scripture, read carefully, in community, with every available scholarly tool, and with the Spirit’s illumination. The result is not perfect agreement on every question, the New Testament itself does not require that. The result is unity on the primary matters that the Scripture addresses with clarity, and legitimate diversity on secondary matters where the Scripture permits it.
The anarchy charge is a charge against the existence of diversity. But diversity on secondary matters is not anarchy. It is the legitimate outcome of the freedom the Word grants on matters where the Word does not require uniformity.
What Genuine Unity Looks Like
The unity that genuine Biblicism produces is the unity of the essential Christian confession, not the artificial unity produced by institutional authority demanding uniformity on matters where the Word permits diversity.
The person who comes to the Scripture honestly, with genuine repentance and genuine faith, without the confessional tradition’s glasses and without the Magisterium’s authorization, arrives at the same essential convictions that every genuinely regenerate believer has arrived at across twenty centuries. The cross. The resurrection. The deity of Christ. Salvation by grace through faith. The return of the King. The resurrection of the body. The judgment to come.
These are not the product of institutional authority. They are the product of the self-interpreting, Spirit-illumined, sufficient Word speaking with the clarity the Psalmist described: great peace for those who love the law. Not anarchy. Not chaos.
The thirty thousand denominations may exist. The interpretive disagreements are real. The diversity on secondary matters is genuine. But the unity on primary matters, the unity produced by the Word’s own clarity on the things that are most important, is the unity the anarchy charge cannot explain away.
Tomorrow, Day 18, the anti-tradition charge. The last of the three straw men.
“Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.” — Psalm 119:165 KJV
📖 This post is adapted from Biblicism: The Faith Once Delivered. If it helped you, the full book is available on Amazon — or you can support this ministry directly.
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