If orthodox Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura, why insist on Trinitarianism, which is not biblical?
It is only biblical if you insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible, which the Bible itself does not insist upon, but in fact the opposite is the case, the Bible itself rejects literalism.
So, if you believe the Bible you don't have to take any of it literally which leads to the problem(?) of taking what could be taken metaphorically, metaphorically, and taking literally ethics which lead to being good (which ethics are good and which bad, is a matter of interpretation)
What you are describing isn't an accuate description of Sola Scriptura or conservative Protestant approaches to theology.
He says while leaving the description he has in mind in his own mind so that no one can refute it.
You win every debate the same way buddy?
... (I don't need to comment on the rest of it, as this is enough)
Regards
DL
Wait hold on a second here. That wasn't a nitpicky dismissal. You got some key doctrines of conservative Protestantism wrong there. Your description was a caricature of what the great majority of conservative Protestants actually teach. Was my post a bit lazy? Perhaps, but in the same vein, it's not unreasonable to expect you to have a reasonably accurate understanding of what you're critiquing, before launching into a detailed response.
Now that being said, here is what I would dispute in your post:
1) Sola scriptura holds that the Bible is the only
infallible rule of faith, not the
only rule of faith. It is therefore open to appeals to the church fathers, tradition etc, so long as they are not held to be infallible. That is also why the older Protestant denominations have confessions which are used for teaching, appealed to in debate etc.
2) Pretty much every Protestant would insist that the Trinity can be reasoned out from scripture, even if it doesn't explicitly say "God is a triune". Obviously the entire case for the Trinity is way to big to get into in great detail here, but as a simple example, there is a lot of stuff in John's Gospel or Paul's letters that is rather difficult to reconcile with a Judeo-Islamic model of one God in one person.
3) Talking about a literal vs metaphorical Bible doesn't really do Biblical hermeneutics justice given:
a) There are large swathes of the Bible where a literal-metaphorical divide just doesn't work. How would the literal-metaphorical divide work for interpreting Psalm 150 for example?
b) The Bible is an eclectic collection of texts written over centuries. To speak about interpreting the whole collection literally or metaphorically, is a stretch given the range of authors, genres etc.
Given the above I disagree with your assertion that "the Bible itself" as a whole rejects literalism.
